“The PRC imports something like 90 percent of Iran’s total oil exports, making it a true economic lifeline for Tehran – and giving it considerable leverage over the regime”

Posted on May 9, 2026 by ArchitectGuy

PRESENT DANGERS
Iran looms over the Trump-Xi summit
Ilan Berman
May 9, 2026

President Trump is headed to China this coming week for that long-awaited summit with Xi Jinping. The agenda is a packed one, because he and the Chinese president have a great deal of bilateral issues to talk about. Iran, though, is shaping up to be a significant subject as well, and it’s one that could influence all the others. Here’s what I mean. When the current conflict started back in late February, the White House was expecting it to be over by the time Trump made his way to Beijing. It was also pretty confident that the war would end in a way that gave the U.S. added leverage over the PRC. Things haven’t turned out quite so. More than two months on, the U.S. conflict with Iran is still simmering, despite the current ceasefire, and Washington is still trying to pressure Tehran into some sort of deal. READ MORE

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Max Long: “I was attacked for who I am, for being Jewish and Israeli and not being afraid to say that”

Posted on May 9, 2026 by ArchitectGuy

ABC NEWS
2nd man charged with attacking 2 Jewish students at DePaul campus in 2024
Mark Rivera and Barb Markoff, Christine Tressel and Tom Jones
May 7, 2026

A second man has been charged in a violent attack on two Jewish students at DePaul University in November 2024. The ABC7 I-Team has been following their story from the very beginning. The I-Team learned Kasem Noubani now faces battery and hate crime charges. He appeared in court Thursday. ABC7 Chicago is now streaming 24/7. A pair of masked men attacked Max Long, a reservist in the Israel Defense Forces, and his friend, Michael Kaminsky. Long was concussed and Kaminsky needed surgery after the attack…The other man charged, Adam Erkan, pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor battery charges last year…Erkan worked with authorities to identify Kasem Noubani as the second attacker, according to court documents. READ MORE

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“Had Trump allowed Israel one final operation in Iran, the IDF would have chosen to destroy the uranium. The Mossad, by contrast, would have chosen an all-out effort to stir Iranians into action and topple the regime”

Posted on May 7, 2026 by ArchitectGuy

ISRAEL HAYOM (by agreement with JNS)
Israeli assessment: This is when Iranians will take to the streets to topple the regime.
Amit Segal
May 10, 2026

A severe dispute has erupted, and still persists, between the army and the Mossad over the ultimate goal of the war in Iran. The IDF views the removal of uranium from Iranian territory as the ultimate achievement. The Mossad, however, believes the objective is toppling the regime…The second approach argues: what good does it do to extract it via an operation or an agreement? If the regime stands, and even if tons of three-percent enriched uranium remain, you’ve only set them back a few years—a blink of an eye in geopolitical terms. A regime without sanctions will be richer, more despicable, and will want to destroy Israel just as before. Only regime change will uproot the plans for Israel’s destruction from the source…The practical expression of this lies in a hypothetical question: what happens if President Trump tells Israel, “You have a green light for one operation”? Most of the security establishment would say thank you and send the Air Force to raid the uranium stockpiles. READ MORE

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“Mohamed Soliman sentenced to life without parole for deadly firebomb attack on Boulder rally supporting Israeli hostages in Gaza”

Posted on May 7, 2026 by ArchitectGuy

ARUTZ SHEVA
Mohamed Soliman sentenced to life without parole for deadly firebomb attack on Boulder rally supporting Israeli hostages in Gaza.
May 7, 2026

A man who carried out a deadly firebomb attack on a demonstration in support of Israeli hostages in Gaza was sentenced on Thursday to life in prison without the possibility of parole after pleading guilty to murder and multiple other charges. Mohamed Sabry Soliman was sentenced in connection with the June 1, 2025, attack in Boulder, Colorado, in which one woman was killed, and more than a dozen others were injured. According to authorities, Soliman threw two Molotov cocktails at participants gathered at Boulder’s Pearl Street pedestrian mall for a weekly demonstration supporting the Israeli hostages held in Gaza. Karen Diamond, 82, later died from injuries sustained in the attack. Twelve others were injured. READ MORE

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“Expecting Hamas to disarm voluntarily is like expecting ISIS or Al-Qaeda to renounce jihad and become peaceful political movements”

Posted on May 7, 2026 by ArchitectGuy

GATESTONE INSTITUTE
Hamas is Humiliating Trump’s ‘Board of Peace’
Khaled Abu Toameh
May 7, 2026

Six months after US President Donald J. Trump unveiled his ambitious ceasefire and reconstruction plan for the Gaza Strip, the Iran-backed Hamas terrorist group remains more armed, entrenched, and openly defiant than ever. Far from disarming, the Islamist group now controls roughly half the Gaza Strip and much of its population, while making a mockery of Trump’s “Board of Peace” initiative and the international mediators sponsoring it. It is now clear that the Trump administration’s strategy was based on a misguided assumption that Hamas (a theocratic terror regime like Iran’s) could somehow be persuaded through negotiations, incentives, and diplomatic pressure to voluntarily surrender its weapons and abandon its jihadist ideology. The exact opposite has happened. Hamas not only rejected disarmament, but also used the ceasefire periods to solidify control, regroup politically and militarily, and humiliate the people negotiating with them. READ MORE

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“Lebanese-Iraqi writer and analyst Hussain Abdul-Hussain discusses Hezbollah, Lebanon’s future and the personal journey that transformed him from an anti-Israel youth into a prominent Arab advocate for normalization and peace with Israel”

Posted on May 7, 2026 by ArchitectGuy

JEWISH INSIDER
Hussain Abdul-Hussain on his anti-Israel upbringing to then making ‘The Arab Case for Israel’
Lahav Harkov
May 7, 2026

Writer and researcher Hussain Abdul-Hussain has an unusual story: A Shia Muslim raised in Iraq and Lebanon and taught to hate Israel and the West, he is now a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies living in Washington, and the author of a book called The Arab Case for Israel…Abdul-Hussain credited the Trump administration for “giving Lebanon more attention than any administration since the early days of Ronald Reagan. … I’m happy that someone sees Lebanon as it is, not as we imagine it to be or just dismiss it and say ‘This is too complicated for us and we’re not going to go into it.’” That attention is “a golden opportunity … to help disarm Hezbollah and live at peace with Israel, Syria, Turkey, Iran, everybody else,” he said. “If the Lebanese don’t grasp it, I’m not sure there will be another opportunity in the coming future.” READ MORE

TIMES OF ISRAEL US to host third round of talks between Israel and Lebanon next week Military representatives from both sides set to participate for first time, Israeli official says, as sides aim to advance concrete measures for disarming Hezbollah

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Rutgers disinvites Rami Elghandour, producer of “The Voice of Hind Rajab”

Posted on May 7, 2026 by ArchitectGuy

JEWISH CHRONICLE
Rutgers cancels graduation speaker over tweet claiming Israelis ‘train dogs to sexually assault prisoners’
Jackie Hajdenberg
May 7, 2026

Administrators at Rutgers University have canceled a commencement speaker scheduled for next week, citing an “inflammatory claim” the speaker tweeted about Israel. Rami Elghandour, a Rutgers alumnus and a producer of an Oscar-nominated docudrama about a Palestinian girl who died in Gaza, was set to deliver the speech at the university’s School of Engineering on May 15. But the university, New Jersey’s public flagship, rescinded the invitation on Wednesday…A university representative specifically cited an April 20 tweet by Elghandour that accuses Israel of genocide and says the Israelis are “running dungeons where they train dogs to sexually assault prisoners.” READ MORE

JERUSALEM POST Cornell publishes footage defending president from claims he hit anti-Israel activists with car Cornell University published video footage on Sunday that it said exonerated its president from claims that he had hit two students with his car, after activists seeking amnesty for anti-Israel activists followed him to his vehicle after an Israeli-Palestinian conflict debate last Thursday. President Michael Kotlikoff said that, after he had introduced debate featuring Norman Finkelstein on the justness of Israel’s post-October 7 massacre response, he was followed and harassed by student and non-student activists. Two of them were reportedly previously banned from campus for disruptive protests and verbal abuse of Cornell staff.

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“Long before the 20th century, ancient Jewish texts recognized what much of the modern West still refuses to accept: Not every enemy can be reasoned with”

Posted on May 5, 2026 by ArchitectGuy

FUTURE OF JEWISH
The problem isn’t Israel’s wars. It’s how the West thinks about war.
Nachum Kaplan
May 3, 2026

…The Torah does not romanticize war; it regulates it, distinguishing between different kinds of enemies and demanding peace when possible and decisiveness when necessary. It recognizes that some conflicts can be resolved through negotiation and others cannot be resolved at all, only ended. It begins not with denial but with recognition: “When you go out to war against your enemies…” (Deuteronomy 21:10). Not if; when. Civilizations that pretend otherwise tend not to last very long. This is not the language of trauma, but of realism. Modern Western thinking, by contrast, has drifted toward a very different assumption: that all conflicts are, at root, misunderstandings. That violence is a failure of communication. That if grievances were addressed, dignity affirmed, and economic conditions improved, enemies would become partners. READ MORE

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“Maher Bitar’s appointment is the latest sign that Democratic Party elites are leaning into growing hostility to Israel in their party”

Posted on May 5, 2026 by ArchitectGuy

FREE BEACON
‘He Was Easily the Most Antagonistic to Israel’: Anti-Israel Activist Who Advised Biden, Schiff To Head Influential Democratic Foreign Policy Group Designed To Staff a Future White House
Adam Kredo
May 4, 2026

An anti-Israel staffer for Sen. Adam Schiff (D., Calif.) who was once pictured wearing a keffiyeh and dancing in front of a banner calling Israel an apartheid state is slated to head an influential Democratic foreign policy group designed to staff the next Democratic presidential administration, Axios reported on Monday. Maher Bitar, a Palestinian American who served as a senior official on former president Joe Biden’s National Security Council and who most recently served as chief counsel to Schiff, has been selected to lead a reconstituted version of National Security Action (NSA), a Democratic foreign policy vehicle…Bitar spent years leading anti-Israel organizations that promote the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement and, as a college student, led his campus’s branch of the anti-Semitic Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) advocacy group. READ MORE

CAMERA BLOG Omri Tubi: Antisemitism, Anti-Zionism and the New York Times’ Defense of Hasan Piker In his April 12 column, New York Times contributor Ezra Klein defended Hasan Piker and accepted him into the Democratic Party. Piker is a popular influencer with over three million followers on the platform, Twitch, and over 1.85 million on YouTube. He is also a self-described anti-imperialist Marxist who has spread extremist, antisemitic and anti-Israel vitriol…For example, Piker said that the U.S. “deserved 9/11;” that if someone cares about Medicare or Medicaid fraud, they should kill U.S. Senator Rick Scott (R-FL); that his favorite flag is Hezbollah’s flag; and that a liberal Zionist is like a “liberal Nazi.” Piker also compared Israelis to the KKK and argued that Hamas is “a thousand times better” than Israel. Additionally, Piker said that it “doesn’t matter” to him if Hamas raped Israelis on Oct. 7, 2023.

JEWISH INSIDER Pelosi backs anti-Israel Democrat who alienated Houston’s Jewish community Rep. Al Green (D-TX), a vocal critic of Israel competing in a closely contested runoff against a fellow House Democrat later this month, announced in social media posts on Monday that he had received a coveted endorsement from Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), the powerful former House speaker.

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“Grief is a badge we wear,” Rachel said. She made the point that it shows we know love, that we have loved deeply, that another person’s existence had become inseparable from our own

Posted on May 5, 2026 by ArchitectGuy

TIMES OF ISRAEL
The Weight of Words: Hearing Rachel Goldberg-Polin Speak
Peter Himmelman
May 4, 2026

…Early on, Rachel described feeling as though she had left this world entirely after Hersh’s abduction and murder. A friend was extremely helpful,” she said. “A Breslov Chossid — you know, long peyos, beard, the real deal — and also a psychiatrist with a medical degree from Brown…..He did not attempt to coax her back down into ordinary language or refute her feeling of existing elsewhere. “He told me,” Rachel said, “that I wasn’t entirely in this world anymore. That part of me was now in Olam Haba.”…What is Olam Haba? It refers to the “World to Come,” the world beyond the one we presently inhabit, beyond the rote and the overly familiar, beyond the normal shapes of trees, the ordinary sounds of birds, the commonness of water — or even of words themselves. READ MORE

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