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As Christians around the world prepare to celebrate Easter Sunday, we go to Palestine to speak to Reverend Munther Isaac, pastor of the Lutheran Church in Ramallah and director of the Bethlehem Institute for Peace and Justice, located in the city of Jesus Christ's birth. This year's Easter preparations come against the backdrop of the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran, which many Christian nationalists in the U.S., including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, are framing in extremist religious terms. Reverend Isaac calls the Christian Zionism espoused by Hegseth and others "a theology of war, of violence" and highlights the efforts of Pope Leo XIV, the U.S.-born head of the Catholic Church who has come out stridently against both the war and Hegseth's rhetoric, to promote peace in the region.
Isaac also comments on Israeli authorities' recent attempt to prevent the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem from entering the Church of the Holy Sepulchre on Palm Sunday due to Israel's ban on gatherings at religious sites during the war. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu quickly granted access to the church following global backlash. But, "do we really need permission from an occupying authority?" asks Isaac. "Israel does not have sovereignty over, should not have sovereignty over Jerusalem. … We have been worshiping here for centuries, uninterrupted."
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After resisting calls for public hearings for weeks, House Republicans have called the secretary of defense to testify at a budget hearing in late April for the first time since the attacks on Iran began.
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The Trump administration says the United States has struck 11,000 targets in Iran since the U.S.-Israeli war on the country began. Critics have questioned the accuracy of the Maven system, the artificial intelligence system used by the military to speed up the process of identifying targets.
"Imagine Google Earth for war, a map of war with white dots, infused with information like elevation, coordinate, what is precisely there, whether it's friendly or foe," says Katrina Manson, a reporter for Bloomberg News and author of Project Maven: A Marine Colonel, His Team, and the Dawn of AI Warfare.
The Pentagon launched Project Maven in 2017. Google was an initial partner, but the company pulled out after over 3,000 Google employees signed a letter opposing the work. The big data firm Palantir then took over the project and has run it ever since.
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