Think of Floridian politics, and one does not often evoke the word “sane.” The state, which helped propel George W. Bush to the presidency in 2000 after a major recount dispute, has seen its fair share of political chaos over the years.

Tuesday’s primaries offered plenty of evidence for why. In one congressional district, social-media provocateur Dan Bilzerian ran a campaign in which he spoke openly of a “Jewish problem,” called his Jewish opponent a “fat Jew,” and released a music video invoking Adolf Hitler in approving terms. Elsewhere, Republican Rep. Cory Mills, already facing House ethics investigations and allegations of sexual misconduct that he denies, was thrown out by his own party.

Amid the circus, something rather sensible happened

Then, amid the circus, something rather sensible happened – Bilzerian was crushed in an embarrassing defeat, which hopefully puts an end to any future political aspirations for the social media personality.

Rep. Randy Fine, the Jewish Republican incumbent in Florida’s 6th Congressional District, took nearly 57% of the vote, while Bilzerian managed less than 19%.

Fine is hardly a poster boy for moderation – some of his own rhetoric about Muslims and Palestinians has repeatedly crossed lines and attracted criticism from both parties – but this was not a competition for civility. Voters were given the chance to vote for a candidate who had made unambiguous antisemitism and anti-Israel views a central part of his political identity, and Florida’s voters acted accordingly and rejected him overwhelmingly.

Fine was not the only pro-Israel victor on Tuesday night. Across the state and across the political divide, prominent Jewish incumbents with strong records of support for Israel survived.

Democratic Rep. Lois Frankel took around three-quarters of the vote in her primary for the 23rd congressional district. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Florida’s first Jewish congresswoman, won a difficult race in unfamiliar territory (20th district) after redistricting dismantled her old seat. Her leading ideological challenger, Elijah Manley, had attacked her support for Israel and the backing she has received from AIPAC. Wasserman Schultz won with just under half the vote; Manley finished far behind with less than 15% of the vote.

Jared Moskowitz also survived a challenge from the Democratic Left. His opponent, Oliver Larkin, was backed by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and opposed US military aid to Israel. Moskowitz, a Jewish Democrat and one of Israel’s more outspoken supporters in his party, won with roughly 63% of the vote.

Hostility toward Israel has become a badge of political identity on the Left

These are very different politicians from across the political spectrum campaigning on different platforms, but at a time when antisemitism has become increasingly brazen on parts of the American Right, while hostility toward Israel has become a badge of political identity among parts of the progressive Left, Florida voters were presented with several unusually clear tests. In race after race, candidates who believed attacking Jews, Israel, AIPAC-funding or the pro-Israel establishment would carry them to victory came up short.

The same picture extended to the race for governor.

Florida, the third-most populous state in America with more than 23 million residents, will choose in November between Republican Byron Donalds and Democrat David Jolly. They disagree sharply on Donald Trump, Iran, and much else, but both are supporters of Israel.

In a state whose relationship with Israel has become unusually close under Governor Ron DeSantis, this would be a positive and important continuation. Whoever replaces him will come from a very different political background, but neither major party has nominated a candidate seeking to tear that relationship up.

There were other interesting election results from Tuesday night in Florida too. Democratic socialist Angie Nixon’s surprise victory over Alex Vindman in the Senate primary reminded us that Florida has not suddenly or completely rejected the progressive Left.

But Vindman’s defeat had more to do with resources and organizing than with Israel. He sat on a $16 million war chest but spent just $2.2 million on ads, leaving him flat-footed against Nixon’s grassroots, DSA-backed campaign — the same playbook that has toppled establishment favorites in Democratic primaries elsewhere this cycle.

On Tuesday, Floridians were offered unequivocal antisemitism on the Right, efforts to turn hostility toward Israel into an electoral weapon on the Left, and scandal and political theater almost everywhere in between. For once, sanity was allowed to reign supreme.

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Turkey firmly rejected on Wednesday what it called “untenable allegations” by Israel regarding its military position in Syria, after Israel bombed a Syrian air base near the Turkish border and said Syria was on the verge of permitting Turkish troops to deploy there.

Israel carried out airstrikes against the Abu al-Duhur base near Aleppo on Tuesday, drawing condemnation from Turkey and criticism from a US envoy who called the attack an “unnecessary escalation.”

In a statement, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said late on Tuesday that Syria was on the verge of violating a “status quo agreed with Israel in security matters” by allowing Turkish troops to deploy at the airbase, adding that such a deployment would threaten Israel’s security and it would not tolerate this.

The untenable allegations put forward by the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office are intended to legitimise Israel’s unlawful airstrikes targeting Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

The imputations voiced stem from Netanyahu’s intent to pursue expansionist and…

— Republic of Türkiye Directorate of Communications (@Communications) August 19, 2026

In response, Turkey’s presidency said the “imputations” from Netanyahu’s office stemmed from his intention to pursue “expansionist and destabilizing policies” ahead of elections in Israel, adding that lasting regional peace could only be achieved if Israel respected international law and abandoned its “aggressive and coercive policies.”

“The untenable allegations put forward by the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office are intended to legitimize Israel’s unlawful airstrikes targeting Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” it said on X, without explicitly referring to any potential deployment plans.

“Turkey will resolutely continue to cooperate with the Syrian Government on a legitimate basis for the establishment of peace, stability, and prosperity in Syria, and will never allow the destabilization of Syria.”

Israel, Turkey tensions escalate over competing military presence in Syria

The strikes on Tuesday follow worsening security tensions between Israel and Turkey and increasingly sharp rhetoric between the two countries over Syria, where both countries’ militaries are active.

Turkey, which has NATO’s second-largest army and has emerged as one of Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa’s main allies, accuses Israel of trying to destabilize Syria and undermine its new administration, repeatedly calling for international pressure and measures on Israel to respect Syria’s territorial integrity.

Ankara has been training Syria’s army, helping it rebuild its state institutions and infrastructure, and providing military and diplomatic support.

US seeks expanded coordination to avoid Israel, Turkey incidents in Syria

Last year, Turkey and Israel, also sharply at odds over the war in Gaza, established a line of communication to avoid any incidents in Syria.

Tom Barrack, the US special presidential envoy for Syria and Iraq, told Reuters after the strikes on Tuesday that Washington was working to establish a deconfliction mechanism among Israel, Turkey and Syria, and added the US already facilitates an information-sharing and dialog mechanism among the parties.

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The Jerusalem Post’s new culture program, The Jerusalem Playlist, launched this week with a look at Israeli cinema, Jewish identity in France, and an unusual Jerusalem art exhibition featuring artists on the autism spectrum.

The program, produced by Gadi Zaig, and hosted by Jerusalem Post culture writer and film critic Hannah Brown and social media manager Ezra Taylor, opened with a discussion on Our Loves, the latest film by veteran Israeli director Avi Nesher, which is set to screen at the Toronto International Film Festival.

The drama begins on October 6, 2023, following several characters who believe they are experiencing the worst day of their lives before the events of October 7 transform their stories. Brown said the film differs from earlier productions about the massacre by introducing fictionalized characters grounded in extensive research rather than recreating specific individuals’ experiences.

International producers Fox Entertainment and Access Entertainment have joined the project, giving the film a path toward theatrical distribution outside Israel, including in the US and Europe.

Looking at French Jewish cinema as well

The episode also examined Just an Illusion, a French Jewish film by directing partners Eric Toledano and Olivier Nakache. The semi-autobiographical story follows a Jewish boy growing up in a Mizrahi family in 1980s Paris while preparing for his bar mitzvah and navigating family life, friendships, and questions of French, Jewish, Moroccan, and Algerian identity.

The film has sold around two million tickets in France and recently opened in Israel, with a US release expected later this year.

Brown also discussed Feelings in Between, an exhibition at the Jerusalem Theater featuring collaborative works by artists on the autism spectrum, including her son. The exhibition, which runs through the end of August, challenges assumptions about autism by showing artists choosing to create works together.

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The United Arab Emirates has suspended “all trade, commercial exchange and financial transactions with Iran” after the Islamic Republic attacked a number of UAE-owned tankers and rejected new talks with the United States, the UAE’s Foreign Ministry announced late on Monday night.

Only shortly before the UAE Foreign Ministry’s Director of Strategic Communications Afra Al Hameli made the statement, Iran fired two missiles toward the UAE, one of which fell within Emirati territorial waters while the second landed outside its territory.

The decision follows a spate of attacks on UAE-owned tankers and Tehran’s rejection of talks with the US. Shortly before the statement, Iran fired two missiles at the UAE. One landed in Emirati territorial waters, while the second landed outside its territory.

Iranian FM denied that Iran was behind the launches

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei on Tuesday denied that Iran was behind the launches, claiming, according to state media, that the “allegation runs counter to the principle of good-neighborliness and undermines ongoing efforts to strengthen trust among regional countries and prevent a further escalation of insecurity in the region.”

Despite Baghaei’s comment, the Islamic Republic has launched numerous attacks on countries across the Middle East since February 28, when the US and Israel attacked the Islamic Republic. According to The National, at least a dozen people have been killed in the UAE during the conflict and more than 200 injured.

“The United Arab Emirates rejects all claims regarding the status of its economic relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran, while reaffirming its steadfast commitment to dialogue, co-operation and regional integration as essential means to enhance peace, stability, and prosperity in the region,” Hameli said in a statement posted on X. 

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Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara on Wednesday proposed postponing the decision to establish a commission of inquiry into the October 7 Massacre until a new government is formed.

She said the election period would get in the way of a decision and noted that the current government had not established one anyway.

Following her statement, the Movement for Quality Government decried the decision, stating, “It is impossible to determine that a state commission of inquiry is essential for uncovering the truth, to warn that the delay may already cause harm to the investigation, and in the same breath propose postponing it again.”

The next government may not be formed for many months, more than three years after the October 7 disaster. The truth cannot wait for the political quagmire. Every day that passes makes it more difficult to uncover the truth, draw lessons, and determine responsibility for the gravest failure in the country’s history.”

Shortly after the Knesset’s dissolution in July, the government informed the High Court of Justice that it had been unable to complete legislation establishing its proposed commission of inquiry into the October 7 massacre “due to the constraints of the Knesset’s schedule,” and that the lawmakers had left for the election recess.

Gov’t previously stated commission proposal would be revived next term

At the time, the government told the court it would revive the proposal after the October 27 election, while asking the court to dismiss petitions seeking a state commission of inquiry and leave the issue to the voters.

Since the October 7 massacre, the subject of a commission of inquiry into the events has reached the Knesset floor several times, including just two weeks before the Knesset’s dissolution, when the plenum passed in its first reading a coalition bill seeking to establish a politically appointed investigative committee to probe government failures during the October 7 massacre.

Majority of Israeli society supports commission of inquiry into October 7 massacre

A Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI) Israeli Society Index published in May revealed that nearly two-thirds of Israelis (63%) support the immediate establishment of a commission of inquiry into the October 7 massacre, and the position is shared by a majority in both the Jewish (62%) and Arab (67%) sectors.

In general, some 15% of Israelis believe that forming the committee should be delayed until the war has fully ended, while even fewer (11%) believe that the decision on when to establish the committee should be left up to the government’s discretion.

Regarding the type of inquiry committee to form, 46% of respondents prefer a state commission of inquiry, while  40% prefer a national inquiry committee.

Sarah Ben-Nun and Keshet Neev contributed to this report.

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Israeli authorities detained the Palestinian Authority’s Jerusalem Affairs Minister, Ashraf Hassan Abbas al-Awar, at his home in the Silwan neighborhood in east Jerusalem on Wednesday morning, the PA’s official news agency WAFA reported.

Awar was taken for questioning, according to the reports.

The reasoning behind the detention is unclear, and The Jerusalem Post reached out to the IDF and Israel Police for confirmation.

Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammad Mustafa appointed Awar as Jerusalem Affairs Minister in 2024.

This is a developing story.

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National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir visited a village in northern Israel on Tuesday and was met with insults and ridicule from local residents.

Ben-Gvir toured the streets of Basmat Tabun accompanied by heavy security and faced a barrage of curses and harsh criticism from residents over his performance.

“You are making a fool of yourself,” residents shouted at him. “You’re a clown. Everyone is laughing at you. You are a champion of failure. They didn’t even give you a visa to the United States.” Residents heard in a video even called the minister a “terrorist,” saying, “A minister convicted of terrorism, you’re a terrorist. Go to a mental institution – you shouldn’t be here. You incite terror.”

The video published Tuesday came against the backdrop of two other recent incidents in which the Arab public voiced harsh criticism against Ben-Gvir and Israel Police.

Earlier this week, residents of Umm al-Fahm claimed that Israeli police forces raided a wedding in the city and ordered guests to lie on the floor. Video footage from the incident shows police officers with drawn weapons walking among guests lying on the ground.

Wedding interruptions by police called ‘political stunts’

The police explained that “the activity documented in the video was conducted following suspicion of weapons use during a wedding.” They further stated: “Accordingly, police forces and officers operated at the scene to inspect suspicions and locate weapons.”

Dr. Yousef Jabareen, chairman of Hadash and a resident of Umm al-Fahm, attacked Ben-Gvir following the incident: “I explicitly accuse Ben Gvir of exploiting his authority to harm and persecute the Arab public, because it serves him in his election campaign.”

In another incident over the weekend, police detained a bride and groom from the south for questioning after claiming their wedding convoy disrupted traffic.

The couple claimed that due to the detention, they arrived late to their own wedding and some guests had already left. The groom and his father pointed the finger at Ben-Gvir, claiming he “used them for a political stunt.”

Ben-Gvir, for his part, responded to the wedding convoy incident: “We are putting an end to wild wedding convoys in the Negev and shooting at weddings that endanger human lives. They will keep babbling, and I will keep working.”

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On Tuesday evening, the Prime Minister’s Office took credit for a strike on Abu al-Duhur airbase in Idlib, Syria. US Ambassador to Turkey and the Trump administration’s special envoy to Syria, Tom Barrack, said that the strike “carried a real risk of rapid escalation into a direct military confrontation between Israel and Turkey as well as Syria.”

“Turkish forces were not aware that the Israeli aircraft were en route to that specific Syrian base, nor of their intended purpose, and therefore could potentially have been inclined to scramble their own jets in the belief that they themselves were under attack,” Barrack said in a Wednesday interview with The Jerusalem Post.

“The events of yesterday were serious and worrisome. However, we are relieved that no human life was harmed and that the situation did not escalate,” he added.

Syria said on Tuesday that Israel had carried out eight airstrikes on the runway and storage facilities at Abu al-Duhur, about 70 kilometers east of the Turkish border.

The Prime Minister’s Office said late Tuesday that Syria was on the “verge” of violating a “status quo agreed with Israel on security matters” by allowing Turkish troops to deploy at the airbase.

“Israel repeatedly warned Syria that such a deployment would pose a threat to Israel’s security. Syria chose to ignore these warnings,” the PMO said.

Barrack told the Post that the lack of clear communication channels could have made the situation “much worse,” and that this needs to change.

Barrack: Discussions ongoing about relaunching Israel-Syria deconfliction cell

“We are currently engaged in quiet discussions with all the relevant parties about relaunching a deconfliction cell between Israel and Syria. Turkey can be invited to be a direct or indirect participant,” Barrack said.

“There would be clear value in placing such an arrangement on a standing, full-time basis, with a fusion cell staffed around the clock by personnel fluent in Hebrew, Arabic, English and Turkish, whether through a formal structure or a more flexible, informal channel. Reliable communication remains essential,” he added.

The Trump envoy said that the absence of dependable communication channels itself creates unnecessary risk.

“There is no inherent obstacle preventing these parties from maintaining open lines of communication. Diplomatic discourse is the best prevention to kinetic interactions,” he said.

In recent years, Barrack has hosted several rounds of discussions between Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa’s government and senior Israeli officials in an attempt to reach a border agreement between the countries, advance normalization and de-escalate tensions. During the most recent round of talks, the sides even agreed to advance joint economic projects and establish a deconfliction mechanism between the countries, based in Jordan.

“Meaningful progress was achieved in clarifying the concerns of both parties, and in light of recent developments, there is clear value in revisiting these talks at the earliest opportunity,” Barrack told the Post, adding that the Sharaa government has made clear that it harbors no predatory intentions toward Israel and seeks only to protect its own sovereignty.

“Syria has demonstrated itself to be a responsible and stable sovereign neighbor, and a carefully structured de-escalation arrangement would contribute significantly to greater calm and predictability across the region,” Barrack said.

Israeli concerns over Turkish military equipment close to Syria-Israeli border remains sticking point

One of the sticking points during the talks was Israel’s concern that Turkish military personnel or equipment could be deployed at Syrian bases, some of them close to the Israeli border.

In January, the Post reported that the deployment of an advanced Turkish HTRS-100 radar system at Damascus International Airport was viewed in Israel as “extremely troubling.”

Israeli officials feared that a Turkish military installation capable of tracking aerial targets within a 150–200-kilometer range could significantly restrict the Israel Air Force’s freedom of movement in Syrian airspace.

Barrack said that, in the US view, the civilian infrastructure does not pose a security threat to Israel.

“Syria’s ability to maintain safe and reliable domestic aviation depends on functioning civilian radar coverage. We remain convinced that this technical requirement need not pose a security concern, and that further conversations can help clarify the matter to everyone’s satisfaction,” he told the Post.

Barrack added that the US’s immediate priority must be to help lower tensions between Ankara and Jerusalem and prevent any unintended escalation that could prove difficult to reverse.

“All parties should work patiently toward a durable resolution of this highly complex situation. Türkiye and Israel have, at various points over the past three decades, enjoyed periods of constructive and productive relations. President Trump’s plan offers a viable path that can succeed if given the necessary space and support,” he said.

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In recent weeks, with the elections drawing nearer, the Prime Minister’s Office has been promoting the National Artificial Intelligence Directorate that has been established under its auspices over the past year. Early this month, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a ceremonial press conference at which he launched the Directorate and introduced its head, former IDF visual and geospatial intelligence Unit 9900 Brig. Gen. (res.) Erez Askal.

Those backing the declarations included Netanyahu’s personal advisor and Aleph venture capital fund cofounder Michael Eisenberg, with posts on his social media management accounts. In recent days, the prime minister has stepped up his efforts in this matter when he presented the new Likud candidate in the 11th spot on the party list, Oren Dobronsky. After working in Silicon Valley for some time, Dobronsky returned to Israel several years ago. He was a cofounder of browser toolbar company Hotbar, which was acquired for $50 million in 2006.

In recent years, Dobronsky’s appearances on “The Sharks,” (Israel’s version of Shark Tank), a television program on the Keshet 12 station in which entrepreneurs pitch their businesses to a group of wealthy investors, have made him a household name in Israel. He also owns a US chain of hummus eateries. The Likud announcement stated that Dobronsky would be responsible for AI in the next government.

Last Wednesday, the National AI Directorate shifted into high gear and presented details of the plan at a special press conference conducted by Askal in its new offices in a flashy Ramat Gan building. He was surrounded by the new employees in the Directorate, who, like Askal himself, came from the Ministry of Defense, the Prime Minister’s Office, and the office of the Accountant General in the Ministry of Finance.

Behind the formal declarations, glittering appointments, and polished packaging, however, lies a cautious plan that pales in comparison with past promises. An examination of the details of the new initiative shows that instead of a national revolution to put Israel in the forefront of global technology, the new Directorate involves mostly inconsequential measures and leaves the weightiest questions in the AI sector unanswered.

Plan based on AI lessons and building a quantum computer

The plan’s initiatives include: 30 hours of AI lessons a year for 8th and 9th graders; bringing 100 scientists back to Israel (three have undertaken to return so far); publication of a document of intentions for founding a “physical AI city” containing a complex with a hospital, a school, and other public buildings; examination of robotics technologies; issuing a tender with an unknown budget for the construction of a quantum computer; a statement of intentions for the purchase of up to 100,000 Nvidia processors within a few years at an undisclosed cost; founding a special institute with a budget in the tens of millions of shekels to coordinate ventures in cooperation with the private sector. The institute will be headed by Orit Korman Negri, former planning department head in the IDF C41 Directorate.

The items in this extremely modest plan are general. It contains no itemized budget, in contrast to the grandiose plan presented last year by Brig. Gen. (res.) Prof. Jacob Nagel, whom Netanyahu asked to form a defense budget plan and later a strategic plan for the AI Directorate before Askal was appointed.

The plan supported by Nagel included: an NIS 18 billion budget for the construction of a supercomputer equipped with 60,000 Nvidia microchips within two years for use by academic researchers and startup entrepreneurs in the field; a NIS 2 billion AI plan for bringing brainpower back to Israel and developing AI researchers; NIS 1 billion AI training program for high schools and the IDF; the founding of an AI directorate and the construction of a language model in Hebrew. Nagel’s plan envisioned a NIS 25 billion budget spread over five years.

The Directorate, which was to have been formed when the National Committee for Accelerating the Field of AI submitted its recommendations a year ago (the Nagel Commission) and was scheduled to begin investing billions of shekels in October 2025, has presented its new plans only now, at the outset of the election campaign. In practice, these plans virtually ignore the main questions on the agenda:

Construction of a supercomputer is not seriously addressed and no specific budget or location for it is mentioned (arguments are taking place in the Prime Minister’s Office whether it should be built in Israel or in a foreign country); the Directorate has yet to decide whether to establish an original Israel language model; no solution has been offered to a problem that has caused an uproar in the AI sector – the temporary halt in connecting server farms to the electrical grid, which has frozen the planning and construction of dozens of prospective server farms.

The people in charge formulated plans, but most recommendations were shelved

If this sequence of events sounds familiar, it is because this is the fourth time in the past seven years that Netanyahu’s governments have presented a national AI plan – with no results to date. In 2018, Netanyahu asked Maj. Gen. (res.) Prof. Isaac Ben-Israel and Eviatar Matania to devise the first plan after the two men had proved themselves by composing a similar plan to further the cybersecurity sector. Their plan, which recommended a NIS 10 billion allocation for the sector, was ready to be put into effect in 2019, but it was not submitted until 2020 because of the multiple election campaigns that year and was discarded during the course of the political upheavals.

The Israel Innovation Authority undertook to pursue the matter and assembled a voluntary association for the purpose – the National Research and Development Infrastructure Forum (TELEM Forum). In late 2020, the Forum hired former Chief Scientist and Google Israel executive Orna Berry to formulate another plan. She recommended investing NIS 5 billion in the sector. In the end, only a few of her recommendations were adopted and the budget for them was a mere NIS 1 billion.

One of these recommendations, development of a Hebrew language model, was shelved after millions of shekels had been invested when OpenAI launched ChatGPT in 2022. Another recommendation, the development of a supercomputer, was eventually accomplished under Innovation Authority sponsorship with a miniscule budget of only NIS 160 million and a quite small number of graphic processors (about 1,000 Blackwell processors), rendering it inadequate for the needs of industry and academic institutions. The capacity of the national supercomputer is estimated at 4,000 graphic processors leased from Nebius, far short of Nagel’s target of 60,000 processors.

Last year, the TELEM Forum, which had been responsible for most AI activity up until then, ran afoul of the prime minister and people in the office of the Accountant General in the Ministry of Finance. Together with then-Prime Minister’s Office director general Yossi Shelley, they decided to found a National AI Directorate. Dovi Frances, another star of “The Sharks” program and an investor who like Dobronsky began his investment career with Oren Zeev, provided advice in starting the directorate, but he has had very little involvement over the past year. Prof. Nagel was then brought in to prepare a masterplan.

Meanwhile, key people who were part of the Innovation Authority program, such as its scientific consultant, Prof. Yoav Shoham, a leading AI lecturer at Stanford University and a cofounder of AI21, and Ziv Katzir, who headed the TELEM Forum, resigned their positions.

‘Too little, too late’: Where did NIS 3 billion go?

Askal is a renowned officer who was awarded the Israel Defense Prize for satellite developments when he commanded Unit 9900 and was also responsible for tech upgrading of IDF systems. He is nevertheless regarded as inexperienced in the management of civilian concerns, has never worked in high-tech, and possesses no scientific degrees.

“The mission entrusted to him is huge: to move the AI industry in Israel forward while simultaneously encourage all of the major systems – the Ministries of Education, Health, and Transport – to adopt AI. It is easy to become overwhelmed by this, so the Directorate is starting on a small scale with sporadic ventures,” a senior industry source says. “What the Directorate presented this week is too little and too late; it is a drop in the ocean.”

The Directorate’s 2026 budget is NIS 3 billion. Its senior executives hope that it will grow after the elections in line with the Nagel Commission’s proposed NIS 5 billion budget, but there is no guarantee that the Directorate will remain the same when the next government is formed after the elections.

The plan unveiled last Wednesday included no details of how the budget will be subdivided. The Directorate’s leaders used vague expressions such as “dozens” and “hundreds” of millions of shekels for the ventures that they presented. At the same time, the Directorate’s largest expense item, the purchase of Nvidia processors for what is called “the Israeli supercomputer,” is still a matter of dispute. While Prof. Nagel presented a request for 60,000 processors, the Directorate wants 100,000, compared with a mere 4,000 at present serving the sole civilian supercomputer in Israel maintained by the Innovation Authority.

The Directorate and the Ministry of Finance are taking a realistic view: the purchase of 100,000 Vera Rubin processors from Nvidia (at $135,000 per unit) translates to an astronomical expense of $13.5 billion that is high even in terms of a multiyear plan. It is believed that sources in the office of the Accountant General in the Ministry of Finance and the Directorate are willing to settle for buying 3,000-6,000 more processors for government and academic needs, coupled with the encouragement of private parties such as Mega Or Group and Shonfeld Data Services (SDS), owned by Yossi Shonfeld, to purchase tens of thousands, or even 60,000, additional processors for the needs of industry.

At this stage, the government is planning to establish Israel’s supercomputer in a foreign country. This decision has been criticized as making a critical government resource dependent on a foreign country. Its supporters, on the other hand, explain that the government data centers can be built much more quickly abroad than in Israel.

The Directorate has meanwhile experienced its first budget cut. It was due to receive a NIS 2.5 billion budget for the purchase of graphic processors (in addition to NIS 1.1 billion that was approved for the Council for Higher Education in Israel Planning and Budget Committee and then inserted into the Directorate’s budget). The Ministry of Finance, however, notified the Directorate that instead of being raised to NIS 3.6 billion, its budget would be consolidated, meaning that its budget increase would be only NIS 1 billion.

Public utilities authority trumps AI sector’s cards

Even if the Directorate and the Ministry of Finance manage to bring tens of thousands of additional graphic processors to Israel, the data centers sector that is supposed to absorb them now faces a problem. The Public Utilities Authority (Electricity) has decided to stop granting approvals for connecting data cemters during a four-month “reconsideration” period.

The logjam created by the Authority has trumped all the cards and caused potential customers of data centers developers to renegotiate their contracts. Several of these, including new players who wanted to enter the Israeli market, such as CoreWeave, have now decided against it. Existing players have also been affected, among them Mega Or, controlled by co-CEO Zahi Nahmias – the company’s share price has tumbled 22% in the past month.

The AI Directorate explains that it is becoming involved in the process and is confident that Israel will be able to supply 2 gigawatts to meet most of the demand. It says that it is acting in tandem for the Ministry of Finance and the Authority to formulate new criteria for granting electricity approvals based, for example, on financial proof of construction of large and expensive data centers and good relations with Nvidia that make it possible to obtain the newest processors in the industry – the Vera Rubins. The industry, on the other hand, is critical of the reactive nature of this activity, not defined as a core mission for the AI Directorate, which is supposed to be an effective party under the prime minister’s personal sponsorship.

‘Existing lack of coordination embarrassing potential partners’

Another act by the Directorate that is being severely criticized in the industry is the publication of the tender for Israel quantum computing, without any budget being presented. According to the plan’s details, the aim is to build a computer that does not constitute a gamble on a specific quantum technology (such as trapped ions or superconductors). Instead, it will facilitate access on the cloud to quantum calculation capabilities for the benefit of national research and development.

This has been criticized because the Innovation Authority has had a well-organized national quantum plan for years involving a NIS 1.1 billion investment in national quantum technology. The Innovation Authority itself issued a call for proposal for the construction of an Israel quantum computer by 2029 with an initial budget of NIS 100 million for 2026 alone.

Sources in the sector are expressing deep concern about the lack of coordination between the Directorate and the Innovation Authority, which is sowing confusion about overlapping authority among potential suppliers and partners. The sources assert that this is a typical case of the right hand being ignorant of what the left hand is doing – the National AI Directorate is entering a field through independent and uncoordinated actions. In addition to creating unnecessary duplication, it is also “embarrassing potential foreign partners” according to an anonymous senior quantum sector source.

While the government stipulated with the support of the Ministry of Finance Budget Department that the Innovation Authority would take the lead in quantum computing policy with the aim of renewing the national quantum plan budget with an additional NIS 1.25 billion for the next five years, the Directorate in the Prime Minister’s Office is now acting on its own.

While the government is spending huge amounts on quantum computers through two agencies that are not communicating with each other, the Ministry of Finance’s attitude towards the Directorate is also ambivalent. The office of the Accountant General is taking an active part in guiding the Directorate’s activity, including the purchase of processors, but the Budget Department finds the plan presented to the public unconvincing, believing that while it is laden with good intentions, it is also bombastic and contains unfounded declarations. The Budget Department is especially skeptical when it comes to the duplication in responsibility for microchip purchasing policy between the TELEM Forum, which represents the Directorate of Defense Research and Development (DDR&D); the Council for Higher Education in Israel Planning and Budget Committee; the Ministry of Science, Technology, and Space; and the Innovation Authority, and the new Directorate, which currently has a staff of 20 people.

On the other hand, senior public sector sources familiar with the Ministry of Finance say, “The result of the Budget Department’s conservative policy, combined with the coalition political pressure, is that only a few enterprises are being approved and the few that are approved are being pursued fanatically for want of anything else to do. The result is a collection of eclectic plans that do not necessarily constitute a coherent strategy.”

The fate of the Israeli language model

There is no better example of the state of the national AI plan than the initiative to develop an internal Israeli language model, not necessarily in Hebrew. This enterprise, which dates back to Orna Berry’s plan, was discarded after ChatGPT was launched in 2022.

The new National AI Directorate has published a call for proposal for development of the model and is definitely discussing the need to develop an Israeli model that will not be dependent on Anthropic, OpenAI, and other foreign companies. The goal is to prevent dependence on these companies and prepare for the possibility of arbitrary decisions to deny Israeli institutions access to AI models under future political circumstances.

Nonetheless, even today, following seven years of plans, the Directorate still does not know who will develop the model and whether it will be private Israeli or foreign companies. Israel startups such as AI21, which have developed their own models, have encountered reverses, gone out of business, or been acquired. Decart, the latest Israeli hope, is on the road to a gigantic acquisition by Anthropic.

While the Israeli government continues to formulate national plans and make swaggering election campaign declarations, the local industry has had to go on searching for answers from the private sector and the international companies, regardless of the Directorate’s promises.

This post was originally published on here. 

The Hind Rajab Foundation (HRF), a Belgian pro-Palestinian organization operating against IDF soldiers who served as combatants, announced on Wednesday that it has filed another criminal complaint in India against an Israeli currently vacationing in the country.

The organization claims that the Israeli is a reservist who was involved during his service in the Gaza Strip in the “unlawful destruction of civilian property” in the Khan Yunis area.

As part of the complaint, the organization is asking Indian authorities to investigate him on suspicion of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and acts of genocide.

These are the organization’s allegations, and at this stage, it is not known whether an investigation has been opened against the Israeli following the complaint.

Unusually, compared to previous complaints filed by the organization, this time it did not reveal the Israeli’s identity. The announcement did not include his name, age, initials, the military unit in which he served, or the area in India where he is currently located. The organization also did not explain why it chose not to publish those details.

Basis of allegations: Social media documentation

Similar to previous cases, the HRF claims that part of the material forming the basis of the complaint originates from footage published by the soldier himself from the period of his service in Gaza, which, according to the organization, points to his alleged direct involvement in the destruction of civilian property.

IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Eyal Zamir issued an order on soldiers’ use of social media, designed, among other things, to reduce the risk posed to soldiers by social media posts.

The guidelines emphasize that soldiers must not publish footage in uniform or from operational zones in a manner that could expose information or be used against soldiers in the international arena.

The Hind Rajab Foundation, established about two years ago, monitors social media posts by IDF soldiers and files complaints against soldiers while they are visiting foreign countries.

The organization has so far submitted dozens of complaints in approximately twenty countries. In some countries, including Peru, Brazil, Romania, and Chile, various legal proceedings have been initiated following these complaints.

The allegations: Destruction in the Khan Yunis area

The current complaint focuses on IDF activity in Abasan al-Saghira, east of Khan Yunis, during the months of March and April 2024.

According to the organization, it possesses satellite imagery, videos posted on social media, and open-source information that it claims point to widespread destruction carried out in the area after IDF forces had already achieved operational control, rather than during active combat.

The organization claims that the acts described in the complaint could amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity, and “acts of genocide.”

However, at this stage, there is no known investigation opened against the soldier or steps taken by Indian authorities following the filing.

The founder of the “March 30 Movement” and its subsidiary, the Hind Rajab Foundation, is Dyab Abou Jahjah, a Lebanese-born Belgian citizen. According to him, “the suspect and his unit carried out the systematic destruction of homes and agricultural land in Gaza.”

Abou Jahjah noted that this is the second complaint the organization has submitted in India and called on the authorities in the country to “fulfill their international obligations.”

Natasha Bracke, head of litigation for the HRF, claimed that the organization’s investigation revealed that the destruction in Abasan al-Saghira “was not a byproduct of combat, but a deliberate campaign to erase Palestinian life from the landscape of Gaza and to achieve territorial gain.”

According to her, the findings were transferred to the “competent Indian authorities,” whom she called on to investigate the allegations and prosecute those responsible.

Second complaint in India in less than three months

This is the second time in less than three months that the organization has acted against an Israeli it claims served in the Gaza Strip and traveled to India.

At the beginning of June, it was reported that HRF filed a complaint against a young man whom the organization claims is an Israeli combat engineering reservist who was staying at the time in the Himachal Pradesh region in northern India.

According to the organization, in that case as well, the Israeli was tracked down following content he published himself on social media, from which his location could be inferred.

The organization claimed then that the materials in its possession also included documentation he posted from his time in service showing the destruction of buildings in the Gaza Strip.

The Hind Rajab Foundation is conducting an international campaign against IDF soldiers who served in the Gaza Strip, tracking their social media activity and attempting to locate them during travel abroad.

The organization has filed complaints in various countries, including the Netherlands, Portugal, Italy, Cyprus, Romania, Brazil, Chile, and Sri Lanka.

This post was originally published on here. 

Former Mossad chief Yossi Cohen joined Japanese investment fund SoftBank five years ago as the head of Israeli operations within the partnership established by Vision Fund 2. Now Cohen has been appointed by the fund’s founder, chairman and CEO Masayoshi Son as strategic advisor, “Globes” has learned. He now holds a more senior position that brings him closer to the top decision-making levels in the organization and to Son himself.

Cohen will continue to operate in the Israeli market but will focus more on the fund’s new areas of activity: financing and developing data centers for AI and cloud processing and investing in chip companies in that field. According to senior executives in the tech industry, Cohen spends extended periods in the US and Europe meeting with executives in the field and taking his first steps, but there has not yet been a known investment in which he actively participated.

He was mainly involved in cybersecurity investments

Since Cohen joined SoftBank, he has mainly been involved in investments in cybersecurity companies. Concentrating on the Israeli market, he has been responsible for identifying new investment opportunities, and participated in investments in companies such as Wiz, Claroty and Cato Networks. The three investments have turned out to be a successful bet for Vision Fund, which joined the investment in Wiz at a late stage – in the secondary fundraising in 2025, and purchased shares in the company at a valuation of $12 billion – selling at a major profit at a company valuation of $32 billion about a year later, raking in a profit of several hundred million shekels.

Previously, Cohen led an investment at the end of 2021 of $150 million in cybersecurity company for industrial plants and physical infrastructures Clarity at a valuation of about $2 billion, according to PitchBook. This, while merging into Israeli company Medigate, which specializes in protecting medical equipment in hospitals.

Although SoftBank did not continue to invest in the company in recent years, Claroty’s valuation has doubled to $4 billion, with the company even considering an IPO, although the move has since been frozen. The investment in Shlomo Kramer’s Cato Networks also led to an increase in valuation. The company did consider an IPO in 2024, but even in raising private capital, its valuation has increased from $3 billion at the time of SoftBank’s first investment in 2023 to $4.8 billion last year.

Even before Cohen joined SoftBank, it had made a number of investments in Israel – some of them successful – including in Lemonade and eToro, which both held successful Wall Street IPOs, while several other investments led to write offs including Cybereason which was taken over by Steven Mnuchin’s Liberty Fund, and was eventually sold to Levelblue for a low amount that was never disclosed. The fund also made write-offs in its investments in the Israeli companies StreamElements and Rapid API. In these investments, SoftBank was perceived as an active and dominant fund that was not afraid to quickly make changes to management and even to product development strategy.

Masayoshi Son decided to change direction

Cohen has enhanced his role in the fund after the changes that took place at Vision Fund, the SoftBank subsidiary that reached the end of its cycle, when he joined the fund five years ago at the height of the tech boom in the summer of 2021, Cohen operated under the guidance of its UK branch, which was then managed by senior investors from Deutsche Bank who were recruited by Son to manage investments in Europe and the Middle East. –

With the onset of the tech crisis in Europe, which led to a decline in valuations and the abandonment of investors throughout the industry in 2022-2023, senior managers, including the fund’s CEO, Rajeev Misra, Cohen’s direct manager, left the UK branch to found an investment fund in the UAE, and Cohen moved to work under Vision Fund’s US branch. He explained the move by the fact that Israeli companies are anyway striving to grow in the US market and that 80% of the fund’s deals were in the US.

In recent years, Masayoshi Son, the fund’s charismatic founder and CEO, has decided to shift the focus of the company’s investments from Vision Fund – which was characterized by the dispersion of large capital in many investments in a classic venture capital model, to direct investments by SoftBank’s parent company in data centers, AI infrastructure and direct capital injection into OpenAI, chip company ARM and Intel. Dozens of managers have left Vision Fund and turned to other investment ventures, and those who remain are engaged in managing existing investments, including giant companies like TikTok operator ByteDance and OpenAI.

The value increased thanks to OpenAI and TikTok

The IPO of ARM, which is still controlled by SoftBank, is considered one of the best chip company flotations in recent years, with its stock rising 400% in just two years. Earlier this month, SoftBank reported a profit of $8.2 billion from an investment in shares Intel made when the stock was at its lowest, which brought the fund’s total profit to $2.2 billion in the second quarter of 2026.

The value of the Vision Fund, a SoftBank subsidiary, recorded a $1.7 billion increase in the value of its investments in the second quarter of 2026 due to the rise in ByteDance’s valuation. SoftBank also holds shares of OpenAI through Vision Fund 2 but unusually did not report a change in profit or loss from the company’s operations in the second quarter. But in the first quarter of 2026 reported a $42.1 billion rise in the fund’s value due to a sharp increase in OpenAI’s valuation.

In the preceding quarter, SoftBank had reported that the valuation of its investment in the AI giant was nearly $80 billion, after investing $34.6 billion. In total, SoftBank pledged to invest $64.6 billion in Sam Altman’s company and raised a $40 billion bridge loan and sold shares in T-Mobile and Nvidia.

No response to this report has been forthcoming from Yossi Cohen and SoftBank.

This post was originally published on here. 

Two Jerusalem residents, along with their one-year-old son, entered Jericho, a city in Area A of the West Bank, on Tuesday, and had to be rescued by Israeli security forces, Israel Police said. 

Police suspect the family entered the city to go shopping.

Israeli citizens are strictly prohibited from entering Area A; police emphasized in their statement following the event that entering Area A is “extremely dangerous and can be life-threatening.”

Last month, police reported multiple instances of Israelis entering Area A, both intentionally and unwittingly.

IDF troops and Border Police officers rescued ten Israeli civilians who intentionally entered Kalkilya in Area A of the West Bank on July 6.

According to a police statement regarding the incident, the Israelis entered the city in an attempt to locate a motorcycle that had been stolen from the settlement of Elad the day before.

Later the same week, Border Police rescued an Israeli citizen on Thursday who accidentally entered the village of A-Ram, just north of Jerusalem, in Area A.

Authorities rescue captive primate in Jericho home, surrender it to the Israeli Primate Sanctuary

Also in Jericho, Israeli security forces, alongside the Israel Nature and Parks Authority (INPA), rescued a grivet monkey from illegal captivity in a Jericho home on Monday night, police confirmed on Tuesday morning. 

Authorities searched the home after “suspicions arose that a monkey was being kept there,” police said.

During the search, security forces found the monkey in a cage. They promptly seized it and transferred it into the care of the INPA, which brought it to the Israeli Primate Sanctuary in the Ben Shemen Forest. 

The suspect, a woman from Ramle in her 30s, was arrested and questioned, then released subject to restrictions, and is expected to be brought in for further questioning. She is suspected of committing offenses involving the trade, hunting, and illegal possession of a protected wild animal.

Grivet monkeys are native to northeastern Africa, just above the Horn, in and around Ethiopia. While they are not considered an endangered species, they are an exotic animal, and it is illegal to own one as a pet in Israel.

This post was originally published on here. 

South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Hyun said on Wednesday that US President Donald Trump’s order to curb joint military drills appeared aimed in part at pressuring Seoul to support US efforts in the Iran war, alongside other unresolved issues such as investment.

“I think President Trump’s message includes pressure over several pending issues concerning the South Korean government, as well as a message to North Korea and an intention by the United States to break a stalemate in the Iran war,” Cho said.

One potential source of friction could be South Korea’s pledge to invest $350 billion in the United States under a trade deal signed last year, Cho said.

Seoul has yet to announce details of the investment plan, although Cho said Washington had sent Seoul a proposal outlining projects that could be considered.

“We could not move faster on the investment plan as we had to consider factors such as commercial viability and take legal procedures,” Cho said. He cited other unexpected problems, without elaborating.

US, South Korea to shorten annual military drill from 11 days to five

South Korea and the United States announced on Wednesday that they will shorten annual military drills to five days from 11 and scale back some field training, following Trump’s order on a substantial reduction in US participation.

South Korea’s Unification Minister Chung Dong-young, who attended the same hearing, said he believes Trump was moving closer to potentially arranging a new meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un by curtailing exercises that have long angered Pyongyang.

This post was originally published on here. 

The Syrian government and US Envoy to Iraq and Syria Tom Barrack accused Israel on Tuesday of carrying out overnight strikes on the Abu al-Duhur military airfield in Idlib province in northwestern Syria, calling the attacks an unnecessary escalation that threatens regional stability.

On Tuesday evening, the Prime Minister’s Office released a statement on X/Twitter appearing to take credit for the strike.

The Prime Minister’s Office:
Israel and Syria agreed to a status quo in security matters, which Syria was on the verge of breaching by permitting Turkish troops to deploy at an airbase near Aleppo.

Israel repeatedly warned Syria that such a deployment would pose a threat to…

— Prime Minister of Israel (@IsraeliPM) August 18, 2026

“Israel and Syria agreed to a status quo in security matters, which Syria was on the verge of breaching by permitting Turkish troops to deploy at an airbase near Aleppo,” the post read.

“Israel repeatedly warned Syria that such a deployment would pose a threat to Israel’s security. Syria chose to ignore these warnings,” it continued, adding that “Israel will not tolerate threats to its security, and would welcome a return to the status quo.”

Specifically, Israel made several attempts to reach an understanding with Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa via indirect dialogue, a source in Israel’s security establishment told KAN News. Israel only took action against the Syrian base once those talks fell through, the source added. 

A diplomatic source in the Syrian Foreign Ministry later denied claims that Israel tried to reach an agreement with Syria, KAN reported, citing Al Jazeera. 

A Turkish source told Axios that the country had no military presence on the base.

“Israel is inventing pretexts to bomb neighboring countries and destabilize the region,” they told the outlet.

A source familiar with the details told The Jerusalem Post that Israel recently provided the US with intelligence on attempts by Syria to build up its military capabilities.

“The Syrian Arab Republic condemns in the strongest terms the Israeli airstrikes targeting Abu al-Duhur Military Airbase in Idlib Governorate, and considers them an unjustified act of aggression, a flagrant violation of Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and a dangerous escalation that threatens security and stability in the region,” a statement from the Syrian Foreign Ministry read.

The strikes demonstrate Israel’s “attempts to undermine these efforts and drag the region toward further tension and instability,” it added.

Statement Issued by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates of the Syrian Arab Republic pic.twitter.com/K8r58jWEAu

— وزارة الخارجية والمغتربين السورية (@syrianmofaex) August 18, 2026

Barrack echoed the Syrian statement, and noted that the US is “deeply concerned” about the airstrikes in a post to X/Twitter.

He added that the strikes “constitute an unnecessary escalation that does not advance regional stability,” and that Syrian President Ahmed al-Shaara’s government has “neither adopted a predatory posture nor maintained proxy forces. It has, in fact, repeatedly indicated a preference for de-escalation with Israel.”

“Enduring de-escalation agreements are built through sustained dialogues with all concerned nations and principals.”

“The United States continues to believe that restraint and engagement offer the more constructive course. We encourage all parties to prioritize logical discourse over further military incidents,” he wrote.

We are deeply concerned that the confirmed Israeli airstrikes on Abu al-Duhur Airbase constitute an unnecessary escalation that does not advance regional stability.

The Al-Sharra government has neither adopted a predatory posture nor maintained proxy forces. It has, in fact,…

— Ambassador Tom Barrack (@USAMBTurkiye) August 18, 2026

Some US officials believe the strike was carried out in part due to Israel’s upcoming elections, Axios reported on Tuesday.

Strikes reportedly target Syrian base’s runway

Earlier in the day, Arab media reported that four aircraft carried out the strikes, which took place about 70 km. from the Turkish border.

A correspondent for the Qatari Al Jazeera network reported that the four strikes targeted the runway of the military base, located in the eastern Idlib countryside.

The network’s correspondent in Damascus said that information about the incident remained scarce and that Syrian authorities had not issued an official response. Other Arab media outlets also reported that the strikes were carried out by “unidentified fighter jets.”

Hezbollah-affiliated Al Mayadeen network suggested that Israel was behind the attack, though the IDF has not addressed any recent strikes in Syria, and other reports in the region did not determine that the Israeli Air Force had carried out the strikes.

The Abu al-Duhur airfield is located east of the city of Idlib and dozens of kilometers from the Turkish border.

The military base changed hands several times during the Syrian civil war. In 2015, rebel forces captured it following a prolonged siege, and in early 2018 it returned to the control of forces loyal to Bashar al-Assad’s regime. In November 2024, rebel forces recaptured it during the offensive that ultimately led to the collapse of the Assad regime.

Since Assad’s fall, the area has been under the control of Syria’s new government, led by Sharaa.

As of Tuesday morning, there have been no reports of casualties from the strikes or of the extent of damage to the runway and facilities at the airfield.

Turkish FM claims Israeli strikes in Syria are a threat to stability

Turkey, on Tuesday, strongly condemned Israeli air strikes on the Abu al-Duhur air base in northwestern Syria, and called on the international community to ensure Israel is held accountable for actions which it said violated international laws.

In an August 6 joint news conference with Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad Hassan al-Shaibani, Turkey’s Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan claimed that Israel’s attacks against Syria are one of the greatest destabilizing factors for the country.

“Israel’s attacks targeting Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity are among the greatest threats to the country’s stability,” he said, adding that Syria’s stability was a shared responsibility for all the countries in the region.

“We call on the international community to take a more decisive stance to end Israel’s escalating aggression against Syria,” Turkey’s foreign ministry said in a statement.

At the time, Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar had pushed back against Fidan’s statements on Israeli action in Syria, accusing Turkey of spending decades “violating the sovereignty of Syria while cynically lecturing others on international law.”

According to Sa’ar, Turkey occupies 5% of Syria and intends to use the space to undermine Israeli security, while Israel only holds “one-tenth of one percent of Syrian territory” in the form of a buffer zone to protect itself from terror attacks.

Amichai Stein, Tzvi Jasper, and Eli Leon contributed to this report.

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Nuclear material in Syria was discovered and collected by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Saudi state-owned Al-Hadath reported on Tuesday, citing confirmation by Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad Hassan al-Shaibani.

According to the report, al-Shaibani emphasized that the material, discovered in Syria’s Deir Ezzor site, will remain in Syrian custody, “subject to IAEA guarantees.”

“We will provide the necessary conditions for handling nuclear materials and storing them safely,” said al-Shaibani, who further noted that Damascus, “on its own initiative,” permitted the IAEA to access the site.

Shaibani made the comments at a joint press conference with IAEA chief Rafael Grossi in Damascus, where he added that Syria had the right to use the material for civil and peaceful purposes.

He noted that cooperation between Syria and the IAEA has reached “advanced stages.”

Syrian authorities working with IAEA over Assad nuclear legacy

Since the ouster of former president Bashar al-Assad in late 2024, Syria’s new authorities have committed to working with the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog to address the legacy of nuclear activities during decades of Assad family rule.

Grossi said the agency accessed the site after the Syrian government notified it.

Syria is not known to hold operational stockpiles of nuclear material for a weapons program, but Israel bombed a suspected Syrian nuclear reactor in 2007 in the country’s eastern province of Deir Ezzor.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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The Mossawa Center for Arab Citizens in Israel demanded on Tuesday that an immediate investigation be opened into police conduct during a Saturday night raid on a private wedding at the home of the Mustafa al-Afan family in Umm al-Fahm.

The organization appealed to Israel Police Commissioner Insp.-Gen. Daniel Levi and the Police Internal Investigations Department (PIID). The letter was also sent to Coastal District commander Deputy Commissioner Yehiel Bohadana, Menashe subdistrict commander Assistant Commissioner Roni Fares, and Umm al-Fahm station commander Chief Superintendent Yossi Ben-David.

The Mossawa Center said footage and testimony from the incident raised suspicions that police exceeded their authority, used disproportionate force, and violated the fundamental rights of the wedding guests.

Attorney Kamal Khoury of the Mossawa Center described in the letter the trauma suffered by the family and guests. He said large numbers of police entered the private wedding compound, threw stun grenades, ordered participants to lie on the ground, and searched them. The center further alleged that chairs were broken during the operation and that the stage and cameras were damaged, while officers addressed those present “in an offensive and humiliating manner.”

The Mossawa Center said footage from the incident appeared to show a police officer allegedly using a taser against a young man who was already being held by officers.

According to the center, the use of the device, together with stun grenades being thrown in the presence of children, women, and elderly people, requires a separate and thorough investigation.

Israel Police raid wedding due to suspicions of weapons

Israel Police said the raid was conducted due to suspicions that weapons were being used during the wedding. However, the searches ended without any weapons being found; no weapons or other arms were seized, and no one present was arrested.

The center argued that the existence of a “suspicion,” without further details, did not answer questions about the legality of entering the compound or using force against all those present.

“There is no dispute over the police’s duty and authority to act against gunfire and the illegal use of weapons during weddings,” the appeal stated. “However, Arab society is the main victim of the phenomenon of weapons and crime, and expects the police to act effectively and in a targeted manner.”

The center claimed that the police operation in Umm el-Fahm bore the characteristics of a “humiliating collective search and indiscriminate use of force.”

The Mossawa Center demanded that all evidence from the incident be preserved immediately, including body-camera footage from police officers and other personnel, recordings of calls to the police emergency hotline, intelligence reports, operational and station logs, the operational order, a list of the forces and units that took part, action reports, and authorizations for the use of stun grenades and the Taser.

The center also demanded answers as to who ordered the raid, what factual and legal basis supported it, whether a search warrant had been issued, how many people were detained or questioned, and why the guests were ordered to lie on the ground.

Human rights groups call for a professional team collecting testimonies

At the same time, the center called on the Umm al-Fahm Municipality to establish a legal and professional team to collect testimony from those affected and accompany the family in its dealings with the police and PIID.

“We demand that the Police Internal Investigations Department immediately begin investigating the conduct of the officers and take the necessary steps against every officer and commander who committed offenses and abused their authority,” the appeal stated.

The center demanded a detailed response within seven days and warned that, in the absence of a satisfactory answer, it would consider turning to the courts in an effort to compel PIID to open an investigation.

Israel Police did not express regret or apologize for the incident and stood by its position. In response to criticism after video from the incident circulated on social media, police said the activity shown in the footage was carried out following suspicions that weapons had been used during a wedding. Police officers and other personnel therefore responded to the scene to investigate the suspicions and locate weapons.

“Israel Police will continue to act resolutely and uncompromisingly against the phenomenon of gunfire at weddings,” police said.

Police had not yet responded to the Mossawa Center’s demand for an investigation.

A similar incident occurred over the previous weekend, when a bride and groom from southern Israel, on their way to their wedding, were detained for questioning after police alleged their wedding convoy had disrupted traffic.

The couple said the delay caused them to arrive late to their wedding and that some guests had already left by the time they arrived. The groom and his father blamed National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, claiming that he had “made a show at their expense.”

“We are putting an end to the wild wedding convoys in the Negev and the shooting at weddings that endangers human life. They will keep babbling, and I will keep working,” Ben-Gvir said. 

The groom’s father contested the matter in comments to Walla.

“If they delayed traffic, then why not give them a ticket and release them? Minister Ben-Gvir wanted to show that he is in control, so why at my son’s expense? Why did they have to film the bride?”

This post was originally published on here. 

Democratic socialist Angie Nixon scored an upset victory on Tuesday in Florida’s Democratic primary race for the US Senate, as media outlets projected she defeated former national security official Alex Vindman.

It was a surprising result as voters in several states picked candidates to run in the November midterm election, which will determine control of Congress.

More surprises could be in store in Alaska, where polls in most of the state closed at 8 p.m. local time (0400 GMT Wednesday).

The state’s unusual nonpartisan primary pits incumbent Republican Senator Dan S. Sullivan against Democratic challenger Mary Peltola and another Republican with a similar name, Dan J. Sullivan. Trump has accused Dan J. Sullivan of trying to confuse voters and dilute the Republican vote, and his Justice Department has launched an investigation. Dan J. Sullivan, a former schoolteacher, says that is not his intent.

In Florida, Vindman, a retired Army officer who rose to prominence in 2019 when he testified to Congress during President Donald Trump’s first impeachment, raised 16 times as much money as Nixon, a state legislator.

Nixon, 42, has been active in Florida’s labor movement and was reprimanded this year for disrupting a Florida House vote when she protested congressional redistricting legislation with a pink megaphone. In her campaign, she urged voters to “make sure you wear your pink to the polls.” She was backed by prominent progressives including Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota.

She will face Republican Senator Ashley Moody in November’s general election. Nonpartisan analysts say Moody is favored to win the matchup and finish the remaining two years in the term of former Florida Senator Marco Rubio, who now serves as Trump’s secretary of state.

Republicans are also favored to win the governor’s race, in which Republican Byron Donalds will face Republican-turned-Democrat David Jolly.

Florida’s new map

Two veteran Florida Democratic lawmakers cleared their first hurdle as they sought to survive a Republican redistricting that forced them to run in new seats.

Representative Jared Moskowitz was projected to win the Democratic primary in Florida’s 25th congressional district, fending off challenger Oliver Larkin, who was backed by the Democratic Socialists of America.

Moskowitz will face Republican Scott Singer, a former Boca Raton mayor, in one of the few congressional races in the state seen as competitive in November.

Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, first elected to Congress in 2004, won her party’s nomination to represent a Black-majority district centered in Broward County.

After a Supreme Court decision weakened a landmark civil rights law in April, some activists who worried about losing Black representation in Congress criticized Wasserman Schultz, who is white, for running in the historically Black district.

Elsewhere in the state, Mike Beltran, a state representative, was projected to win the Republican nomination to face Democratic Representative Kathy Castor in a district redrawn to favor Republicans.

Florida’s new map, pushed through by the Republican-controlled legislature this spring, could leave the state with a House delegation of 24 Republicans and only four Democrats. Trump, a Republican, won Florida by 13 percentage points in 2024.

States usually redraw their congressional maps only at the beginning of every decade, to reflect census results. But several have redistricted over the past year at Trump’s urging to shore up the Republican majority in Congress, prompting some Democratic-led states to redraw their own maps in response.

Republican Representative Cory Mills, who is embroiled in ethics investigations, was defeated in his central Florida primary for reelection by former broadcast news anchor Ryan Elijah.

Mills has denied allegations of campaign finance law violations and sexual misconduct now being probed by the House Ethics Committee. Democrats had seen the seat as a potential pickup opportunity if Mills had won the nomination.

Sullivan vs. Sullivan in Alaska

In Alaska, some opinion polls show Democrat Peltola, a moderate who formerly held the state’s sole House seat, leading Senator Dan S. Sullivan – an unusual result for a state that typically backs Republican candidates.

Democrats, who are seeking to pick up at least four seats from Republicans to win control of the 100-seat Senate, see the Alaska race as one of their strongest opportunities.

The top four candidates in the nonpartisan primary advance to the November election. Peltola stands to benefit from Alaska’s ranked-choice voting system, which could allow her to consolidate support among independents.

She also could benefit if challenger Dan J. Sullivan makes the cut.

The race has drawn the interest of Trump, who urged voters on social media to “be careful. VOTE FOR THE REAL DAN SULLIVAN TODAY,” and called challenger Dan J. Sullivan an “imposter.”

In the House of Representatives, incumbent Republican Representative Nick Begich III is facing a challenge from former school administrator Bill Hill, who is listed as an independent but has donated to Democratic candidates in the past. Thirteen other candidates are also on the ballot.

This post was originally published on here. 

At least nine people were killed, including a child, in a fire at a hotel in India’s eastern city of Kolkata on Wednesday, local police said.

The fire broke out at around 2:50 a.m. local time on the second floor of the hotel building and was brought under control within an hour, a senior police officer told Reuters.

Around 30 people were evacuated safely in the incident, which may have been triggered by an electrical short circuit, the officer said.

The exact cause of the blaze is yet to be ascertained, he added.

Local media reported injuries, with at least six wounded undergoing hospital treatment.

News agency ANI, in which Reuters has a minority stake, reported, citing the fire department, that among the dead were Bangladeshi citizens who were in Kolkata to seek medical treatment.

NDTV reported all nine dead were Bangladeshis.

Nationalities of those killed are still unknown

The senior police official Reuters spoke to, however, said the nationalities of those killed were yet to be ascertained.

The hotel is located in a congested area in central Kolkata and is known for budget accommodations and restaurants.

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Abdullah Gergawi, who was indicted Tuesday over an alleged plot to carry out a terrorist attack near the Forum nightclub in Beersheba, told investigators that he intended to target people dancing at the venue.

“I wanted to blow up the people dancing there, whether they were Jews or Arabs.”

Gergawi, 20, from Shaqib al-Salam, was charged with several offenses, including contact with a foreign agent, providing services or means to a terrorist organization, preparing to carry out an act of terrorism, and training or instruction for terrorist purposes.

During his interrogation, Gergawi admitted that he had searched YouTube for instructions on how to make explosives.

“A video appeared for me about how to make an explosive filling. The video said that I needed agricultural lime, sulfur, and charcoal. I found lime in my storage room because I have an uncle who works in Jenin. I took a cup of lime from the sack, and took from it an amount of 75 grams of lime, charcoal, and sulfur.”

Gergawi joined ISIS group messages on Signal

Gergawi also told investigators that he took charcoal from his home and obtained sulfur from matches.

“I ground them up and mixed the materials and put them in a cup and took them to my grandfather’s house, to the concrete yard, where I tried to ignite them, and there was a spark and smoke.”

“I want to say that before I took the sulfur from the matches, I went to Dahariya and Bani Naim and looked there for sulfur to use in preparing the explosive material, but I did not find any because they did not agree to sell it to me and some told me they did not have any, so after I returned home I decided to take the sulfur from the matches.”

According to the indictment, Gergawi began consuming ISIS-related content on social media as early as 2022. He later began supporting the terrorist organization and identifying with it.

As his involvement deepened, Gergawi contacted ISIS supporters and discussed the organization with them. Through those contacts, he was exposed to additional ISIS materials, according to the indictment.

In the months before his arrest, Gergawi joined a small group on the Signal messaging app, where members discussed jihad and developments in Israel.

When he learned that the group was expected to shut down, Gergawi urged its members to take action. He was told to be patient and that they would contact him when they needed him.

After the group was shut down, Gergawi deleted Signal from his phone in an effort to avoid leaving any traces.

This post was originally published on here. 

Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem claimed on Tuesday that 47 Palestinian families are at risk of expulsion from their homes in the West Bank’s northern Jordan Valley.

The left-wing organization claimed that settler extremists, alongside with the IDF, cut off the water supply for 300 people in Ras al-Ahmar, At-Tha’ala, and the area east of Atuf.

IDF sources told The Jerusalem Post that the circumstances differ for each family involved in the case, with many or all of the families living in the area having built their homes illegally in Area C of the West Bank.

The military says the families should not have built their homes in those areas, that each case is currently proceeding through the legal system, and that the project that may be affecting the water in the area is being carried out for security reasons.

“The purpose of the project is operational control that will make it possible to prevent the smuggling of weapons, thwart security threats to the State of Israel and terrorist incidents in the Jordan Valley area,” the military said in a statement.

The water shortage, which B’Tselem blamed on the IDF, is reportedly making it difficult for families to remain in the area, particularly those who primarily make a living through agriculture and sheep rearing.

According to the organization’s announcement, damaged water infrastructure is also threatening the viability of thousands of dunams of agricultural land.

IDF believes Palestinians at risk of evacuation built houses illegally

IDF sources did not confirm or deny the allegations regarding the water supply. Instead, sources told the Post that the IDF is currently undertaking a digging project in the area for security reasons.

According to the sources, three years ago the military established a dividing wall between Palestinian and Israeli settlements in the area, which failed to improve the security situation.

“There is a sectoral history of terrorist acts in the area, including shooting attacks as well as other events that have claimed the lives of both soldiers and civilians,” the IDF stated, adding that the two most notable cases were the attacks involving the Deutsch and the Dee families.

Because the IDF is now digging to create even larger barriers, some damage to the water infrastructure in the area is possible, but sources insisted that no one should be living there in the first place.

“It should be clarified that the work is being carried out in accordance with the latest court decision in the petition, which allows the start of work on most sections of the barrier, with certain restrictions, particularly concerning the demolition of buildings,” the IDF said. 

‘Intent to displace Palestinian communities’

B’Tselem claimed that attacks on water infrastructure in the region are carried out with the express intent of displacing Palestinian communities as part of an effort to expand settlements in the West Bank.

“Bulldozers uprooted olive trees, destroyed crops and greenhouses, ruined kilometers of water and irrigation lines, and damaged agricultural areas that provide a livelihood for dozens of workers,” the organization said in a statement, adding that the water shortage enables the de facto annexation of thousands of acres of land held by Palestinians.

“The route of the barrier, announced by the army about a year ago, stretches for approximately 22 kilometers from Ein Shibli to the Tyasir checkpoint area, passing through the lands of Khirbet Atuf, Ras al-Ahmar, Khirbet Yarza, and other communities.”

This post was originally published on here. 

Defense Minister Israel Katz wants to shift responsibility for handling Israeli extremist violence in the West Bank from the IDF to the police. It is an idea worth discussing, but a shift this radical should not be announced before it is actually planned, particularly in an arena as volatile and operationally complicated as the West Bank.

Reporting by The Jerusalem Post’s Yonah Jeremy Bob revealed exclusively that Katz did not coordinate his proposal with a number of the relevant IDF authorities before making it public.

Some senior officials reportedly did not fully understand what he was proposing until a meeting on Monday. Between legal questions, manpower constraints, operational difficulties, and potential High Court challenges, the plan could still easily end up delayed, diluted, or blocked entirely.

Katz has spoken about the transfer as though the fundamental decision has already been made, while the institutions expected to carry it out are still trying to determine whether it is workable.

A defense minister is certainly entitled to pursue major reform, including reform that challenges an imperfect status quo. However, governing requires doing the difficult work needed to make an outcome function rather than just declaring an outcome.

IDF has responsibility for security and public order

The existing system is complicated because the reality on the ground is complicated.

The IDF has primary responsibility for security and public order in the West Bank, while the police and the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) play parallel roles. Violent incidents involving Palestinian residents and extremist settlers also do not fall into clean institutional categories.

At the same confrontation, soldiers can face Palestinian suspects, Israeli civilians, violent rioters, and bystanders requiring protection. Katz’s proposal does not make that complexity disappear.

And this is hardly an academic discussion. Recent weeks have provided disturbing examples of extremist settler violence in Kusra, where settlers repeatedly entered the Palestinian village despite a closed military zone order.

Residents described threats and attacks, while IDF troops were deployed to the area and an additional battalion was sent as reinforcement.

The military has since opened an internal investigation into its own handling of the events, specifically looking into why it took 48 hours to evacuate an illegal outpost and why troops reportedly failed to carry out parts of the evacuation mission.

Video footage showed extremists dismantling fences, blocking roads, and surrounding areas, while Yesha Council leaders themselves condemned violence against Palestinians and Israeli security personnel.

Those failures should lead to better enforcement, clearer authority, and greater accountability rather than confusion over who is supposed to intervene. If the police are to assume a much larger role, they need the officers, command structures, and legal authority to do so.

Katz risks creating outcome of further failure

The transition must be fully coordinated with the IDF, the attorney-general, and every other body that will have to make split-second decisions when violence erupts.

Otherwise, Katz risks creating precisely the outcome critics fear: the IDF is instructed to step back from confronting Jewish extremists, while the police are not yet equipped or positioned to step forward.

Responsibility has not been transferred; it has simply fallen into the gap between two institutions, a concern Bob’s reporting notes is already being raised by critics of Katz’s proposal.

There is also an unavoidable political dimension. Israel is heading toward an October 27 election, and the settler movement represents an important constituency on the Right. That does not by itself prove Katz’s proposal is motivated by campaigning.

However, when a minister announces a politically convenient transfer of responsibility before resolving operational and legal questions, it is reasonable to ask whether political considerations are outrunning policy.

That is ultimately the most troubling part of Katz’s approach. Settler violence is not an administrative nuisance for the Defense Ministry to pass elsewhere; it is a security and law enforcement problem that requires attention, resources, and leadership.

Katz may genuinely believe the police should carry more of the burden, but his responsibility is to make sure somebody actually carries it.

Israel does not need leaders who solve difficult problems by putting distance between themselves and the problem. It needs ministers willing to own those problems until workable solutions are in place.

Katz should focus less on who can be made responsible for settler violence and more on ensuring that Israel’s authorities stop it. That is the responsibility he cannot outsource.

This post was originally published on here. 

Jewish far-right firebrand Rep. Randy Fine secured a landslide victory in his Florida GOP primary on Tuesday, ending a race marked by antisemitic tropes, allusions to Adolf Hitler and sharp criticism of Islam. 

The Associated Press called the race in just under an hour after polls closed, at 7:53 p.m., when Fine secured 56.7% of the votes, with 69% of votes counted. His main opponent, mega-influencer Dan Bilzerian, had accrued 18% of the votes by that time. 

Fine, who is currently serving his first term in Congress, was endorsed by US President Donald Trump, the Republican Jewish Coalition and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

However, he has sparked anger in Congress on both sides of the aisle for comments disparaging Muslims, including comparing them to dogs, and saying that Gazans should “starve away” until the Israeli hostages were released.

Bilzerian, an influencer who has spread conspiracy theories about Jews, has previously said that he wants to “kill Israelis” and described his opponent as a “fat Jew.” After Bilzerian declared his candidacy this past spring, the founder of TMZ asked the influencer if his usage of the phrase was antisemitic.

Bilzerian invoked Hitler in campaign remarks

In response, Bilzerian questioned whether remarks made by Fine earlier this year “about how Muslims are lower than dogs,” which drew bipartisan criticism, were Islamophobic.

“District 6 understands the Jewish problem,” Bilzerian posted on X/Twitter on Saturday, following up the next day with a message that “the Jew is scared.” A recent Bilzerian campaign music video referenced Adolf Hitler in a positive light, featuring the lyrics, “Should we revisit that Austrian painter’s opinions?” 

Fine, meanwhile, told Fox News Digital on Tuesday that Bilzerian is “an open Nazi who transported himself from Las Vegas to Florida in order to target me.” 

“This isn’t an organic campaign,” he added. “It’s an organized pogrom against the Jews.”

The primary had been marked by inflammatory rhetoric and personal attacks. Fine responded to Bilzerian’s entry into the race by declaring that “we don’t want Armenians to be able to serve in Congress” (Bilzerian is Armenian), prompting anger from Armenian-American groups.

Last week a Fine campaign sign was defaced with a swastika, an act condemned by the Anti-Defamation League and other Jewish groups. In a release, Fine accused Bilzerian’s supporters of having painted the swastika, a charge Bilzerian has denied and labeled “the most jew move of all time.”

Jewish incumbent favorite to win in November

South Florida Democrat Rep. Lois Frankel defeated outsider Victoria Doyle in a Democratic primary race on Tuesday, positioning the longstanding Jewish candidate for a likely victory this November.  

The Associated Press called the race less than an hour after polls closed, at 7:41pm, when Frankel secured 75% of the votes, with 92% of votes counted. Doyle had accrued 23.1% of the votes by this time. 

Frankel faced a serious challenge from Doyle on the campaign trail, particularly after a statewide reshuffling of districts ended up reshaping local constituencies.

President Donald Trump had pushed for GOP governors to reshape voting boundaries, in a bid to strengthen the Republican party’s grasp on Capitol Hill. Responding in Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis and state legislators opted to merge multiple Democratic districts.

Prior to the redistricting, Frankel was serving constituents from Delray to West Palm Beach in the state’s 22nd District. But the revamped District 22, which is expected to turn red, will instead stretch from Palm Beach County to Marco Island on the Gulf Coast.

Frankel, who has been in Congress since 2013, opted to run in a reshaped 23rd District, which includes parts of Broward County and southern Palm Beach County. 

Israel and AIPAC were not major points of contention between Frankel and Doyle, whose priorities focus on affordability, women’s rights and immigration reforms. 

Frankel, however, is a staunch supporter of Israel who has promised “continued security assistance to Israel and robust funding for Israel’s missile defense capabilities.” Pro-Israel PACs have spent about $861,000 backing her over the course of her career, according to Track AIPAC. 

“The major focus of our campaign is the need to get big money out of politics,” the Victoria Doyle for Congress campaign told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in an emailed statement, prior to the primary. 

Accusing her opponent of taking “millions of dollars in special interest, corporate, big donor, and PAC money” and calling out AIPAC as Frankel’s biggest donor, the campaign stressed that Doyle “takes no PAC or special interest money, and runs a scrappy grassroots campaign centered on voters rather than donors.” 

“For a while Frankel supporters attempted to label Victoria as ‘antisemitic,’ but the attack was laughably crude and unbelievable, seen more as Frankel’s desperation and being out of touch with the new district than anything else,” the statement added. 

Frankel’s campaign did not reply to a request for comment.

This post was originally published on here. 

A veteran Southeast Florida Democrat, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, defeated her opponents in Tuesday’s primary race that took place in unfamiliar territory, following a statewide rewrite of electoral battle lines.  

The Associated Press called the race just minutes after polls closed, at 7:24 p.m., when Wasserman Schultz secured 50.5% of the votes, with 67% of votes counted. The candidate viewed as her top challenger, Elijah Manley, had amassed just 12.8% of the votes, while Dale VC Holness had gotten 21.1%.

“the people that we spoke to all across this district understand that I’m going to fight to make sure that they can pay their rent,” Wasserman Schultz said in an emotional victory speech on Tuesday. “We’re going to make sure we fight those damn Republicans.”

Wasserman Schultz, who will be seeking a 12th term in November, had long been representing Fort Lauderdale and southern Broward County. But earlier this year, Gov. Ron DeSantis urged state legislators to redraw the congressional map, in line with a Trump administration push to reshape voting boundaries in GOP-led states.

Florida’s answer was to consolidate Democratic districts and minimize the number of blue seats. 

Wasserman-Schultz ran in mostly-Black precinct

The redistricting means that Wasserman Schultz’s current region, the 25th District, would stretch from Miami Beach to Delray Beach and likely turn red, according to Ballotpedia. 

Wasserman Schultz therefore chose to run in a redrawn 20th District, a reliably blue region that includes most of Broward County’s Black-majority precincts. But her move sparked considerable discomfort in a region that has sent Black Democrats to Congress since 1992, according to the Associated Press. 

“The most important thing I can say is that I can commit to the people of District 20 to work every day to live up to the legacy of Alcee Hastings,” Wasserman Schultz said on Tuesday, referring to the Black congressman who served the 20th District from 2013 until his death in 2021.

Ahead of the primary, Luis Fleischman, a professor of sociology at Palm Beach State College, had warned that Wasserman Schultz’s entrance into this district “creates tensions between Wasserman Schultz and parts of the constituency.” 

Though Wasserman Schultz faced four rivals, all of whom are Black, her main competition was Elijah Manley, a 27-year-old gay activist who said that he converted to Judaism but has also been a fierce critic of Israel. While Manley has described himself as a Democratic socialist, he is not a member of the Democratic Socialists of America.  

Stephen Sussman, a professor of public administration at Barry University, had said prior to the primary that Wasserman Schultz could benefit from having multiple opponents, as these candidates could split the vote. 

“The reality of it is that all she needs is a plurality,” Sussman added, noting that Florida primaries don’t require a majority winner. 

Though Wasserman Schultz has been serving Southeast Florida for more than two decades, both the political landscape and her views have shifted. When she took office as Florida’s first Jewish congresswoman in 2005, she represented what the Forward described as “a heavily Jewish swath of Broward County.”

She advocated for Israeli-Palestinian peace, diverging from her hawkish predecessor, Peter Deutsch.

Wasserman Schultz today lists Israel among her legislative priorities, with an emphasis on “the threat of antisemitism at home and abroad.” She has stressed the Jewish state’s right to defend itself while also expressing continued support for a two-state solution.

Manley, her main opponent, spent considerable airtime on the campaign trail criticizing both her support of Israel and the financial backing she has received from American Israel Public Affairs Committee. 

In a recent social media post, he called her “a key Netanyahu ally” who has accepted “more pro-Israel PAC money than anyone else in Florida.” He made these claims after the House Democratic Caucus appointed her to the Foreign Affairs Committee, where she vowed to “fight Trump’s self-serving, America-last foreign policy.”

Pro-Israel PACs have spent around $1.5 million on Wasserman Schultz over the course of her career, according to Track AIPAC, which uses Federal Election Commission data to document contributions from Israel-linked special interests groups. FEC filings from the current race link at least $250,000 to AIPAC.

A lump sum of $250,000 came from Pro-Choice Majority Action, an affiliate of the Elect Democratic Women Action Fund, whose biggest funder is the United Democracy Project, AIPAC’s super PAC.  

Wasserman Schultz, meanwhile, told JTA in a statement that Israel and AIPAC haven’t typically come up “in the thousands of conversations” she’s had on the campaign trail.

When constituents bring up foreign affairs, she said they tend to focus on fears that the Trump administration could “force their family and friends to be deported back to brutal homelands plagued by lawless violence and oppressive poverty.” 

“Voters here always ask how I’ll help lower gas, grocery and healthcare costs, and stop Trump’s rampant cruelty and corruption,” she added.

This post was originally published on here. 

The US is considering scaling back its military presence in the Middle East as a result of the war with Iran, The Washington Post reported Tuesday, citing several officials familiar with the matter.

The Pentagon’s policy office is leading the current evaluations, one source told the newspaper, adding that the Joint Staff and US Central Command (CENTCOM) are also taking part.

The issue is expected to cause a rift between hawkish members of the administration who tend to favor more intervention and the dovish, non-interventionist camp, The Washington Post cited another source as saying.

CENTCOM chief Adm. Brad Cooper has been involved in the discussions, one source said, adding that he supports discussing the relocation of Gulf troops westward.

US bases were, in some cases, evacuated before Feb. strikes

The Persian Gulf is one of the major arenas in which the Pentagon is looking at making cuts, the report cited two sources as saying. In some cases, it, the US is considering not rebuilding bases damaged by Iran during the recent fighting.

Many of these bases were evacuated in February before the US and Israel launched strikes on Iran, a person familiar with the details told the newspaper, saying that the bases were considered vulnerable to drone and missile attacks.

“Iran thinks we are in the traditional places,” they said.

A CENTCOM spokesperson declined to comment on the report.

The US currently houses troops and military infrastructure in several countries in the Middle East, including Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, the UAE, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan. The US maintains temporary facilities in other countries, such as Israel.

After the launch of Operation Epic Fury, Iran responded with attacks on Gulf states that housed US troops, launching thousands of ballistic missiles and one-way drones over the course of months.

As of August, 19 American soldiers had been killed, and hundreds injured, many in strikes on these bases.

The UAE said Iran launched ballistic missiles, Iran denied

On Tuesday, the UAE warned residents of incoming ballistic missiles, later determined to have been launched by Iran. Neither struck the Gulf nation, and Iran’s Foreign Ministry later rejected the report, instead suggesting that a “false-flag” attack by the US or Israel may have been behind the action.

This post was originally published on here. 

On August 17 the homepage of the BBC had two important headlines that reflect changing US policy and the affect it is having on the world order.

“Trump threatens to bomb US ally Oman, if it ‘gets in the way’ over Iran deal” was the first headline. “Trump says to reduce military drills with South Korea after it stayed out of Iran war,” was the second.

The two headlines reflect a US policy that is now having a kind of butterfly affect around the world. The US and Israel chose to bomb Iran in later February 2026.

Now the US is reducing its role in the Pacific and Asia and pivoting to the Middle East. After a decade and a half where the US has sought to bolster its focus on China and Asia, the US strategy is now deeply focused on the Strait of Hormuz and US ties around the world are changing.

The US has slammed European allies and allies such as South Korea. Threats to Oman show that the White House is willing to threaten partners and friends of the US.

The US has been involved in Asia since the 19th century

The decision on South Korea could have long term ramifications. Along with the US using large numbers of munitions in the war on Iran, there is now a chance that US friends in both Europe and Asia may see the US as an increasingly erratic and uncertain friend. What are reports saying?

The Guardian in the UK noted that “South Korea’s president ⁠has renewed his push to regain independent control of the military from the US in the event of war and urged faster progress in acquiring nuclear-powered submarines after Donald Trump’s order to cut joint drills.”

The report added that “Lee Jae Myung said on Tuesday that Seoul should proceed without disruption with ‌the planned transfer, during his term, of ‌wartime operational control, or Opcon, of South Korean forces from the US – a goal he and the government have long held.”

“A strong alliance makes the foundation of security stronger, and strengthening our own capabilities increases our value and necessity as an ally,” Lee said. What this means is that South Korea may be thinking ahead. It’s not known yet how much the US decision could inform the next decade of US policy and how US allies and partners relate to each other and to Washington.

The current US security ties around the world often date from either the Cold War or earlier. It’s worth reviewing the hundreds of years of US policy in Asia. For more than 170 years, the US has viewed Asia and the Pacific as central to its long-term strategic interests. This goes back to the mid-1850s.

One of the earliest turning points came in 1853, when Commodore Matthew Perry sailed into Tokyo Bay with a squadron of US warships.

His mission was to persuade Japan to end centuries of isolation and open its ports to international trade. The resulting Treaty of Kanagawa marked the beginning of America’s sustained role in East Asia and helped lay the foundation for Japan’s modernization and its later emergence as a major regional power. The US was stepping in where European colonial powers had been before.

Japan, eager to learn from the US and others, began to modernize its military. Decades later it defeated the Russian navy at the battle of Tsushima. Japanese expansion in Korea and then China led to the decision by Japan to also attack the US in 1941.

The Japanese decision came after years of policy debate in Japan the discussed two different strategies: the Northern Expansion Doctrine (Hokushin-ron), favored by the Army to strike Soviet Siberia, and the Southern Expansion Doctrine (Nanshin-ron), favored by the Navy to head south toward Southeast Asia and Indonesia.

After the US role in Japan had long term ramifications, the US also engaged in other important efforts in Asia. During the Cold War, US strategy shifted from commerce to containment.

Following the Korean War, Washington sought to prevent the spread of communism across Asia. That policy culminated in the Korean and Vietnam wars, where hundreds of thousands of American troops fought. Consider the US Marines coming ashore in 1965 in Vietnam near Da Nang. Little did Washington know that the US would remain for almost a decade.

Another historic shift occurred in 1972, when US President Richard Nixon traveled to Beijing to meet China’s Chairman Mao Zedong. The visit altered the global balance of power.

This was the era of Détente and Trilateral diplomacy. By opening relations with China, the United States sought to exploit the split between Moscow and Beijing. Nixon’s diplomacy transformed China from an isolated revolutionary state into an increasingly important player in the international system.

China eventually pursued a policy called “Hide your strength, bide your time” (taoguang yanghui). Deng Xiaoping in the late 1980s and then other leaders championed this. Now China is more assertive. Who would have known that Nixon’s visit might lead to this change. Who would have known that Perry arriving in Japan would have long term ramifications.

During and after the Cold War, the United States expanded its network of alliances with Japan, South Korea, Australia, the Philippines, Thailand, and other partners while maintaining a large naval presence across the Pacific. Now the US is shifting naval assets to the Middle East due to the Iran war.

While successive US administrations have emphasized the Indo-Pacific as the primary theater for long-term American strategy, there is now a sense that US policy is focused on the Middle East.

Some see this as important for the US-Israel relationship. In fact, some argue that Israel today is one of America’s only allies. However, the long term affect may be that other US partners and allies begin to seek new relationships and hedge their bets about the future.

US policy in Asia has shown historically that certain policy moves have long term affects. Reducing the US role with South Korea could be one of those moments. 

This post was originally published on here. 

Scheduled joint military drills by the US and South Korea are expected to be cut by about half, various South Korean media reported on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Reports from South Korean broadcasters KBS, MBC, and the newspaper Kyunghyang follow US President Donald Trump‘s Sunday order to the Pentagon to “substantially reduce” US participation in the annual exercise and his mention of his “very good relationship” with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

The US Forces Korea declined to comment and directed queries to the Pentagon. The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment. South Korea’s defense ministry had no comment.

Trump pushing for Kim meeting

Trump is pushing aides to meet with Kim as soon as this fall, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday, citing US officials.

The US president has privately discussed setting up an in-person discussion with Kim during Trump’s next trip to Asia, which could happen in November for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation in Shenzhen, China, the Journal reported.

Reuters could not immediately verify the report.

This post was originally published on here. 

A former US Department of Justice attorney has said the Trump administration’s probes of US universities over accusations of antisemitism lacked evidence and had predetermined outcomes.

Investigations by a Trump administration task force into alleged antisemitism were “marked by extraordinary procedural irregularities, predetermined outcomes without factual or legal support, and disregard” for specific legal requirements and free speech rights, lawyers for Haley Van Erem, a former career attorney in the DOJ’s civil rights division, said in a complaint.

The whistleblower complaint sent to the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee was made public on Tuesday by Democratic US Representative Jamie Raskin.

The complaint said Van Erem and others suggested to also open probes into allegations of anti-Muslim bias on university campuses but those proposals “were not pursued by leadership.”

Republican US President Donald Trump has targeted universities with probes and federal funding suspension ​threats over pro-Palestinian protests ​against US ally Israel’s war with Hamas. The Trump administration alleges the protesters were antisemitic and supported extremism.

Complaints says some allegations ‘rooted in Islamophobic assumptions’

Protesters, including some Jewish groups, say opposing Israel’s “occupation” of Palestinian territories and its war in Gaza ​is not antisemitic and advocacy for Palestinian rights should ​not ⁠be equated with supporting extremism.

“While at the DOJ, Ms. Haley Van Erem did not work on university investigations. And for all matters, the department stands behind the integrity of these investigations,” a DOJ spokesperson said.

Senior DOJ and Department of Health and Human Services officials “departed from longstanding investigative practices designed to ensure due process, accuracy and legal compliance,” the complaint said.

“For at least some of the investigations, there was little to no factual predicate justifying opening them. When they (Van Erem and others) asked questions, raised legal concerns, or sought to document their objections, they were sometimes admonished and their concerns were often disregarded,” it added.

The complaint said some DOJ assignees felt the mandate to conduct interviews with some Middle East studies professors “seemed like an attempt to intimidate those professors and was rooted in Islamophobic assumptions that Middle East Studies professors would harbor antisemitic viewpoints rather than any actual evidence of complaints about antisemitism.”

The government has also targeted universities over diversity initiatives, transgender policies and climate programs. Rights advocates have raised due process, free speech and academic freedom concerns.

Columbia University agreed to pay more than $200 million to the US government to resolve federal probes and restore most of its federal ⁠funding in ​July last year. Brown University said it would pay $50 million to support local workforce development when it reached a settlement with the government in 2025.

Both institutions, who have said they oppose all forms of discrimination, had accepted certain government demands.

Harvard University is yet to make a deal. It has previously cast Trump administration probes as “retaliatory actions against Harvard for its refusal to ​surrender our independence and constitutional rights.”

This post was originally published on here. 

Iran carried out a drone attack on the office of the Kurdistan Regional Government’s prime minister’s office on August 17. The attack took place in the early hours and the autonomous KRG government quickly determined that Iran had used new jet-powered drones in the attack.

Masrour Barzani, the KRG prime minister, wrote on X/Twitter that “based on information and investigations conducted by the Counter-Terrorism Directorate in the Kurdistan Region, it has been confirmed that my personal office and the residence of the President of the Parastin Agency were subjected today to Iranian attacks using drones.”

He added “as I strongly condemn these reckless and unacceptable aggressions in the strongest terms, I affirm that they constitute a dangerous escalation and a direct threat to the security and stability of the region, and such attacks will not deter us from continuing to carry out our duties and protecting our citizens.”

The attack came a day after a report at Axios noted that KRG President Nechirvan Barzani had been tapped by the US as a possible backchannel in diplomacy with Iran. Nechirvan and Masrour are related, and both come from the Barzani family that runs the KDP party, the largest Kurdish party in Iraq.

The role of Nechirvan was later confirmed in a second report at Iran International. It is not clear if Iran carried out the drone attack in the context of sending a message to the Kurdistan Region or to the US. The US has apparently been giving the cold shoulder to new talks with Iran.

Iran may have used attack to showcase drone

The Kurdistan Region has been attacked more than 1,000 times by Iran and its proxies since the US and Israeli strikes on Iran in February. Nechirvan Barzani’s resident was targeted in March. The escalation in attacks, now targeting Masrour Barzani, illustrates how Iran is willing to continue to cross red lines.

Iran is seeking to inflame the region and spread the war to new fronts. Iraq is a front. Iranian-backed militias attacked Saudi Arabia from Iraq over the last month. Iraq is being pressured by the US to rein in and disarm the militias. However, other disarmament initiatives in Gaza and Lebanon, where Iranian-backed terrorist groups operate, have not been successful so far.

What did the KRG say about the drone attack. “The Kurdistan Counter-Terrorism Unit has confirmed that at 00:28 on Monday (17 August 2026), Iran launched two explosives-laden Hadid-110 drones across the border, targeting the prime minister’s private office (at KRG headquarters) and the home of the head of the KRG Security and Intelligence Agency (in Pirmam District, Erbil Governorate),” the KRG said.

The Hadid 110 is an Iranian drone that was unveiled in February 2025. It was then supplied to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp. It is supposed to be able to fly at a higher speed than piston-driven drones that use propellers. It is also supposed to have more “steal” than other Iranian drones. It is not clear how the KRG knew it was this type of drone.

If the use of this drone is confirmed it would show how Iran is innovating. Iran has been innovating in drone warfare since the 1980s. In 2020 Iran sent Shahed 136 drones to the Houthis in Yemen.

Up until that time this type of delta-wing design had not been widely used. After it was provided to the Houthis, Iran exported it to Russia and Moscow used it extensively against Ukraine. It’s possible the attack on Barzani’s office is a way for Iran to show the capabilities of the drone.

Iran has attacked the Kurdistan Region in the past to use its missiles and drones there as a kind of test bed. Iran knows that the KRG can’t respond. It also knows the KRG lacks defenses.

For instance, Iran used its Fateh-110 missiles in an attack on a Kurdish Iranian opposition group in Koya in the Kurdistan Region of northern Iraq in 2018.

Iran then exported drones to Iranian-backed militias in Iraq. These were used increasingly in 2022-2022 in attacks in Iraq and then in Syria. The goal of Iran was to showcase new drone capabilities. For instance, Iran attacked Saudi Arabia’s Abqaiq energy facility in 2019.

Attack part of new war effort by Tehran

Iran was raising the curtain between 2019 and 2023 on how it would fight the US in the case of a conflict. It spread drone threats all over the region. Kataib Hezollah, an Iranian-backed militia in Iraq, attacked Saudi Arabia and also attacked US forces in Jordan in January 2024. The Iraqi militias also targeted Israel.

It is clear that the Iranian threat to the KRG and Barzani is part of this growing war effort by Tehran. Reports indicate Iran is also considering wider and new actions in the Gulf or against Kuwait. As such, Iran is seeking to be innovative in its threats and attacks. It wants to drive the US from the Gulf and force the US to relocate forces further away.

Iran knows the US is supposed to leave Iraq on September 30. This may include redeploying from the Kurdistan Region as well. The US has wrapped up its military operations in Syria. Tehran sees wins on numerous fronts as the US presence changes.

It should be recalled the US also left Afghanistan, which is on the border with Iran. Although Iran’s foreign minister appeared to deny the attack on the Kurdistan Region, he also claimed it was a “false flag” attack. Iran wants to muddy the waters through this denial.

The goal is that Iran wants to say to the Kurdistan Region that it should be careful. Claiming a “false flag” is supposed to give Erbil a way to climb-down from any escalation.

Although most countries in the region, such as Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar, condemned the attack on the Kurdistan Region, most of these countries won’t do anything about it. The US, UK and EU also condemned the attack. However, it’s not clear if any country will bolster support for the Kurdistan Region. As such, Iran may have crossed a red line, but it wants to show it can redraw where the red lines exist in the Middle East. 

This post was originally published on here. 

Jürgen Stroop, the Nazi commander who led the killing of more than 50,000 Jews, was sitting in a cell in Warsaw awaiting his own execution. 

Before he met the gallows, Stroop described in unrepentant detail his ascent as a Nazi, his destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto and his daily prosecution of mass murder. He gave his account to Kazimierz Moczarski, the journalist, Polish resistance leader and veteran of the Warsaw Uprising who shared Stroop’s cell in Mokotów Prison for 255 days in 1949.

Though he is now remembered as a hero for fighting the Nazi occupation, Moczarski was villainized by Poland’s postwar Communist regime, which viewed his resistance group as a threat to their monopoly on power.

His unlikely imprisonment alongside a former Nazi officer he’d once tried to assassinate gave Moczarski the chance to document Stroop’s confessions in an influential book, “Conversations with an Executioner.”

This book, despite being censored for years by the Polish government, proved revelatory about the psychology and motivations behind Nazi ideology.

Moczarski died without ever seeing the book properly published

After decades of being translated into over 15 languages and adapted for the stage and screen, “Conversations with an Executioner” was published Tuesday for the first time in an uncensored English translation by Steerforth, an imprint of Pushkin Press. 

The book’s champions say it’s about time. 

“On the one hand, this book is a central historical source for this really important event in the modern history of the world,” Sean Casper Bye, the book’s English translator, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “And at the same time, it’s one that has continually struggled to get fully into publication.”

The book’s revelations about Stroop, the rise of Nazism and the psychology of genocide is reaching English readers after a long deferral. Moczarski made many unsuccessful attempts to publish “Conversations with an Executioner” after his release, but found little interest from publishers in Communist Poland. 

The book did not align with Communist ideological narratives about the Holocaust, which deemphasized tragedy in favor of total victory over the Nazis. And the government’s crackdown on Polish resistance members, which led to Moczarski’s imprisonment with Stroop, remained a taboo subject.

A serialized version of the book first appeared in the Polish magazine Odra from 1972 to 1974, and Moczarski died the following year at age 68. He never saw the first censored edition in 1977, which removed references to the reasons behind his own incarceration. Nor did he see the publication of “Conversations with an Executioner” as an uncensored book in 1992, after the fall of Communism, when it became a bestseller.  

Now, the book has “canonical status” in Poland, said Bye. It has been included for years on required school reading lists, shaping how generations of Polish people remember the Holocaust.

Moczarski’s account also faced an uphill battle to reach English readers. During the Cold War, censorship, disrupted communication and closed archives in Eastern Europe made it difficult to publish books from Poland in English, said Bye. That lowered the focus on Eastern European sources and languages for years in Holocaust scholarship across English-speaking countries.  

The new English translation was championed by Clare Bullock, the book’s editor in the United Kingdom, who has Polish Jewish heritage. She spent years pushing for it to appear in English at multiple publishing houses, said Bye. 

Moczarski and Stroop’s fates were intertwined long before they shared a cell. During World War II, Moczarski joined the Home Army, the main Polish resistance force, where he worked for the Office of Information and Propaganda. 

Identifying local Nazi officials and collaborators as targets, Moczarski and his associates assassinated Stroop’s predecessor, Franz Kutschera, nicknamed the “Butcher of Warsaw” for his mass executions of Polish civilians. They also made a failed attempt to kill Stroop, detailed by Moczarski in their cell. 

Though he was not Jewish, Moczarski supported and liaised with the Jewish Fighting Organization, known in Polish as ŻOB. The Home Army provided ŻOB leaders with weapons and technical instructions for the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the largest Jewish revolt against the Nazis. 

A year later, Moczarski fought in the Home Army’s citywide Warsaw Uprising. The Nazis also brutally crushed this revolt, which led to the deaths of over 160,000 Poles, including some 17,000 Polish Jews who took part in the fighting or were discovered in hiding. 

Instead of being rewarded after the war, Moczarski was arrested in 1945 as the Communists consolidated their power in the aftermath of Nazi rule. The new regime baselessly declared the Home Army a quasi-fascist organization, claiming they had collaborated with the Nazis rather than fighting against them. Moczarski spent 11 years in prison, where, he would later recount, he endured 49 methods of torture. 

His confinement with Stroop made for another form of torture, according to Bye, who said it was “symbolically equating him, a brave Polish patriot, with a Nazi war criminal.” 

The men had a third cellmate: Gustav Schielke, a German former policeman turned low-ranking SS officer who resented the police’s subordination to the Nazis, but did not resist them. In prison, these enemies lived under a code that required equality and confidentiality for survival. They slept on the floor together on three pallets, and Moczarski spent nights huddled between Stroop and Schielke to stay warm.

Stroop opened up to Moczarski about the events of the ghetto uprising

Moczarski made it his mission to understand the war criminals. 

“If I succeed, I have the chance, if only to a certain extent, to answer my own question,” he wrote. “What historical, psychological, sociological mechanism led some Germans to come together into a gang of mass murderers who governed the Reich and did their utmost to introduce their ‘Ordnung,’  their Order, in Europe and the world?”

He unraveled in Stroop an average German middle-class man of his time, with a low level of education, a drive to rise through military ranks, a reverence for order and obedience and a penchant for parroting Nazi ideology. 

As his defenses wore down, Stroop gave Moczarski a day-by-day account of his orders to crush the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943. Over nearly a month, his forces battled Jewish guerilla fighters and eventually burned down the ghetto block by block. He referred to the operations as “neutralizing” Jews or “cleansing” the Warsaw Ghetto of “subhumans.”

When Moczarski asked Stroop whether he pitied the women fighters whom he captured and killed, he said the commander responded, after a long and “worked up” silence, with Nazi clichés. 

“Finally, the general straightens up, smooths down the hair at his temples and replies, in a chanting rhythm,” Moczarski wrote. “‘Anyone wishing to be a true man in those days, meaning a strong one, had to act as I did. Gelobt sei was hart macht!’” The German phrase by Nietzsche, meaning “Praised be what hardens,” was taken from Nazi propaganda. 

In this portrait of Stroop, Bye saw a man who was motivated primarily by moving up the Nazi Party hierarchy. While Stroop repeated Nazi tropes and adapted his beliefs accordingly, upon becoming an SS officer, he broke with the Roman Catholic Church and declared himself “Gottgläubig,” a Nazi religious term, much of his testimony amounted to a boastful account of personal victories.

“This was a type of Nazi,” said Bye. “Not everybody was a completely 100% committed idealogue. There were lots of people who were just ambitious and unscrupulous, and that was part of the engine that kept the Nazi machine going.” 

The idea that the Holocaust could have been willingly committed by everyday, career-minded people, not just Nazi ideologues and sadists, has been echoed in other landmark works of scholarship and culture, from Hannah Arendt’s 1963 “Eichmann in Jerusalem” to the 2023 film “The Zone of Interest.” 

“Conversations with an Executioner” has been challenged as an authentic document, since Moczarski had no materials to take notes in the cell, yet recounted years of dialogue in vivid detail. Moczarski claimed that he honed an exceptional memory in prison and could write the book in his mind. After being released in 1956, he verified facts by obtaining Stroop’s reports from the Polish Commission for Researching Nazi War Crimes and information from the US Pentagon archives.

The limitations of the book as a firsthand account also make it a precious resource, said Bye. Stroop’s destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto was so effective that “Conversations with an Executioner” provided a rare surviving window into what occurred.

Bye said that voices like Moczarski’s are becoming ever more crucial as the last generation of survivors die out and the Holocaust fades from living memory. He hopes the new English translation will give readers a counterweight to current-day narratives about the Holocaust, emerging in politics and elsewhere, that mold the past to fit ideological messages. 

“There are so many people who have a vested interest in getting us to look at the Holocaust in a particular way, who want to instrumentalize the Holocaust as this hugely emotionally weighty event for their own purposes,” he said.

“One of the ways that we can keep in touch with the reality of the Holocaust is by going back to primary sources like this, going back to the people who did see it with their own eyes and who wrote about it themselves.”

This post was originally published on here. 

France will expel two Iranian diplomats in the coming days in response to an incident in July involving two staff members of the French embassy in Tehran.

“I had announced that this intolerable act would have consequences. And so it has. Two Iranian diplomats in France will be expelled in the very near future,” Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said in a post on X/Twitter. 

Le peuple iranien, un grand peuple, est la principale victime de cette période d’extrême tension au Moyen-Orient, pris en étau entre la répression sanglante des manifestations de janvier 2026 et les bombardements.

C’est précisément parce que la France se tient aux côtés du…

— Jean-Noël Barrot (@jnbarrot) August 18, 2026

Last month, the French ministry said the two French embassy staff had been detained and physically intimidated by Iranian security services in Tehran.

Barrot had summoned the Iranian charge d’affaires in Paris in protest following the incident on July 19.

Barrot’s comments came one day after the Iranian ministry said two French embassy employees, who were involved in July in a diplomatic dispute in Tehran, would not be allowed to return to Iran.

French staff violated Vienna Convention, Baghaei says

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said the two French staff had violated the Vienna Convention, which defines the rules ​and privileges of diplomatic missions, by engaging in activities ​supporting Iranian civil society.

French Foreign Ministry spokesperson Pascal Confavreux said in a statement that “the Iranian authorities have chosen to make completely false accusations against our agents and to fabricate a case of interference to justify their actions.”

This post was originally published on here. 

AIPAC and its allies have poured millions of dollars into a California special election, transforming a race between two Democrats into a battleground over the pro-Israel group’s place in Democratic politics.

The spending in the Bay Area’s 14th congressional district is aimed at boosting Melissa Hernandez, a moderate Democrat and president of the Bay Area Rapid Transit Board, over Aisha Wahab, a progressive state senator who supports ending US military aid to Israel.

Wahab replied “yes” during an April debate when asked whether Israel’s war against Hamas constituted a genocide. In contrast, Hernandez declined to give a yes-or-no answer, instead saying that Israel had a right to defend itself following the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks, but that the “destruction into Gaza has gone too far.”

Wahab remains the favorite heading into Tuesday’s election to replace former Rep. Eric Swalwell, a reliable supporter of Israel in Congress who resigned in April amid sexual misconduct allegations that he has denied. Wahab finished ahead of Hernandez in the election’s June 16 special primary, receiving 42.8% of the vote compared to Hernandez’s 16.8%.

The United Democracy Project, AIPAC’s main super PAC, has poured close to $2.5 million into boosting Hernandez and attacking Wahab this election cycle, while Bold America, another group that has received funding from the United Democracy Project, has spent roughly $1.8 million, according to The Hill.

Wahab opposes US wars, appeared on Hasan Piker’s livestream

When asked about the AIPAC spending in the race by the Pleasanton Weekly, Hernandez replied, “I have no say over independent expenditures. That is the law, and I see them when you do.” She added: “I have thousands of donors and not one of them sets my agenda.”

But while the Bay Area race has become one of the the latest focuses of the pro-Israel lobby, following a costly defeat by Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary, Israel has hardly been a defining issue in the contest, and Wahab has not neatly fit the mold of other progressive candidates the group has targeted this election cycle.

Wahab, who is the child of Afghan refugees, has centered her campaign on affordability issues and civil rights. While her campaign website calls for “No More Wars!” it does not specifically reference the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Citing the civilian toll in US military operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya, her site reads, “We cannot bomb our way to lasting peace.”

Hernandez, who previously served as the mayor of Dublin, California, has focused her campaign on lowering costs and her commitments to fighting crime and increasing public safety. 

Wahab, 39, has drawn endorsements from a host of labor unions, the California Democratic Party and Our Revolution, the group formed by Sen. Bernie Sanders to advance the progressive movement. Hernandez, 51, meanwhile, has received endorsements from several police and fire unions, as well as Democratic Jewish Reps. Lois Frankel of Florida and Brad Schneider of Illinois.

During a Thursday appearance on the livestream of Hasan Piker, who has faced accusations of antisemitism, Wahab said that she would have voted for the Stop the Bombs Act and supported ending all US aid to Israel, though she stipulated that “humanitarian aid is important to me too.”

During the livestream, Wahab also touted a September 2025 resolution she co-authored with Jewish state Senator Scott Wiener, which called for the “end to the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza and the immediate release of all hostages.” The resolution was also signed by members of the California Legislative Jewish Caucus.

J Street Action Fund contributing to Wahab’s election campaign

In 2021, Wahab also collaborated with local Jewish leaders on a fundraiser for Afghan refugee resettlement in the aftermath of the US pullout from the country.

“I work well with the Jewish community. I’m very proud to support them. They’re my constituents,” Wahab said on the livestream. 

“As an Afghan, you know, I really deeply want to ensure that all people feel welcomed and safe and secure in this nation. And we know that there’s a rise in antisemitism. We know all of that,” Wahab continued. “But that doesn’t mean you can’t criticize a foreign nation. You can’t criticize their leadership.”

Wahab attributed the volume of AIPAC spending in the race to “pure racism and prejudice,” saying that her “Jewish Senate colleagues are literally confused as to why they are spending this much money against me.”

As Wahab pushes back on the attack ads, she has also garnered $200,000 in support from American Priorities, a pro-Palestinian PAC that formed as a counterweight to AIPAC. 

The liberal pro-Israel lobby J Street Action Fund also announced Thursday that it was spending $100,000 to support Wahab. 

Tali deGroot, the group’s vice president of political and digital strategy, said in a statement that AIPAC’s spending against her marked another “cynical attempt” to “defeat a candidate who won’t rubber-stamp their agenda.”

“AIPAC’s super PAC has failed time and again this cycle, and we expect this latest attempt to take Republican billionaire dollars and buy a Democratic primary to fail as well,” said deGroot.

“Voters in the 14th deserve better, and they deserve a Member of Congress who will bring the kind of clear-eyed, nuanced and compassionate leadership that Dr. Wahab has shown throughout her career.”

This post was originally published on here. 

Ukraine’s recently ousted defense minister Mykhailo Fedorov called for wartime elections in a bombshell address on Tuesday evening, stating that the wartime nation faced a crisis of governance, in the biggest internal challenge to President Volodymyr Zelensky since 2022.

Fedorov’s call, delivered in a video address posted on Youtube, is the first such demand by a major Ukrainian political figure since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. The law in Ukraine prohibits the holding of elections during wartime.

“Democracy cannot be held hostage by Russia,” Fedorov said. “We must find a legal, safe and realistic mechanism that will allow Ukraine to renew its full democratic process even in the conditions of a long war.”

The 35-year-old Fedorov was a longtime ally of Zelensky’s until his unexpected firing from the defense ministry in July, just six months after he had been appointed, vowing sweeping reforms.

Shortly after his dismissal, the tech-savvy Fedorov publicly tore into the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, Oleksandr Syrskyi, exposing a bitter rift between the men and their different visions for the war.

Thousands of Ukrainians took to the streets to demand the sacking of Syrskyi, an old-guard military commander blamed by his critics for heavy troop losses at the front line, and Fedorov’s reinstatement.

Protests in support of Fedorov have continued for the past month, losing some of their early momentum but still regularly drawing a couple thousand attendees in Kyiv.

While Fedorov did not say in his address that he would compete in any election, a recent poll indicated the ex-minister would comfortably beat Zelensky in a runoff vote, where the top two presidential candidates go head-to-head.

Zelensky’s office didn’t immediately respond to Fedorov’s statement

Fedorov’s statement came just hours after Zelensky confirmed he had asked parliament to confirm new Defence Minister Yevhenii Khmara in office on Wednesday.

In what appeared to be an open challenge to Zelensky, Fedorov said that Ukraine faced a “systemic crisis of governance.”

“The old system lives by its own rules too often. It protects itself. It is scared of change,” he said.

Without naming names, Fedorov hit out at official corruption, which he said hurt Ukraine’s war effort. The ex-minister recently said he believed that his reform of the defense ministry’s procurement processes, responsible for purchasing billions of dollars of equipment, contributed to his sacking.

Zelensky’s office had no immediate comment on Federov’s statement.

The youngest minister in Ukraine’s history when he was appointed aged 28 as Ukraine’s digitalization chief, Fedorov spent six years in that post. He was the last remaining member of Zelensky’s first cabinet in 2019.

His role running the Ministry of Digital Transformation saw him become an early adopter of drone warfare, which has turned combat in Ukraine on its head since 2022.

However, his nationwide profile grew greatly after his appointment to run the vast Defense Ministry in January, immediately vowing a data-driven overhaul. Unlike his predecessors, Fedorov publicly laid out a strategy to defeat Russia through attrition and technological superiority.

“Our people have long been ready for a different country,” Fedorov said in his address. “Now, our state must become worthy of its people.”

This post was originally published on here. 

The UAE’s defense ministry announced that its air defense systems detected a missile threat on Tuesday, in a post on X/Twitter.

The ministry said, “If any sounds are heard, they are the result of air defense interceptions.”

Reuters confirmed via the defense ministry that two ballistic missiles were launched from Iran, and that one fell inside and another outside of territorial waters. 

Both missiles were reportedly targetting marine traffic. 

The UAE’s interior ministry later sent a phone alert, saying that the situation was currently safe and to resume normal activities.

رصدت منظومات الدفاع الجوي تهديد صاروخي على الدولة، يرجى متابعة التحذيرات والمستجدات من المصادر الرسمية.

وتوضح وزارة الدفاع أنه في حال سماع أي أصوات، فإنها ناتجة عن عمليات تصدي واعتراض منظومات الدفاع الجوي.

وتؤكد الوزارة أنها على أهبة الاستعداد والجاهزية للتعامل مع أي تهديد، بما… pic.twitter.com/a15FEqUevH

— وزارة الدفاع |MOD UAE (@modgovae) August 18, 2026

Iran denies launching missiles, dubs attack ‘false flag’

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei denied accusations that Iran had launched a missile strike on the UAE in a statement early Wednesday morning.

The statement called on regional countries to refrain from making “baseless accusations” against Iran, citing what it described as the “ongoing evils of the US and the Zionist regime against regional peace and security,” including what Tehran claimed were “numerous” false-flag attacks.

MoU expires, Trump declares Hormuz ‘US territory’

This comes amid tensions with Iran as the Memorandum of Understanding expired, with US President Donald Trump laying claim to the Strait of Hormuz with a declaration marking it as “US territory.”

Later on Tuesday, Trump said that there are “no talks or conversations going on, or scheduled, with the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

“The Naval Blockade remains in full force and effect. The Hormuz Strait is open and operating. All water mines have been removed or detonated,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post.

This post was originally published on here. 

The United States expects “responsible action” by the Israeli government over recent attacks by West Bank settlers in the Palestinian village of Kusra, US Ambassador Mike Huckabee said on Tuesday in an interview with N12 News, referring to the attacks as “terrorism.”

“We feel like it’s very important that people who carry out these acts of crime, and I’ll use the word, terror. I’ve been rebuked by people who said, ‘Well, that’s not terrorism,'” said Huckabee, noting that those in the Israeli government who disagree with his use of the term can “say whatever they want.”

“Under the US definition of terrorism, when acts are conducted that cause people to change their behavior, and put them in fear for their lives… that’s terror,” he said.

Huckabee noted that those involved in the attacks are a “very small minority,” saying that he doesn’t consider them settlers.

“I don’t call them settlers, because I think many of them don’t even live in Judea and Samaria,” he said. “They live elsewhere, and they come in and create trouble. But they’re not settlers; they’re unsettlers.”

He added that the attackers have caused damage to the image of both the State of Israel and the Jewish people despite them claiming to represent one or the other.

“What I would love to tell them is: if you want to help the Jewish cause, if you want to help the Israeli cause, then don’t do something that none of us, even your best friends, can do anything other than look at, point at, and condemn,” Huckabee said. “This is an act of crime; it’s an act of terror. Stop it.”

Iran must make a deal or face military action, won’t keep enriched uranium

In response to reports that Iran is seeing to escalate the war, Huckabee said that he “hope[s] not,” and that “we don’t need another [war].”

“Let’s hope that somewhere along the way, that the Iranian regime can wake up to the fact that they’re not gonna get a nuclear weapon, and they can either determine they won’t have it by result of diplomacy, or the result of activity that they really don’t benefit from.”

“They’re weakened, they’re weakened dramatically, economically, militarily, because of the 12-Day War last year, because of Epic Fury this year.”

Huckabee called Iran’s public refusal to negotiate an extension of the ceasefire “typical” for the country, and that the regime merely seeks to portray itself as strong despite the negative situation Iran finds itself in.

Moreover, Huckabee warned that should Iran refuse a deal, the US could take military action again.

Huckabee also reiterated the US’ position on Iran’s nuclear program, declaring that “they will not have” enriched uranium.

Huckabee: Trump ‘sensitive’ on Israeli elections, doesn’t want to ‘tip the scale’

The conversation then turned to Israel’s upcoming elections in October, with the ambassador saying that US President Donald Trump likely prefers to stay out of the issue.

“I think he’s sensitive,” said Huckabee. “He doesn’t want to engage.”

Huckabee added that he believes Trump knows an endorsement of any particular Israeli party or candidate can both “help” or “hurt” the process, with the US president preferring not to “tip the scale unfairly.”

He noted that if Trump wished to make an endorsement at any point, he probably would.

“He’s a man that when he wants ot say something, he does,” Huckabee said.

Huckabee noted that, “as an ambassador,” he himself cannot be involved in Israel’s election process.

“It’s not a matter of even choice,” he said. “It’s a matter of obligation.”

Israel not expected to withdraw from Gaza until Hamas disarms, Huckabee says

Regarding Gaza, Huckabee emphasized Israel’s commitment to Trump’s 20-point agreement, saying it has “never backed away” from the peace deal.

He further declared continued US support for Israel’s right to defend itself in Gaza, saying that the country is “not expected to stand back and take it in the teeth.”

“What the president has made clear is that Hamas must disarm, demilitarize, and they have no future in the governing of Gaza,” he said.

Huckabee further noted that Israel is not expected to withdraw until Hamas fulfills its obligations under the agreement.

This post was originally published on here. 

The summer break is coming to an end, and as kids across Israel are prepping to go back to school, there is still one activity that they can do before the academic year starts.

Peter Pan is now being performed at the Tel Aviv Performing Arts Center throughout the rest of the month. I watched the production’s early afternoon show with two friends last Sunday; it featured impressive sets and costumes, and a cast of actors who dazzled on stage with their physicality and choreography.

The audience was mostly parents and children, who responded enthusiastically to the performances and the immersion into Neverland.

This particular adaptation of J. M. Barrie’s classic story initially premiered in 1988, with the titular character having been played by Hanoch Rosen, who now takes the director’s chair in this year’s production.

He co-wrote the show with Uri Paster, who initially directed the 1988 production and also wrote the lyrics, while Ilan Gilboa composed the music, resulting in all original songs being in Hebrew.

Who’s who in Tel Aviv Performing Arts Center’s Peter Pan?

Lee Biran plays the Peter Pan of 2026, while Sasson Gabbay plays Captain Hook, reprising his role from the 1980s production. Other actors include Meshi Kleinstein as Wendy, Linoy Cohen as Tiger Lily, and Ofir Weil as Smee.

Biran is charismatic as the lead, bringing the energy throughout the show. Kleinstein will be remembered most for her angelic voice, most notably in the first song performed in the show, “He Must Come.” Weil’s character, Smee, shines as Hook’s right-hand man, as his mannerisms drew much laughter from the crowd. Cohen, as Tiger Lily, shines in her dancing and stage physicality. Gabbay has amazing stage presence as the musical’s villain, stealing every scene he’s in.

And, of course, this production only further proves the iconic phrase: “There are no small parts, there are only small actors,” as the entire ensemble is given much to do throughout, playing multiple characters, performing numerous choreographed dances, and portraying evil pirates in Hook’s crew or one of the tribespeople under Tiger Lily.

What also caught my eye were the costumes and sets, as well as how the production managed to pull off the crocodile that torments Hook. 

This production also uses unique flight technology brought from abroad to Israel, taking Biran’s and Kleinstein’s performances to new heights.

Even if you don’t speak Hebrew, your familiarity with the story, the songs, and the actors’ performances is enough to keep you entertained throughout its runtime. You can buy tickets until August 28 here. 

The writer is a studio producer for The Jerusalem Post.

This post was originally published on here. 

Israeli grandmaster Yahli Sokolovsky went unbeaten in Montenegro, scoring seven points from nine rounds and winning his final three games to claim the European title.

Israeli chess celebrated a major achievement as grandmaster Yahli Sokolovsky, a 2006-born member of the Kiryat Ono Chess Club, was crowned the 2026 European Under-20 champion.

Sokolovsky finished atop the standings with seven points from nine possible, recording five wins and four draws without suffering a single defeat throughout the tournament.

The championship was held from Aug. 6-15 in Cetinje, Montenegro, and was organized by the European Chess Union and the Montenegro Chess Federation. The Swiss-system competition featured nine rounds of classical chess.

Sokolovsky entered the championship as the top seed, with an international rating of 2541. While he was considered one of the leading contenders for the title, the road to the championship was challenging, with the Israeli facing grandmasters, international masters and FIDE masters among Europe’s leading young players.

Display of impressive consistency claims title

After opening the tournament with a victory, Sokolovsky continued to display impressive consistency. The decisive stretch came in the final three rounds. In the seventh round, he defeated Anton Zlatkov of North Macedonia. He then beat Armenian grandmaster Emin Ohanyan, who was ranked second in the tournament, with the black pieces in the eighth round.

Sokolovsky entered the ninth and final round knowing that a victory would put him in an excellent position to claim the title. He delivered, defeating Armenian international master Vah Sukiasyan to secure his seventh point, move to the top of the standings, and clinch the European Under-20 championship.

Sokolovsky’s performance throughout the nine rounds translated into a performance rating of 2584, well above the 2541 rating with which he entered the competition.

Israeli Chess Federation CEO Gil Boruchovsky praised Sokolovsky’s achievement, saying, “Yahli is one of the hottest names in the Israeli Chess Federation and will be one to watch in the coming years. This impressive victory demonstrates his tremendous talent and his place among the leading players of the next generation of Israeli chess.” Israeli Chess Federation chairman Dr. Zvika Barkai added, “This is an outstanding achievement and a direct continuation of the successes of Israeli chess on the international stage.”

European title marks significant career milestone

The European title marks another significant milestone in Sokolovsky’s developing career and further establishes him among the leading young chess players in Europe. Beyond the individual accomplishment, his victory represents another proud moment for Israeli chess and another indication of the country’s standing on the international stage.

Arik Kaplan, president and CEO of the Ayelet Association, the umbrella organization for Israel’s non-Olympic sports, called Sokolovsky’s victory “a tremendous and moving achievement for Israeli chess, praising the young grandmaster for displaying “exceptional talent, consistency, determination and the composure of a champion, especially in the decisive moments.”

“Yahli is a great source of pride for all of us and an example for the young generation of chess players in Israel,” Kaplan added. “We congratulate him on his impressive European title and are confident that many more international achievements await him.”

This post was originally published on here. 

Ofra Yitzhaki – an internationally acclaimed Israeli pianist, artistic director of the Upper Galilee Chamber Music Festival at Kfar Blum, and a highly regarded faculty member at the Tel Aviv Academy of Music – has long established herself on world stages as a prominent interpreter of modern and avant-garde music.

Above all, the Juilliard graduate has emerged as one of today’s leading champions of Israeli art music.

Over the span of just 18 months, Yitzhaki released three distinct albums, each focusing on a monumental figure in Israeli composition.

Josef Tal and Mordecai Seter, she noted with enthusiasm, are two of the greatest composers Israel has ever produced, and they stand firmly on the global stage.

The third album features the complete piano works of Josef Bardanashvili, widely regarded as one of Israel’s greatest living composers.

Although released in rapid succession, the overarching project took years the develop.

“The initial spark occurred about eight years ago, when I was invited by the Berlin Orchestra to perform Tal’s Piano Concerto No. 1 (1944),” Yitzhaki recalled.

“It gripped me so intensely that I asked myself: How is it possible that I don’t know his piano music? It’s simply outstanding.”

Shortly after, a German record label invited her to record a comprehensive selection of Tal’s piano works – an invitation she eagerly accepted.

Part I: Josef Tal – Uncompromising innovation

Tal belongs to the founding generation of Israel’s classical music. In 1934, at the age of 23, he fled Nazi Germany, leaving his parents behind. In his memoir, he recalled them sitting near the railway station like two statues, waving goodbye as his train departed. His father was later murdered in Auschwitz.

Settling in British Mandate Palestine, Tal established himself as a fierce artistic pioneer. Yet for decades, much of his piano music remained tucked away in archives or preserved only in sporadic historical recordings.

Yitzhaki’s album, Josef Tal: Piano Works 1936-2000, released on the premier German label NEOS, finally brings this repertoire to a global audience under the guidance of a dedicated interpreter.

“Knowing where our local classical scene stands regarding native repertoire, it didn’t surprise me culturally,” Yitzhaki admitted regarding the German release.

In Germany, Tal remains deeply revered, making the recording process feel, as she put it, “like bringing his piano music back to where it truly belonged.”

Tal’s legacy raises compelling questions about identity. Arriving in Mandate Palestine in the 1930s, he faced a web of aesthetic expectations to write music with explicit Jewish or Israeli folk themes.

Coming from an assimilated German-Jewish background, Tal resisted these demands, viewing them as an artificial imposition on his mature compositional technique.

While some scholars view his refusal to incorporate “Mediterraneanism” (Middle Eastern modes and traditional motifs) as a political statement or an expression of Eurocentric cultural commitment, Yitzhaki saw it more straightforwardly: “It is only natural to stay true to who you are.”

Tal did not ignore his surroundings entirely. His First Symphony references “By the Rivers of Babylon,” his Piano Sonata references Yehuda Sharett’s “Rachel,” and he frequently drew on extra-musical themes linked to his Jewish-Israeli identity.

However, he refused to alter his core compositional language – a balance musicologist Prof. Jehoash Hirshberg famously termed “national individualism.”

Tal’s achievements extend far beyond local influences. In 1961, he established the first electronic music studio in Israel, opening new horizons parallel to visionaries like Karlheinz Stockhausen.

His ability to integrate the acoustic idiom of the piano with emerging electronic media remains a landmark. He was also among the first to introduce avant-garde serialism, including his own treatment of Arnold Schoenberg’s 12-tone technique, to Israeli art music.

Moreover, while his earlier works are exceptional, original examples of modernism, in his later works Tal cultivated a unique musical idiom that challenges professional and non-professional musicians alike.

“He possessed immense creative freedom and intellectual curiosity,” explained Yitzhaki. “Even in his late 90s, he remained curious about new compositional techniques. That openness laid the groundwork for later modern and avant-garde Israeli composers.”

Part II: Mordecai Seter – Transcendental introspection

Yitzhaki’s commitment to capturing overlooked repertoire continued with Mordecai Seter: Late Works, released on the Israel Music Institute (IMI) label.

The project originated in 2024, when she curated a concert titled Still Seter: Intimate Sounds to mark 30 years since the composer’s death.

Performing Seter’s early pieces alongside his late, rarely heard compositions, Yitzhaki was struck by how deeply listeners connected to those final, austere pieces.

“Musicians, students, and general listeners were spellbound by his late works,” she said. “I felt compelled to capture this unique universe on record.”

Describing her experience performing this repertoire, Yitzhaki spoke of being absorbed into Seter’s meditative mysticism – a deeply philosophical worldview translated into sound that sits stylistically between the sparse stillness of Morton Feldman and the coloristic intensity of Olivier Messiaen.

Part III: Josef Bardanashvili – A living dialogue

Completing this trilogy is the complete piano works of Josef Bardanashvili, released on the German label TYXArt. Interpreting a living composer presented a stark contrast to recording Tal or Seter.

“With historical composers, it’s just me and my artistic choices,” Yitzhaki explained. “Here, the composer is in the booth, saying, ‘Try that again,’ or ‘I envisioned this differently.’ It becomes a true partnership.”

In an interview regarding this project, Bardanashvili echoed this sentiment: “Ofra takes my ideas and makes them entirely her own.”

The album highlights Bardanashvili’s striking versatility. It ranges from his early First Piano Sonata (1974), written when he was deeply influenced by Arnold Schoenberg, to his Second Piano Sonata (1990), which draws on Neo-Baroque textures inspired by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach.

The collection also features works written for theater and film – offering a window into his communicative, semi-popular style – alongside his popular Piano Fantasy, which seamlessly weaves synagogue cantillations, Georgian folk songs, and Soviet avant-garde techniques.

Though Bardanashvili draws heavily on liturgical themes, he noted that his settings of Georgian-Jewish melodies reflect a rich tapestry of traditions, spanning Sephardi, Russian Ashkenazi, and Lithuanian Ashkenazi roots brought together in Georgia.

When asked about his primary influences, he pointed to Soviet giants Dmitri Shostakovich, Alfred Schnittke, and Giya Kancheli.

Reflecting on her trilogy, Yitzhaki resisted labeling her project as an explicit political statement.

“My primary drive is simply to record music I believe in deeply, on an artistic level,” she said. “It just so happens that this superb music is Israeli. I feel a need to bridge the songs I grew up listening to with the classical repertoire I play on stage.”

As Bardanashvili aptly put it, Yitzhaki’s dedication is “a gift to everyone – to the audience, to the history of music, and especially to composers.”

This post was originally published on here. 

A 17-year-old Israeli student had his gold medal win disqualified at the 2026 International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) in Uzbekistan, after wearing the Israeli flag during the awards ceremony.

Yotam Budnik, from Rehovot, raised the flag during the live-broadcast TV ceremony, despite knowing that Israeli symbols were not allowed.

Since October 7, IOI hosts have forbidden Israeli contestants from competing with national symbols. As a result, the education minister advised against sending a team. This year, however, it was agreed the students would go as independent contestants, without representing Israel specifically.

Team leader Ron Ryvchin told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday that despite the rules, “Yotam basically felt that this entire situation is quite absurd because the decision to forbid us from showing the flag was accepted without us being able to defend ourselves.

“Even in 2024, we competed online, and then they erased the name of Israel from the ceremonies. They even erased the name of Israel from the map, and they did not mention our online contestants at all.

“So he felt, year after year, Israeli students are erased from their national identity or even erased completely. So he decided that as an act of protest, he wouldn’t follow this rule. He showed the flag on the stage.”

Afterward, the international committee disqualified him because he did not follow the rule.

Yotam refused to hand over medal until teammates received theirs

The president of the IOI went to Yotam to take his medal, but he “refused to hand it over” until his friends received their medals.

“He was really, really, really brave. It was amazing to see a 17-year-old boy talking so well to them. He told them this rule is nonsense and that they just discriminate against people based on their country. And that he thinks that in an organization that should be focused on informatics and on bringing people together from various nations, fostering friendships, there is no place for these politics.”

According to Ryvchin, the organizers told Yotam that he still must follow the rules.

“They said that he made the first mistake when he showed the flag, and now he’s making the second one, that it’s better for him to return [the medal].”

They then removed him from the international IOI website, and he no longer appears in the ranking.

“They changed his score to zero. So, like officially, he’s not an IOI gold medalist.

“But, of course, we all think he earned his medal by himself. He worked very hard; he’s super talented. I think he deserves this medal.”

Ryvchin: ‘Really great’ competition despite incident, Israelis win four medals

Aside from this incident, Ryvchin said the competition “was really great,” and three Israeli students won gold, and one bronze.

“It was the first IOI for everyone. So it really is very impressive because it’s very difficult in the first competition under pressure to perform so well.”

He told the Post he hopes the IOI will realize that the best way to really foster friendship and encourage young students everywhere to study informatics “is to leave the politics out because it’s kind of absurd.”

Mostly, he wanted to congratulate the “amazing Israeli students” again, who didn’t even know in advance they would participate, but trained really hard anyway.

“I’m really proud of them,” he said.

This post was originally published on here. 

Iran’s ambassador to Kuwait met four Iranian nationals who have been detained in Kuwait for three months, state media quoted Iran’s embassy in Kuwait as saying on Tuesday, a few days after an Iranian military official accused Kuwait of withholding information about their fate.

This is a developing story.

This post was originally published on here.