Israel’s military withdrew from Gaza’s largest hospital early Monday after a two-week raid, leaving behind several bodies and a vast swath of destruction, according to Palestinian residents. Israeli forces described the raid on Shifa Hospital as one of the most successful of the nearly six-month war, claiming to have killed scores of Hamas militants who had regrouped there after an earlier raid, and that it seized weapons and valuable intelligence.

Protests, meanwhile, broke out across Israel on Sunday, elevating pressure on embattled Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Demonstrations in Tel Aviv and elsewhere were some of the largest since Oct. 7, when Iran-backed Hamas militants killed more than 1,200 Israeli civilians and took about 250 hostages. Mr. Netanyahu is facing rising public anger over the fact that dozens of the hostages are still held by Hamas.

The protests come as fears continue to swirl around the potential for a widening clash between Israeli forces and Hezbollah, another Iran-backed militant organization that has long clashed with Israel. Israeli Defense Forces said Friday that they had carried out an airstrike in Lebanon that killed Ali Abed Akhsan Naim, a deputy Hezbollah commander responsible for rockets and missiles launched by the group into Israel.

The U.S. likely provided Russia with enough information to help avert the March 22 Islamic State attack on a Moscow concert that killed more than 130 people, according to the former head of the Pentagon’s Central Command. “I think we gave them pretty precise information,” retired Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie said over the weekend, adding that “the problem that ISIS-K has … is when they wanted to conduct an attack abroad, they have to communicate and that communication is often something that we have the opportunity to listen to.”

Questions continue to swirl about whether the Kremlin knew the assault was coming and allowed it to happen. As previously reported by Threat Status, the U.S. Embassy in Moscow issued a public warning on Friday, March 8, that an extremist attack in Russia could be “imminent.” The warning came a day after the Kremlin’s own Federal Security Service (FSB) said Russian authorities had killed militants from the Islamic State terror group who were plotting to attack a Moscow synagogue.

The FSB warning notably came on March 7 as U.S. Army Gen. Erik Kurilla, the current head of Central Command, testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee that ISIS-K operatives in Afghanistan and Syria had the capability and the will to launch strikes with “little to no warning.”

The latest episode of the weekly Threat Status podcast that dropped Monday morning examines whether Russian President Vladimir Putin let the ISIS-K terrorist attack happen for sinister geopolitical reasons.

The episode separately features an interview with Taiwan AI Labs founder Ethan Tu, who tells Threat Status that the Communist regime in China is using generative artificial intelligence to create armies of disinformation trolls across social media platforms in multiple languages.

A recent analysis by Taiwan AI Labs found the “involvement of 9,080 troll accounts” involved in debates on social media among U.S. lawmakers, technology experts and digital communities over the potential ban by the United States government of the China-based TikTok platform.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is being forced to become a lot more transparent about border activity, particularly regarding how many illegal immigrants it is catching and releasing and why it is having trouble keeping so many of them in detention. Congress ordered the data be made available in language tucked inside the massive spending package passed just two weeks ago.

The Washington Times’ Stephen Dinan has a deep dive on the language, which requires DHS to publicize how many detention beds it pays for each month and how many it is actually filling. The department also must reveal the total number of migrants caught and released under Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’ “parole” powers; the reason for each parole; the number of migrants caught and released under other authorities; and the number of illegal immigrants referred by agents and officers to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution.

U.S. bickering over military and other aid for Ukraine more than two years after the Russian invasion proves that Kyiv’s only real option for success against Moscow is to pursue NATO membership, according to Ukraine-based international affairs analyst Lesia Dubenko.

Ms. Dubenko, who examines the differences between Washington’s current postures on the Ukraine war and the Israel-Hamas conflict, argues that the stakes are rising for Kyiv, particularly as many Republicans hold to the view that future Ukraine aid should be tied to a border security deal and a clearer outline from the Biden administration of America’s war strategy.

“Though there is little optimism that the upcoming NATO summit in Washington will add clarity to Ukraine’s membership, it is paramount that the notion of having no alternatives to it — in the U.S. foremost — must finally sink in,” she writes.