Trump’s Turkey envoy: We were ‘a step away’ from military confrontation between Turkey and Israel

Posted on August 27, 2026 by ArchitectGuy

MIDDLE EAST FORUM
The Empty Runway: What a war with Turkey would look like, and how to hold Syria’s sky without fighting one
Gregg Roman
August 23, 2026

At dawn on Tuesday, Israeli aircraft put eight strikes into the runway and storage sheds of Abu al-Duhur, a mothballed Syrian airbase in Idlib about 70 kilometers from the Turkish border. Nobody died. The base has not operated as a working military airfield in over a decade. That is the point: Israel was not bombing an army. It was bombing a possibility. The possibility had visited the day before. Syrian officials told the Associated Press that a Turkish delegation had toured the base on Monday to review rehabilitation work and left hours before the bombs arrived, the first confirmed Turkish presence at the site. Jerusalem confirmed the strike and said Syria was on the verge of breaching an agreed security status quo by letting Turkish troops deploy there. Ankara denied any delegation was at the base before or during the strike, called the raid a violation of Syrian sovereignty, and accused Israel of expansionist politics timed to an election. Damascus said the Turkish visits were ordinary military contact and that no Turkish base is planned. Carry all of it; the gap between those tellings is exactly where wars are born. READ MORE

i24NEWS Trump’s envoy to i24NEWS: We were ‘a step away’ from military confrontation between Turkey and Israel  The US Ambassador to Turkey, Tom Barrack, who also serves as President Donald Trump’s envoy to Syria, told i24NEWS on Wednesday that the Israeli airstrike on the Abu al-Duhur military airbase in Syria “carried a real risk of rapidly escalating to a direct military confrontation between Israel and Turkey, as well as with Syria.” “The Turkish forces did not know that Israeli aircraft were on their way to this specific Syrian base, nor did they know what their objective was. Therefore, they might have decided to scramble their own fighter jets, believing they themselves were under attack,” Barrack said in an interview with i24NEWS. He added, “Yesterday’s events were serious and worrying. However, we are relieved that no lives were lost and that the situation did not escalate.”

FDD Syria-Israel Talks Will Face a Turkish Test Syria and Israel are back at the negotiating table after a seven-month pause in talks over a potential security agreement. On August 23, Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani met with Mossad Director Roman Gofman in Jordan. The meeting, held under U.S. mediation, was aimed at defusing tensions following Israel’s August 18 strike on the Abu Duhur Air Base in northwestern Syria. The strike reportedly followed Israeli intelligence indicating that Turkey was seeking to deploy troops and radar systems at the base. Israeli concerns about Turkish entrenchment in Syria have been clear since the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in December 2024, given Ankara’s support for Hamas and its increasingly hostile rhetoric toward Israel.

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“My former boss, Bernie Sanders, and the broader left-wing activist infrastructure that surrounds him, are actively fueling antisemitism in this country”

Posted on August 27, 2026 by ArchitectGuy

FREE PRESS
I Worked for Bernie Sanders. The Democratic Party Is Turning Against the Jews.
Joel Rubin
August 21, 2026

…The reason I was hired [by Bernie Sanders] was clear to me. The campaign understood that Jews—who have long voted overwhelmingly for Democrats—were an important constituency for Sanders, and they worried that anti-Zionist voices in his coalition would jeopardize his Jewish support. But very quickly after joining, I realized there had been a profound misunderstanding on the part of the campaign team: Many of the activists trying to get Sanders elected—and who the campaign depended on—were not looking for a candidate who supported Israel’s existence. That I did was a letdown for them, but one that they had to swallow. At the time, I assumed these were outliers—a vocal fringe the campaign would eventually outgrow. But I was wrong. They were a sign of where the campaign, and the Democratic Party as a whole, was rapidly heading: toward a status quo in which the price of belonging to the party is to explicitly distance yourself from Israel, denounce the mainstream Jewish institutions that support the Jewish state, and accept the premise that Zionism itself is incompatible with progressive politics. READ MORE

JEWISH INSIDER Van Hollen, Kaine, Sanders plan to force vote on Israeli policy in West Bank Sens. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), Tim Kaine (D-VA), Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and eight Democratic colleagues plan to force a vote in the Senate in the coming weeks to require the State Department to produce a report for Congress on violence by settlers and Israeli forces in the West Bank, including killings and detentions of Americans. If the resolution were to pass — which is unlikely — and the State Department were to fail to produce the report within 30 days, most U.S. security assistance to Israel would be cut off. After such a report was delivered, any senator would also be able to force a vote on cutting off aid to Israel.

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“The move by Rogers’ team angered AIPAC officials, who had spent more than $30 million to try to defeat El-Sayed in the Democratic primary and prepared to spend millions more to help elect Rogers, according to people familiar with the conversations”

Posted on August 26, 2026 by ArchitectGuy

AXIOS
Mike Rogers-AIPAC rupture roils Michigan Senate race
Alex Isenstadt
August 22, 2026

Allies of Mike Rogers, Michigan’s GOP nominee for the U.S. Senate, have asked AIPAC not to advertise on his behalf, triggering a rupture with the powerful but polarizing pro-Israel group. Rogers spoke with AIPAC chair Michael Tuchin in Los Angeles last week. The next day, AIPAC shelved an already-cut video ad targeting Rogers’ Democratic rival, outspoken Israel critic Abdul El-Sayed. The extraordinary tension underscores how far AIPAC’s political standing has fallen amid voters’ anger over the war in Gaza. Even Rogers — a staunchly pro-Israel Republican — fears the group’s public support could be a liability in the Nov. 3 election. READ MORE

FREE BEACON El-Sayed Campaign Gets a $175,000 Boost From CAIR, Whose Leader Was ‘Happy’ About Oct. 7, After Alleging Primary Opponent’s AIPAC Support Constituted ‘Foreign’ Intervention in Election The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the anti-Israel group whose leader said he was “happy” about October 7, is quietly funding left-wing Democrat Abdul El-Sayed’s Senate bid in Michigan. That financial support comes after El-Sayed made demonization of the pro-Israel American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) a central pillar of his primary campaign against Michigan congresswoman Haley Stevens, maligning the American group’s support as foreign meddling in the election. 

JEWISH INSIDER Michigan Jewish Dems circulate letter endorsing Republican Mike Rogers for Senate The signatories say they ‘fear the far-left and anti-Jewish elements in the Democratic party would become dominant’ if Abdul El-Sayed is elected

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“The terror group can never be trusted to lay down arms, renounce violent jihad, and accept a settlement that abides Israel’s existence as a Jewish state”

Posted on August 26, 2026 by ArchitectGuy

NATIONAL REVIEW
The Folly of Negotiating with Hamas
Andrews C. McCarthy
August 22, 2026

…The White House doesn’t see conflicts of interest because it fancies Trump (he of the multiple bankruptcies) as a boffo business dealmaker, and sees business — commerce — as transcendent. To repeat what I’ve opined before, President Trump not only fails to grasp the sharia supremacist ideology of the Iranian regime, Hamas, the Taliban, et al.; even as he sits in messes of his own making due specifically to cluelessness about how our enemies’ ideology dictates their actions, he doesn’t see the point of trying to understand them. He is biddable, and he calculates that his counterparties are, too. An ideological contest — the West’s principles against Islamist principles — is outside his framework. It’s just another deal, and our enemies’ anti-American, antisemitic, and anti-Western stances are dismissed as so much puffery until we finally arrive at a price to close what can be sold to the public as a spectacular deal. READ MORE

JPOST Jared Kushner is the latest victim of the Oslo Syndrome In his 2005 book, The Oslo Syndrome: Delusions of a People Under Siege Kenneth Levin coined the phrase “The Oslo Syndrome” to describe the relentless, irrational pursuit of peace at all costs by the Israeli public and its political leadership that began with the 1993 Oslo Accords. The name references The Stockholm Syndrome, a better-known Scandinavian ailment that manifests when a captive develops an emotional bond with their captor…The [Oslo Syndrome] bug has not gone away, and no vaccine has been found. New victims keep showing up, oblivious to their affliction and ready to forge peace. The latest patient appears to be none other than Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law. Kushner’s official government title is “United States Special Envoy for Peace Missions.” Never has a patient embraced his affliction so wholeheartedly and energetically.

TABLET MAG Elliott Abrams: Talking to Terrorists The Trump administration’s policy of meeting with terrorist leaders does more than legitimize their aims and tactics. It also establishes a ruinous precedent for future administrations that find deeper sympathies with organizations that murder Western civilians while proclaiming, “Death to America.” Even in their most appeasement-minded moments, the Carter, Obama, and Biden administrations accepted the formal premise that some actors’ behavior and goals place them beyond the pale of polite diplomacy. Now, that seal of isolation on the planet’s worst actors and their repulsive ideologies has been broken.

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Rep. Brad Schneider: ‘It is disingenuous for El-Sayed to try to distance himself from Piker without specifically condemning, refuting, or even just rejecting Piker’s hateful rhetoric’

Posted on August 25, 2026 by ArchitectGuy

WASHINGTON TIMES
Hasan Piker blames AIPAC as Democrats condemn his remarks on Jews
August 26, 2026

Left-wing Twitch streamer Hasan Piker has blamed the American Israel Public Affairs Committee for a wave of Democratic condemnations touched off by his comments suggesting that American Jews’ support for Israel invites violence against them. Writing on X, Mr. Piker said an “AIPAC boss call was made” and that the lawmakers criticizing him were “unanimous in their hatred,” adding that he welcomed it. In a second post, he suggested tallying how much the Democrats who denounced him had received from AIPAC, a Washington-based pro-Israel lobbying organization that he characterized as a foreign government lobby backed by MAGA billionaires. Fox News Digital, which first reported Mr. Piker’s response, said AIPAC did not immediately reply to a request for comment. The remarks that prompted the backlash came during an Aug. 20 livestream. READ MORE

WASHINGTON EXAMINER Jewish House Democrat calls out el Sayed for refusing to ‘condemn the words of Hasan Piker’ Rep. Brad Schneider (D-IL) called out Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul el Sayed for refusing to “condemn the words” of socialist Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, who recently made comments saying some Jews in the United States are “making antisemitism worse” with their support for Israel. Schneider, a Jewish House Democrat and chairman of the center-left New Democrat Coalition, weighed in on Piker’s recent inflammatory remarks against Jews. The Twitch streamer said “eventually, someone is going to come around and take action … against American Jews” if they “keep putting this idea out there that they are singularly invested in Israel,” while discussing Michigan state Sen. Jeremy Moss, who is Jewish.

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“After Oct. 7, the landscape shifted in a seismic way, not that antisemitism was brand new, because we do have a history of quotas to limit Jewish enrollment in medicine and other examples of discrimination against Jewish doctors”

Posted on August 25, 2026 by ArchitectGuy

STANDWITHUS
CCA training will teach faculty, staff and students to recognize antisemitism in its evolving forms
August 24, 2026

The Center for Combating Antisemitism (CCA) announced on August 24 that it will provide antisemitism-awareness and recognition training to Haverford College faculty, staff and students as part of the settlement reached between the college and Jewish students who brought a lawsuit alleging that Haverford failed to adequately address antisemitism on campus. The settlement follows more than two years of litigation and includes significant policy changes, including recognition that discrimination against Jews cannot be excused simply by characterizing targeted individuals as “Zionists.”…As part of the settlement, she wrote, the college is making clear that all students, including Jews, Israelis and Zionists, are “welcome” on campus and can “enjoy equal access to the college and all of its educational programs and activities.” READ MORE

 JNS ‘Tsunami of hate’ against Jews in medicine and hospitals, researchers say At the University of California, Los Angeles David Geffen School of Medicine, Jews were labeled as oppressors. Patients were afraid to be identified as Jews at the University of California, San Francisco, and protesters targeted medical schools in New York City and demanded the destruction of the State of Israel. These are some of the antisemitic incidents that erupted in hospitals, dental schools, psychology conferences and elsewhere since Oct. 7, according to a new study published in the Rambam Maimonides Medical Journal.

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Many Jewish Peloton members and non-Jewish allies said fitness company continues to ignore what they consider an act anti-Jewish bigotry — in the form of wiping the Jewish state off the map — within its staff’s ranks

Posted on August 24, 2026 by ArchitectGuy

AFTER OCTOBER 7
Peloton Goes Silent as Jewish Backlash Grows Over Instructor’s Israel-Erasure Ad
Kevin Deutsch
August 11, 2026

Facing backlash after Peloton instructor Adrian Williams recorded an Instagram advertisement for an anti-zionist Palestinian restaurant chain that promotes Israel’s erasure from world maps, the fitness company has apparently settled on a strategy of silence, while Jewish advocacy group StandWithUs has launched a campaign pressing Peloton to enforce its own policies and take action against anti-Jewish bigotry. Peloton has thus far declined to answer media inquiries or address specific concerns from members over Williams’ promotional Instagram post for Ayat, which he starred in and narrated for his 315,000 followers. The video shows Williams eating at one of the Brooklyn-based chain eatery’s locations and displaying a misleading “Discover Palestine” page inside an Ayat menu, which shows a map of Israel incorrectly labeled “Palestine;”..The antizionist Palestinian restaurant chain previously drew backlash for using “From the River to the Sea” on its menu, promoting the antizionist slogan that calls for the elimination of Israel. READ MORE

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“Foreign adversaries have been actively using disinformation and psychological operations to divide America, erode our national security, and undermine U.S. foreign policy. Americans deserve to know when the voices shaping what they see online are working on behalf of foreign interests”

Posted on August 24, 2026 by ArchitectGuy

JEWISH INSIDER
Bipartisan group introduces bill to make influencers register under FARA
Marc Rod
August 24, 2026

A bipartisan group of House members introduced legislation on Monday that would require influencers to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act when receiving payments from foreign governments for their work. The Foreign Propaganda Disclosure Act comes amid suspicion and scrutiny, particularly among different online factions of the conservative movement, about foreign governments driving social media conversation, including accusations of Qatari, Turkish, Ukrainian and Israeli influence. The bill is sponsored by Reps. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL), Vicente Gonzalez (D-TX), Derrick Van Orden (R-WI) and Jared Moskowitz (D-FL). It would explicitly add social media influencers to existing FARA registration requirements. “There is a big difference between having an organic opinion and secretly acting on behalf of foreign interests to push propaganda to Americans,” Luna said in a statement. READ MORE

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“CBC News doesn’t designate specific groups as terrorists regardless of the region or the events, because these words are so loaded with meaning, politics and emotion that they can end up being impediments to our journalism”

Posted on August 23, 2026 by ArchitectGuy

NEW YORK POST
Canada’s CBC instructs staff not to call 9/11 a ‘terrorist attack’ in news coverage
Ronny Reyes
August 27, 2026

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation instructed its staff not to refer to the killings on 9/11 as “terrorist attacks” ahead of its coverage of the 25th anniversary, according to an internal memo. The public broadcaster reaffirmed that it would avoid using words like “terrorist” and “terrorism” when describing events, directing its staffers to follow the longstanding company policy that previously landed them in hot water during their Oct. 7, 2023, coverage…The public broadcaster had previously come under fire over the same policy in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack in Israel, where Conservative MPs demanded answers for CBC’s coverage. READ MORE

JEWISH CHRONICLE Petition to bar Mamdani from 9/11 commemoration hits 25,000 signatures Signatories, including relatives of victims, claim the New York mayor has associated with individuals ‘hostile to American values’

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Jews have lived in Kaifeng for a millennium. It took Xi Jinping only a decade to bring them to the brink.

Posted on August 23, 2026 by ArchitectGuy

TABLET MAG
China Erases Its Jewish Past
Lee Moore
August 18, 2026

For the past decade, police have been stationed outside the door of one of China’s most prominent native Jews. “They see who goes in, who talks. They can hear who is saying what inside the house,” says that person’s sibling, who now lives in Israel (to protect their identities, this article will refer to the one living in Israel as Zhao Lao’er and the one living in Kaifeng as Zhao Laoda). The police monitoring Zhao Laoda’s life are national-level police. “They are like the FBI, not local Kaifeng police.” Several times a year, Zhao Laoda is hauled in by the police for questioning about activities in the Jewish community. The recent crackdown under President Xi Jinping’s rule has focused on erasing Kaifeng’s Jewish history. Most of what we know of the small Jewish community in this central Chinese city is carved in stone on four tablets that, for centuries, were located outside the Kaifeng synagogue, particularly the tablets from 1489 and 1512. READ MORE

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