The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced Monday the killing of a Hamas commander who took part in the terrorist group’s invasion of Israel on Oct. 7, an attack in which militants crossed the border from Gaza and massacred some 1,200 people.

In a post on X, the IDF said it eliminated Adil Mismah, the Nukhba company commander in the Gazan city of Deir al-Balah.

The Jerusalem Post reported that Mismah led terrorists into Kibbutz Kissufim and directed gunmen to devastate the kibbutz communities of Nirim and Be’eri.

The IDF said Mismah was killed in an Israeli Air Force strike with help from troops on the ground.

In the same post, the IDF said it struck terror targets run by Hamas and Islamic Jihad for conducting warfare. During the operation, troops located substantial amounts of weapons.

Troops also destroyed a launch post, eliminated a terrorist cell accused of attacking IDF forces with mortar shells, and identified and eliminated a terrorist launching rockets in Khan Yunis.

The post came as Israel announced plans to partially withdraw its forces from Gaza in the coming months as the war against Hamas enters a new phase.

The shift means the IDF will focus on more targeted operations against Hamas, reducing the use of artillery and air strikes.

It also means that some reservists who were called up for active duty will return to civilian life to help stimulate the economy, according to Reuters.

While the change means a shift in how Israel goes after Hamas, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said over the weekend that the war is set to last many more months.

‘This will take six months at least and involve intense mopping-up missions against the terrorists,’ an Israeli official told Reuters. ‘No one is talking about doves of peace being flown from Shajaia.’

Fox News’ Anders Hagstrom and Reuters contributed to this report.

Israel’s Home Front Command is reportedly preparing to allow some residents who lived in border communities near the Gaza Strip to return to their homes as fighting in the north winds down after three months. 

Israelis who lived within 4 miles of Gaza were evacuated after the October 7 assault, in which Hamas militants infiltrated Israel and massacred 1,200 people, and kidnapped 240 others to Gaza. The hardest-hit communities were within two to four miles of Gaza. 

Some have since returned, but many have stayed away as fighting continues, being hosted at hotels or at kibbutz guesthouses, per the Times of Israel. 

Citing the Home Front Command, the Times reported Monday that those at least 2.5 miles from Northern Gaza – where the IDF says it has decimated Hamas – will start returning to their homes, though no timeline was offered. 

It follows the reopening of the rabbinical seminary, the Max and Ruth Scwartz Hesder Yeshiva in Sderot last week. 

The Times’ report comes as the Israeli military confirmed it was pulling thousands of troops out of the Gaza Strip, a step that could clear the way for a new long-term phase of lower-intensity fighting against Hamas.

In its announcement, the army said that five brigades, or several thousand troops, would be taken out of Gaza in the coming weeks. Some will return to bases for further training or rest, while many older reservists will go home. The war has taken a toll on the economy by preventing reservists from going to their jobs, running their businesses or returning to university studies.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Iran’s Alborz warship has reportedly entered the Red Sea, emerging at a time of heightened tensions in the key shipping route amid ongoing attacks on vessels in response to the Israel-Hamas war. 

Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency reported Monday that the vessel had entered the Red Sea through the Bab al-Mandab Strait, though it was unclear precisely when.  

Tasnim did not give details of the Alborz’s mission but said Iranian warships had been operating in open waters to secure shipping routes, combat piracy, and carry out other tasks since 2009.

The Alvand class destroyer had been a part of the Iranian navy’s 34th fleet, and patrolled the Gulf of Aden, the north of the Indian Ocean and the Bab Al-Mandab Strait as far back as 2015, according to Iran’s Press TV. 

The news comes as the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier strike group – which was moved to the Eastern Mediterranean Sea following Hamas’ deadly Oct. 7 invasion of Israel – is heading back to its home in Norfolk, Va. 

The Ford was deployed to the Eastern Mediterranean so it could be within striking distance of Israel following the Oct. 7 attacks. 

The carrier remained in the Mediterranean while its accompanying ships sailed into the Red Sea where Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis have been targeting vessels since November to show their support for the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas in its war with Israel.

In response, many major shipping companies have rerouted their vessels around Africa’s Cape of Good Hope, adding exorbitant costs and delays. 

Houthi militants attacked a Maersk container vessel with missiles and small boats on Saturday and Sunday, prompting the company to pause all sailing through the Red Sea for 48 hours.

Fox News’ Greg Wehner and Reuters contributed to this report.

A Georgetown University professor who spent 12 years as a CIA intelligence analyst is warning that DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) efforts and the overall politicization of the intelligence community have become a ‘significant’ problem and that he is confident those agencies will attempt to interfere with the 2024 election similar to their efforts in 2020.

‘My guess is that the the proverbial deep state within the intelligence community will reemerge because presumably a Republican candidate will again be seen as a threat to the internal policies that many intelligence people like,’ Dr. John Gentry, author of the new book, ‘Neutering the CIA: Why US Intelligence Versus Trump Has Long-Term Consequences,’ told Fox News Digital. 

Within days of the bombshell New York Post story that detailed the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop in the lead-up to the 2020 election, 51 former intelligence officials signed onto a letter in an attempt to discredit the laptop, saying it ‘has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.’ 

The CIA approved the publication of the infamous Hunter Biden laptop letter, according to documents obtained by Fox News Digital in 2023.

Gentry told Fox News Digital that downplaying the Hunter Biden laptop was ‘clearly political’ and that a highly placed source told him ‘in no uncertain terms’ that it was done ‘explicitly’ with the ‘intent to help the Biden campaign.’

He said there have already been signs in recent weeks that current or former intelligence agency members will be active in 2024.

‘I long have thought we are likely to again see former intelligence officers be politically active against Trump or whomever the Republican presidential candidate is next year, and I expect leaking to resume,’ Gentry said. ‘The activities of ‘formers’ have resumed already, a bit before I expected.’

Gentry pointed to a recent article from Marc Polymeropoulos, a CIA official who retired in 2019 and was the co-lead of the Hunter Biden laptop ‘open letter,’ and former FBI employee Asha Rangappa that warned of the dangers of Trump’s rhetoric on the campaign trail. 

‘Asha Rangappa once worked at the FBI and also was openly anti-Trump, though as a relatively junior former, she attracted less attention than many,’ Gentry said. ‘I think it is worth closely monitoring these people. Many have compromised their credibility by actions such as the ‘Laptop 51′ letter.’

A major issue over the past few decades, Gentry said, was the introduction of DEI policies at the major intelligence agencies, including the CIA, that shifted attention away from day-to-day operations to a more ‘woke’ political agenda.

‘It was an effort half a century ago to get more women and minorities into the intelligence community,’ Gentry said. ‘This was done under the rubric of affirmative action. It gradually became more of a policy through the Clinton administration. But it took a significant step forward, or not, depending on your perspective, when President Obama signed an executive order designed to improve diversity and inclusion in the federal workforce.’

Gentry told Fox News Digital that discussions about personal politics didn’t happen during his time at the CIA but that sources in the intelligence community during the Obama years told him that standard was largely ‘gone’ and political activism was ‘common.’

Two of the main drivers of the more politically active intel agencies, Gentry explained, were former CIA Director John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.

Gentry said Brennan and Clapper were both ‘… very strongly supportive of Obama’s desire to transform the federal workforce, and so they began to accelerate this process and did a number of things from the standpoint of policy actions, in terms of specific recruitment efforts, for example, and they pushed their employees to be more concerned about diversity and inclusion issues and, even in Brennan’s case, to be politically active.’

Gentry told Fox News Digital that there is no doubt that DEI and politicization within the intel agencies have had a negative effect on morale with the rank-and-file workers.

‘There are a lot of people who are unhappy about it because it’s politicizing the workforce, and it’s dividing the workforce among people who believe in DEI policies and those who don’t,’ Gentry said. 

‘And even in the Obama period, the analysis director had people who were beginning to talk about, quote, ‘soft totalitarianism.’ That was a direct result of Brennan’s top-down, politically driven policies; the totalitarianism being a reminder of the Soviet Union and China and so on. Well, this has a number of effects in terms of performance and in terms of credibility.’

Gentry said his book will hopefully help readers ‘appreciate that there is a significant political problem within the agencies’ and that former members of the intel community saw how effective they were in damaging Trump in 2020 and ‘no one was criticized.’

‘So, put all these things together, and I’m pretty confident that we’ll see a reemergence of activism,’ Gentry said.

In a speech at the Aspen Security Forum in July, CIA Director William Burns addressed the issue of politicization inside the intelligence community. 

‘My obligation, and President Biden reminds me of this frequently, is to offer the best intelligence that we can collect and analyze straight up, even when that’s inconvenient to policymakers. I spent enough time on the other side of the table to know when it’s inconvenient to, when somebody’s telling you that the big new idea is actually not so big, not so new, and not so effective,’ Burns said. 

‘Our job is to be straight about that, whether it’s welcome downtown, at the White House, or other parts of the executive branch or not. It’s not an easy role to play, but it’s an incredibly important one. It’s one I take seriously. I know Director Haines does and others across the US intelligence community. That’s what our officers do their very best to provide.’

In the second half of the Supreme Court’s 2023-2024, the justices are set to hear some blockbuster cases on topics ranging from First Amendment rights of social media companies, the abortion pill and the power of federal agencies. 

After a brief winter break, the high court will resume oral arguments on Jan. 8, which will continue through the spring, with opinions expected to be issued early summer.

Here are some of the high-profile cases to watch.

SOCIAL MEDIA: Moody (FL AG) v. NetChoice, LLC; NetChoice, LLC v. Moody; NetChoice LLC v. Paxton   

ARGUMENT DATE: Not yet set

AT ISSUE: Whether social media platforms’ handling of user content is protected by the First Amendment. 

THE CASE: Separate laws in Florida and Texas would require large companies like X and Facebook to host third-party communications and would prevent those businesses from blocking or removing users’ posts based on political viewpoints. 

THE ARGUMENTS: The laws aim to address what some lawmakers call ‘censoring’ of conservative messages and banning politicians like former President Trump for violating policies over offensive or ‘problematic’ content. A federal appeals court had ruled for the tech industry in the Florida case, saying as private entities, those companies were ‘engaged in constitutionally protected expressive activity when they moderate and curate the content that they disseminate on their platforms.’

IMPACT: Trump and a coalition of 16 states are among those filing separate amicus briefs supporting Florida. The Biden administration has opposed the state laws.

EXECUTIVE POWER: Loper Bright Enterprises, Inc. v. Raimondo

ARGUMENT DATE: Jan. 17

AT ISSUE: Potential far-reaching appeal over another legal effort to have the so-called ‘Chevron’ deference overturned by the Supreme Court. That 1984 ruling says when congressional federal laws are not clearly defined, federal agencies should be allowed broad discretion to interpret and enforce those policies. 

THE CASE: Lead plaintiff Loper Bright Enterprises of New Jersey, represented by the Cause of Action Institute, challenges a federal mandate requiring Atlantic herring fishermen to pay more than $700 per day for monitors to ride their boats, observe their activities and report to the government.  

THE ARGUMENTS: A federal appeals court found the National Marine Fisheries Service’s interpretation of a federal fishery law to be ‘reasonable.’ The fishermen argue Congress never granted the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration the authority to force fishermen to pay for monitors. Groups supporting them say the ‘Chevron’ precedent forces courts to defer to an agency’s interpretation of ‘ambiguous’ statutes. Those supporting continued deference say an adverse ruling would sow ‘chaos’ across the federal government and would concentrate rulemaking authority with unelected judges, who are not experts in specific policy matters.

THE IMPACT: Conservatives have long chafed at the ‘Chevron’ decision. The high court has been incrementally reining in federal regulators, including a June 2022 decision limiting EPA authority over greenhouse gas emissions. Overturning ‘Chevron’ or further weakening federal agency discretion would have enormous impacts on key areas like the environment, workplace safety, consumer protections, public health and immigration. The court has the option of broadly addressing the use of ‘Chevron’ deference or clarifying specific areas of its application by federal agencies.

ABORTION MEDICATION: FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine 

ARGUMENT DATE: Not yet set

AT ISSUE: Lawsuit seeking to restrict access to mifepristone, one of two drugs typically used to induce a medical abortion.

THE CASE: The FDA approved mifepristone in 2000 to end a pregnancy, and it is used in combination with a second drug, misoprostol. That pill combination is approved for use up to the 10th week of pregnancy. 

THE ARGUMENTS: Groups opposing the FDA say it failed to follow proper procedures when determining the drug’s safety risks. The Biden administration warned an adverse ruling would severely disrupt the way drugs are tested and brought to market. The Supreme Court has allowed the FDA to regulate the drug while the case is being litigated on its merits. While the case is still being litigated, a nationwide injunction could be issued by the judge, preventing medication abortions even in states where it remains legal. 

THE IMPACT: Any high court decision could impact 40 million women nationwide, and the Guttmacher Institute research group says more than half of all abortions in the U.S. use mifepristone. Supreme Court involvement in arguably the most contentious social issue could have enormous political implications in a presidential election year.

GUN RIGHTS : Garland v. Cargill 

ARGUMENT DATE: Not yet set 

AT ISSUE: Whether a bump stock device is a ‘machine gun’ as defined under federal law, because it is designed and intended for use in converting a rifle into a weapon that fires ‘automatically more than one shot… by a single function of the trigger.’

THE CASE: In the wake of a 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas that left 60 people dead and 500 more wounded, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) issued an interpretive rule concluding that bump stocks are machine guns. A bump stock is an attachment that allows a semiautomatic rifle to mimic a fully automatic weapon’s ‘cyclic firing rate to mimic nearly continuous automatic fire,’ according to ATF. The device essentially replaces the gun’s stock and pistol grip and causes the weapon to buck back and forth, repeatedly ‘bumping’ the trigger against the shooter’s finger. Michael Cargill, owner of Central Texas Gun Works, sued the government after he was forced to surrender several bump stocks under the ATF’s rule. 

THE ARGUMENTS: Mark Chenoweth, NCLA president and general counsel, said ‘this is not a case about gun rights. It is a case about administrative power.’ 

‘Congress never gave ATF the power to rewrite federal criminal statutes pertaining to machine guns—nor could it. Writing federal criminal laws is the sole preserve of Congress, and the Trump and Biden Administrations committed grievous constitutional error by trying to ban bump stocks without involving Congress. We are confident the U.S. Supreme Court will right this wrong for Michael Cargill and all Americans,’ Chenoweth said.

THE IMPACT: Millions of lawful gun owners also own bump stocks prior to the ATF rule. Cargill’s lawyers say that ATF has admitted that the loss of property for law-abiding Americans, should the rule stand, would be upwards of $100 million. 

FREE SPEECH: National Rifle Association of America v. Vullo

ARGUMENT DATE: Not yet set

AT ISSUE: Whether a government regulator threatening regulated entities with adverse regulatory actions if they do business with a controversial speaker, allegedly because of the government’s own hostility to the speaker’s viewpoint, violates the First Amendment.

THE CASE: The former superintendent of the New York State Department of Financial Services (DFS), Maria T. Vullo, at the behest of then-New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, allegedly wielded DFS’ regulatory power to financially blacklist the NRA – coercing banks and insurers to cut ties with the association, in an effort, the group says, to suppress its speech.

THE ARGUMENTS: The NRA argues that Vullo’s actions were meant to silence the NRA – using ‘guidance letters,’ backroom threats and other measures to cause financial institutions to ‘drop’ the Association. The NRA’s First Amendment claims withstood multiple motions to dismiss, but in 2022, after Vullo appealed the trial court’s ruling, the Second Circuit struck down the NRA’s claims. The court decided that in an era of ‘enhanced corporate social responsibility,’ it was reasonable for New York’s financial regulator to warn banks and insurance companies against servicing pro-gun groups based on the supposed ‘social backlash’ against those groups’ advocacy. 

THE IMPACT: The NRA earned an unlikely bedfellow in the American Civil Liberties, who will argue in support of the gun rights group that they ideologically oppose, but agree that its free speech liberties were violated by the New York official.

OBSTRUCTION: Fischer v. United States

ARGUMENT DATE: Not yet set 

AT ISSUE: Whether a court of appeals correctly determined that the indictments in these three cases permissibly included a charge of corruptly obstructing, influencing or impeding an official proceeding, based on each petitioner’s violent conduct on Jan. 6, 2021.

THE CASE: Over 300 people have been charged by the Justice Department with obstructing an official proceeding in connection with the Jan. 6 riot. This case stems from three defendants — Garret Miller of Dallas, Joseph Fischer of Boston, and Edward Jacob Lang of New York’s Hudson Valley – who are challenging that charge. 

THE ARGUMENTS: A lower court judge earlier dismissed the obstruction charge against three defendants, ruling that their conduct did not warrant that charge. However, the Biden DOJ challenged that ruling, and the appeals court in Washington, D.C., agreed with government prosecutors. 

THE IMPACT: The outcome of this case could impact former President Trump’s criminal case, in which he also faces similar obstruction charges.