Saturday, August 29, 2026

08/29 Links: How Ireland succumbed to ‘radical chic’; Maher blasts academics for trashing Western civilization – and Israel; Tucker Carlson Keeps Turning Up in Foreign Agents' Paperwork

From Ian:

How Ireland succumbed to ‘radical chic’
his growing alignment of pro-Palestinian activism with Irish republican sentiment does not just affect foreign policy; it damages what the writer and strategist Eoghan Harris calls ‘the decent pluralism of Middle Ireland’. It is helping to revive political beliefs that left thousands dead and were thought to have been laid to rest.

While Sinn Fein is not benefiting electorally from this phenomenon as much as it might wish, its core messages and slogans are increasingly normalised. And as those with real memories of the violence grow older, a younger generation is being encouraged to sentimentalise the past. Everyone is entitled to remember their dead; the danger, though, is that Irish republicans are simultaneously seeking to erase everyone else’s dead from the narrative, whether victims of 7 October or of IRA terror.

In this febrile environment, there are growing demands for an Irish unity poll, despite the destabilising effect this would have in Northern Ireland. Sinn Fein recently pressed the new Northern Ireland Secretary, Chris Bryant, for an ‘orderly transition into a unity referendum and constitutional change’, presenting it as if it were a done deal. The implication was that only the final, finer points of detail remained to be sketched out. Some commentators now even suggest that Sinn Fein should boycott the devolved assembly unless the UK agrees to a border poll. Bryant’s response – ‘I am not starting the poll now, or this week, or this month, or, I will suggest, this year’ – will only encourage Sinn Fein to push the matter further.

As for the other political parties in Ireland, far from standing firm against this radical drift, many are flirting with these new forces to help secure votes. Politicians involved with Fine Gael and Fianna Fail, parties which had historically built hard constitutional bulwarks against republican violence, have also been guilty of peddling anti-Israel rhetoric. It has pushed the centre of gravity further to the left and accelerated the very radicalism these parties once sought to contain. What could possibly go wrong? Everything, if the allegations facing that young woman at the border are any guide.
Simon Sebag Montefiore: How my ancestor dealt with anti-Semitism
I was once guilty of contra-establishmentarianism myself when I told an interviewer my Jewish family who escaped from Russia in 1903 were peasants with straw in their hair. When it was out, my mother phoned. ‘My father,’ she said passionately, ‘was descended from ten generations of scholars.’ ‘But they were poor!’ I insisted. ‘They escaped in a haycart!’ ‘There… was…. no… straw!’ she said. ‘Please correct this!’ I told my next interviewer that even in the shtetls of Lithuania, we were the Establishment.

My mother was always concerned by my over-ambitious projects: ‘Writing Jerusalem is far too stressful for you! You need nourishing food and luxuriant sleep.’ ‘What do you suggest?’ I said. ‘GIVE THE MONEY BACK!’ she said. In her view, my frailties qualified me only for the life of a hothouse valetudinarian. She wouldn’t have approved of my new book, The Cauldron. ‘Montefiore is walking on hot coals,’ confirmed the Times reviewer, ‘in this panoramic history of the Middle East.’ Sadly my mother is dead, but she was right about everything: from now on I am taking her advice.

My ancestor Moses Montefiore, a British magnate, knew everyone from sultans to tsars in the Victorian era. In the 1820s, he befriended Muhammad Ali, Turco-Albanian ruler of Egypt. When Mohammed Ali’s son Said visited London, he stayed with Moses, thanking him with a monumental silver decoration (now in the V&A). Said later built the Suez Canal. Those were interesting times when Islamic rulers could send their sons to stay with Jewish friends. Nowadays, I admire how Moses coped with anti-Semitism. Attending a royal dinner, a bigot denounced him: ‘I just visited Japan which I loved because Japan has no Jews and no pigs!’ ‘Then you and I should go to Japan together,’ answered Montefiore. ‘So they have one of each.’
Why is Hollywood campaigning to free convicted murderer Marwan Barghouti?
With millions facing hunger and displacement in Sudan, dissidents enduring prison and torture in Iran, and thousands of political prisoners languishing in Myanmar’s jails, the world is hardly suffering from a shortage of worthy humanitarian causes.

Yet some of the biggest names in the movie business have decided that what the world really needs is the release of Marwan Barghouti, a Palestinian terrorist and convicted murderer serving five life sentences in an Israeli prison.

More than 20 actors associated with Marvel films have joined the “Free Marwan” campaign demanding his release, including Benedict Cumberbatch, Mark Ruffalo, Don Cheadle, and Cate Blanchett.

After years of pretending to save the world while wearing capes, armor, and assorted forms of spandex, these Marvel veterans have settled on a new real-life mission: securing the freedom of a man convicted of directing terrorist attacks that killed innocent people.

The celebrities say they are concerned about Barghouti’s imprisonment and alleged mistreatment, while the campaign they have joined portrays his trial as illegitimate and politically motivated.

Barghouti convicted of five murders
The trouble is that Barghouti is not in prison because Israel objected to his politics.

In 2004, the Tel Aviv District Court convicted him of five murders stemming from three terrorist attacks, as well as attempted murder and membership in a terrorist organization. He was sentenced to five consecutive life terms plus 40 years.

The attempted-murder conviction involved a failed car-bomb attack near Jerusalem’s Malha Mall.

Nor was Barghouti some peripheral political figure who happened to get swept up in the violence of the Second Intifada.

He was one of Fatah’s most powerful leaders in Judea and Samaria, headed its Tanzim terror group, and, the court found, exercised authority over the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, which carried out suicide bombings and shooting attacks.

The judges ruled that Barghouti issued orders to kill through the Brigades and found that he supplied terrorist field units with money and weapons through close associates.

The consequences were brutal. A January 2002 shooting near Givat Ze’ev, the judges concluded, was carried out on Barghouti’s instructions. The victim, Yoela Chen, a mother of two, had stopped at a gas station while on her way to a family wedding. Gunmen opened fire on their car, killing Chen and wounding her aunt.

Barghouti was also convicted for his role in the June 2001 murder of Father Georgios Tsibouktzakis, a Greek Orthodox monk from St. George’s Monastery in Wadi Kelt, who was shot while driving on the Jerusalem-Ma’aleh Adumim road.

And Barghouti also authorized the March 2002 terrorist attack at Tel Aviv’s Seafood Market restaurant, where the gunman opened fire on diners. Yosef Habi, 52, of Herzliya, and Eli Dahan, 53, of Lod, were killed, as was Salim Barakat, a 33-year-old Druze police officer from Yarka who confronted the attacker. Thirty-five others were wounded.

Hollywood has long specialized in suspending disbelief. But asking us to suspend it about Barghouti’s five murder convictions may be its most ambitious production yet.

The “Free Marwan” campaign portrays Barghouti as a symbol of Palestinian unity, and some supporters have gone so far as to compare him to Nelson Mandela.


Finland quietly extends defense ties with Israel, sparking backlash from left
Finland and Israel have quietly extended their bilateral defense agreement for a decade, according to local media.

The deal, signed without a public announcement from the Nordic nation’s defense ministry, triggered fierce backlash from the country’s left-wing opposition.

Under the pact, was first signed in 2013 and again 2019, each time for five years, the two countries cooperate in the research, development and procurement of military products.

Left-wing opposition called the deal a “historic shame.”

“When we demanded pressure on Israel, the government tightened cooperation,” said Green League chair Sofia Virta, according to Helsinki Times.

“The silence does not surprise me, because the chosen line is intolerably shameful,” chair of the Left Alliance Minja Koskela said.

But Finland’s Defense Minister called the pact standard practice between countries with established defense ties.

“We have cooperation documents with 40 countries, and Israel has long been one of them,” said Antti Häkkänen, according to Finnish public broadcaster Yle. “It is not a dramatic new policy.”

“At this stage, we have only made sure that Finland gets the best air defense system in the world, and the best technology related to it.“

The two countries began laying the groundwork to renew the agreement in 2024, when the previous deal was set to expire. The new memorandum runs until 2034.

Finland and Israel have a relationship based on “common values” and “shared interests,” according to a copy of memorandum obtained by Yle.

“During the last years it has increased and developed into a unique partnership,” it said.
Bill Maher blasts academics for trashing Western civilization – and Israel
Comedian Bill Maher roasted lefty academics for trashing Western civilization — while enjoying the freedoms and institutions it created.

During Friday night’s episode of HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher,” he vented during a conversation about Israel with Wesleyan University President Michael Roth, who has criticized the “Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions” movement against Israel that has flared at the elite Connecticut school and other campuses.

“Israel was known as an outpost of Western civilization,” he told Roth.

“And that’s what it was called. That was always a good thing. Now, I don’t think it is,” Maher said, referring to the changing perception of Israel amid its war against Hamas in Gaza that began after the Oct. 7 attacks.

“Western civilization — they talk about it like it’s a bad thing, instead of saying Western civilization is what gave everyone who’s a progressive the things they should be most proud of,” Maher continued.

Roth jumped in to acknowledge that “a lot of our students think just that.”

Maher was incredulous.

“The professors are teaching that message? I think they’re learning it from my show,” joked Maher.

Roth suggested the professors might be watching his show more than the typical 18-year-old, prompting Maher to ask whether he could come to the Middletown, Conn., campus and be “welcome.”

“Welcome maybe not, but certainly …” Roth responded, drawing laughs from the audience.


Netanyahu condemns settler attack on West Bank Palestinian village
Settlers barricaded themselves inside a Palestinian house in Kusra on Saturday, where residents were present before IDF forces arrived to forcibly remove the rioters from the house.

The IDF stated that, following reports of the riots, it dispatched troops along with Border Police officers to the area.

The army added that it also confiscated vehicles belonging to the rioters, which are suspected of being used to access the area. These vehicles, along with additional evidence collected at the scene by Israeli security forces, are being transferred to the West Bank District of the Israel Police as part of an ongoing investigation into the incident.

Palestinians reported that a total of eight people were injured during stone-throwing altercations with the rioters, some of whom were evacuated for medical treatment by the Red Crescent.

According to Israeli media, no arrests were made after the IDF arrived in the area, with the settlers leaving the village outskirts after being ordered by the military to do so.

According to a Walla report, the IDF and Border Police continue to maintain a presence in the Kusra area due to concerns that the rioters might attempt to return. Netanyahu condemns the violence

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned violence committed by dozens of settler rioters who gathered on the outskirts of the village of Kusra in the West Bank on Saturday, igniting violent clashes with the local residents.

“I strongly condemn the criminal acts of violence committed in the villages of Kusra and Jalud by a handful of rioters who violate the law, cause enormous injustice to the law-abiding settler public, hinder the IDF in fulfilling its missions, and harm Israel’s standing in the world,” Netanyahu said in a statement.

Netanyahu added that security forces had ended the incident “in a short time” and confiscated three vehicles.

The IDF, the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency), and the police are conducting an investigation, Netanyahu said, adding that he expected the rioters to be arrested and brought to justice.


Police confirm settlers detained British activist, say he’s suspected of indecent act against minor
Police confirm that a British man seen being led away by armed settlers in the southern West Bank’s Umm al-Kheir earlier today is in custody.

The man was detained by the head of the security squad of “one of the settlements adjacent to Ma’on,” a recognized settlement south of Hebron, “on suspicion of performing an indecent act against a minor,” police say in response to a query.

“The suspect has been transferred to interrogation, which is still in its beginning,” police say.

The man was performing so-called protective presence with Palestinians in the area.

That’s How It Works, a social media account that posts claims against such activists, publishes footage in which the British man can be seen holding on to a fence, next to an Arabic sign that reads “welcome to Khirbet Umm al-Kheir,” and pressing his body against that of a child in an apparent attempt to prevent the child from passing through.


Female Palestinian activists in West Bank face growing Islamist extremist threat
Palestinian women in the West Bank are facing an escalating campaign by Islamist extremists attempting to stop their participation in public life.

Feminist activists in Hebron have warned of a climate of fear created by Hizb ut-Tahrir (HuT), an international movement that seeks to create a global Caliphate that was proscribed as a terrorist organisation in the UK in 2024.

The group’s members have disrupted meetings and denounced campaigners and their organisations, claiming they are “corrupting” women, spreading Christianity and destroying Islamic society.

It is feared that the extremist campaign is being supported by former members of the now banned HuT group in the UK.

Pressure has come through social media, public statements, mosque sermons and organised gatherings.

Organisations working with women have as a result suspended activities and seen falling attendance at meetings.

The outside world has provided no meaningful support for the targeted groups “whether material or moral, local or international”, says one organisation’s member.

According to the UN Human Rights Office, similar harassment and intimidation by HuT to obstruct women’s rights took place in 2019, albeit on a smaller scale.

A campaign by Islamists has taken place over the summer this year, according to activists who say the organiser of a meeting on women’s political participation was targeted in a video threatening her by name.

HuT also condemned the governor of Hebron, Khaled Dudin, for allowing men and women to sit together at the screening of a World Cup match, accusing him of “defying God” by failing to enforce segregation.


US sanctions are hurting Iran, but economic collapse alone may not topple regime, expert says
US sanctions are increasingly damaging Iran’s ability to obtain hard currency and function economically, Professor Uzi Rabi told 103FM radio on Thursday, while warning against drawing a quick conclusion that an economic collapse would inevitably lead to the fall of the regime.

“The economic path is not certain,” he said.

Rabi, head of the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies at Tel Aviv University, spoke with Barak Seri and Eli Ohana on 103FM radio about the economic war the US has declared against Iran and analyzed its potential impact.

US blockade on Iran raises questions over whether it will achieve its intended goals
“This blockade is theoretically the best thing to do. If the US is determined, if the US is consistent, it should work,” Rabi said.

“There is a question here with China, Turkey, Pakistan. How long will the US continue? [Regarding] the 'D-Day method,' I think that for the first time the US understands that this is not about attacking Iran’s economy, but rather going to the outer layer. Let’s see how much they will listen and how much they will restrict Iran. There is one thing that is undisputed. Iran has been forced in recent weeks to manage with fewer and fewer dollars. When it lacks hard currency, it cannot even operate its agriculture and industry.

“From the day Iran was established as an Islamic republic, it has not managed a normal economy; it has managed a resistance economy,” he added. “But there are sanctions, and there are sanctions. I think these sanctions are much more persuasive, but still, being within our own society, who knows what will happen tomorrow if suddenly the Omanis and Iranians come with an agreement, the Pakistanis tell [US President Donald] Trump that there is something to discuss, and he starts loosening things here and there.”

Rabi said that while the economic campaign is a strategic tool, it does not guarantee the regime's collapse.

“The Strait of Hormuz is not what it used to be. At the beginning of the war, we saw the great damage caused to Hormuz. Many players understood that if they do not develop alternative routes, they are truly heading toward disaster. We are seeing Saudi Arabia exporting its oil through the Red Sea.”

“The Americans are extracting oil where the Iranian radar does not stop, ultimately penetrating or breaking through because of the blows it has taken,” Rabi said. “Iran is a battered country. But I do not want this interview to create the logic that if the economy collapses, then the regime falls. Iran has another economy, the regime’s economy. In supermarkets, people are suffering deeply in ways they never knew before, even when their situation is difficult. The question is what will happen with smuggling and cryptocurrency. The US is going to choke all the pipelines, the economic route to Iran. Let’s give this its due.”


Shin Bet confirms significant Iranian threat against Yair Netanyahu prompted evacuation from US
The Shin Bet confirmed an Iranian threat against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s son, Yair, on Saturday after reports circulated following his quick evacuation from Florida back to Israel.

“There was indeed a significant threat to harm Yair Netanyahu, and in light of this, following a situation assessment, a decision was made to extract him together with his security team urgently back to Israel,” the Shin Bet stated.

The original report about the Iranian threat was published on the Boca Raton-based Newsmax website on Tuesday, citing a US law enforcement source allegedly familiar with the situation.

The report stated that Israeli intelligence discovered an Iranian plot in December to assassinate Yair in Florida and passed a warning to US authorities.

The US source told Newsmax that, according to the intelligence assessment, Iranian operatives were already “on the ground” in the Miami area and had even conducted surveillance on Yair’s residence and movements.

Yair, who is accompanied by close Israeli security at all times, was instructed to leave the location immediately.

According to the report, he left without taking his belongings and returned directly to Israel, where he currently lives.

Netanyahu speaks on the threat against his son
Last week, the prime minister revealed in an interview with Channel 14 that Iran had attempted to assassinate one of his sons, but declined to say whether the target was Yair or Avner.

“There is something here that is unimaginable,” Netanyahu said. “Iran marked one of my sons. Iran tried to murder him – tried to murder one of my sons.”
IDF says strike on Gaza hospital compound killed Hamas commander
An Israeli strike within the compound of a Gaza Strip hospital Saturday killed a Hamas commander who was planning attacks on IDF troops and civilians, the military said, while the coastal territory’s health officials reported Israeli strikes elsewhere killed three people.

The IDF said the commander, who it did not immediately name, was targeted in a strike in the Deir al-Balah area, while “hiding adjacent to Shuhada al-Aqsa Hospital.”

The hospital reported that three people were injured in an Israeli strike near a warehouse close to the maternity ward inside the medical facility. The military said that it took steps to mitigate harm to civilians in the area.

“This is another example of Hamas’s cynical use of humanitarian infrastructure and Hamas’s systematic embedding within medical facilities to advance and carry out terror activity,” the military said.

The IDF said the Hamas commander recently was advancing attacks on troops and Israeli civilians, as well as acting to restore the capabilities of the terror group, “while systematically violating the ceasefire.”

“The strike was carried out to remove the threat,” the army added.

Earlier in the day, Al-Aqsa Hospital reported one person was killed by Israeli fire in the eastern area of the city. The IDF said it was checking the reports.

In Gaza City, the civil defense agency, which operates as a rescue force under Hamas, said an Israeli strike near a roundabout in the Tel al-Hawa neighborhood killed two people and injured several others.

The military said it struck a “military operative” in the area.

The IDF also announced that a strike it carried out on Friday in northern Gaza killed a Hamas commander and a sniper in the terror group.

According to the IDF, the strike killed Hani Abd al-Hai Fakhri Mazloum, a company commander in Hamas’s elite Nukhba Force, and Hassan Zidan Hassan Deiri, a Hamas sniper.

Both terror operatives were also involved in “trafficking and supply of weapons to Hamas terrorists,” the military said.

The IDF justified the strike amid the ceasefire by saying that both operatives had been advancing attacks on troops and civilians, as well as trying to restore Hamas capabilities, “all in violation of the ceasefire agreement.”


Jonathan S. Tobin: The clock is ticking on the chances to stop JD Vance
The Tucker Carlson connection
It was Carlson, along with the president’s namesake, who is believed to have played the decisive role in persuading the elder Trump to help jumpstart Vance’s political career by endorsing him in a tightly contested Republican senatorial primary in Ohio in 2022. And the pair of buddies came through again for him two years later, when Trump tapped Vance to be his running mate in 2024.

The vice president has made it clear that he will always stick with his friends no matter what. As a general principle, that’s an admirable sentiment. But in this case, it involves him being willing to tolerate and tacitly encourage Carlson’s descent down a rabbit hole of antisemitism and obsessive hate for Israel, not to mention a bizarre affinity for the Islamist regime in Qatar—its Iranian ally—and Vladimir Putin’s regime in Russia.

In 2022, Carlson was still widely considered a tribune of modern conservatism due to his use of his influential perch as the host of a prime-time show on Fox News, where he led the opposition to wokeism, the “mostly peaceful” Black Lives Matter riots in 2020, and the authoritarian and ultimately futile COVID-19 pandemic policies of the Biden administration.

By 2023, however, his penchant for promoting conspiracy theories and an increasingly hostile relationship with the Murdoch family that owns the network, along with racist text messages that were made public due to the lawsuit against the channel about claims of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election, led to Carlson’s firing.

Since then—and with the help of Malik and Trump Jr.—Carlson’s podcast has become one of the most watched and listened to political programs on the Internet, claiming nearly 4 million subscribers and tens of millions of views every week. But rather than merely continuing to express the same views he aired on Fox, which could be described as, for the most part, those of a mainstream conservative, he blazed a new trail on his own network. I had noted as early as July 2019 and then again in March 2021 that Carlson was a threat to the U.S.-Israel alliance and American Jews.

Those warnings were vindicated by what happened once the guardrails imposed on him by his bosses at Fox were removed. Since it was launched in December 2023, his podcast has become a regular source of openly antisemitic material. He has hosted and granted friendly interviews to Holocaust denier Daryl Cooper and neo-Nazi groyper Nick Fuentes. Every possible variety of Israel-basher, ranging from those on the far right to those on the left, has also been granted access to his popular platform. Along with them, a wide variety of preposterous anti-Jewish conspiracy theories—claiming that Jews invented pornography to subvert American society to bogus assertions about Jeffrey Epstein being a Mossad agent and the Chabad religious movement being responsible for the war on Iran—have been aired and endorsed on his program.

What’s more, the popularity of his show—at least in terms of Internet clicks, whether they are the work of real people or bots—has encouraged others on the right to join Carlson in venting animus at Israel and Jews, such as podcaster Megyn Kelly, not to mention even more extreme figures like Fuentes and conspiracy theorist Candace Owens.

Left-wing Jew-hatred has gained increasing influence over the Democratic Party and now threatens to dominate it as the DSA movement of Marxists and Islamists win primary after primary. But while the groyper wing of the GOP has flopped in the 2026 primaries, there is no denying that Carlson has become one of the most dangerous antisemites in American history.

That makes his close connection to Vance a significant concern.

What drives the ‘woke right’
Operating by the conventional rules of presidential politics, a potential 2028 contender like Vance would have ditched Carlson long ago, notwithstanding the favors he owes him. But that hasn’t happened.

More than that, when offered a perfect opportunity to establish a firewall between himself and Carlson last December at the Turning Point USA AmericaFest, Vance didn’t just pass on it. In his speech at the event, he did more than declare his neutrality in the argument between Ben Shapiro and Carlson about the latter’s antisemitism, both of whom also addressed the same forum. He said his vision of the Republican Party obliged him not to turn his back on Carlson and those who subscribed to his hateful stands, whether or not he agreed with them.

Vance had sung a very different tune during both his 2022 Senate run and the 2024 race, when he did well as Trump’s running mate (especially when compared to Democratic vice-presidential nominee Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz). In an address to the anti-Israel Quincy Institute, he made a case for the importance of the U.S.-Israel relationship as the ideal “America First” alliance because of the threat from Iran and other Islamists, as well as the fact that, unlike the Europeans, Israel is always prepared to fight for itself and alongside the United States. Since then, whether due to the influence of Carlson or not, he seems to have extended his neo-isolationist philosophy to ties with Israel.

Contrary to the brickbats thrown at him by his detractors, the vice president is neither shallow nor uninformed. He’s a genuine intellectual who, unlike many in the party establishment, moved from a stand in favor of pure free-market conservatism and hostility to Trump to one that rightly espoused a more common-good philosophy. Like Trump, he came to understand the way the Bush-era GOP had failed America’s working class. His critique of the European Union and its anti-democratic tendencies delivered in a speech in Munich in February 2025 may have scared globalist elites, but they were very much on target and in keeping with American values.

Yet his tolerance for the groypers—indeed, his seeming belief that they are an essential part of the Republican coalition if it is to preserve the gains it made under Trump once he leaves the stage in 2028—isn’t just wrongheaded. It is a reflection of a desire among some on the right to treat the post-Oct. 7, 2023 surge of antisemitism as something to be tolerated and even exploited, rather than to be condemned and tossed out of the party as Trump has done with Carlson.

The so-called “woke right” is merely a variation on the same theme of Jew-hatred that has become the new orthodoxy on the left. But it has far fewer adherents than those turning out to decide Democratic primaries in favor of candidates like New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Michigan Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, and many other DSA members and “progressives.” But if someone like Vance, who is unwilling to draw a line in the sand between them and the party of Lincoln and Reagan, becomes its leader, that distinction will no longer be of any importance.

Unless and until Vance reverses his stand on Carlson and a big GOP tent that includes the groypers, his 2028 presidential ambitions must be regarded as a genuine threat not just to American Jews and the alliance with Israel, but to the values of Western civilization that are the foundation of American democracy.
Eitan Fischberger: Tucker Carlson Keeps Turning Up in Foreign Agents' Paperwork — I Just Found Three More
Key Findings of the Investigation:
There are (so far) five FARA-registered agents with documented outreach and meetings with the Tucker Carlson Network: El Salvador, Turkey, Republika Srpska, Qatar, and Venezuela.

Damian Merlo’s firm made eight contacts with Carlson’s team before the Bukele interview, paid $520,000 by El Salvador’s president’s office in that window. The same firm arranged Tucker’s interview with Argentinian President Javier Milei.

The Washington D.C. office of Turkey’s ruling party, AKP, met virtually with Neil Patel (Daily Caller co-founder, now Tucker Carlson Network CEO) in March 2026.

Former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich, whose firm RRB represents Srpska, appeared twice on Tucker’s show over the last 2 years, once before the firm’s Srpska contract even existed.

Qatar paid Lumen8 Advisors to help arrange the Qatari Prime Minister’s interview with Carlson, as previously reported.

Robert Amsterdam, another guest on Tucker’s show, was representing Venezuela’s attorney general at the time of his appearance, around when Tucker began speaking positively about Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro. Amsterdam had also represented Nigeria’s former Kaduna State governor and explicitly denied the genocide of Christians in Nigeria on air during Tucker’s show.
A Very Strange Connection is Happening Between JD Vance & Tucker's Qatar Agent...
Is Qatar quietly buying influence inside the American right? On this episode of Axis of Truth, Emily Schrader follows the money connecting a major J.D. Vance fundraiser, Tucker Carlson’s media network and registered Qatari agents, arguing that Doha’s influence operation is increasingly targeting conservative politics and media. She also examines Turkey’s growing confrontation with Israel and calls for Ankara’s expulsion from NATO, before turning to Paramount’s clash with Mark Ruffalo, an alleged ISIS-inspired plot to bomb the New York State Capitol and questions surrounding Spain’s economic ties with Iran.

Correction: The video misstated that Steve and Alex Witkoff were among the founders of 1789. This should have said “Zach and Alex Witkoff,” as Steve was not a cofounder. We apologize for this error.




I Saw How Socialists Won Over The University Of Michigan With My Own Eyes
The highly anticipated Michigan Democratic Senate primary was close. Moderate Democrat Haley Stevens lost by a slim margin to progressive, democratic socialist-leaning candidate Abdul El-Sayed. After multiple prominent DSA and DSA-adjacent victories across the country, it is worth examining this movement that is gaining traction in America, especially among my university-aged peers.

With El-Sayed winning over 60% of Washtenaw County’s vote (home of Ann Arbor), the DSA has clearly made a splash with young minds on the University of Michigan’s campus.

It is no coincidence that El-Sayed swept my college town of Ann Arbor, where far-Left progressivism is encouraged as the norm by both professors and students. While he denies holding socialist views, El-Sayed attended fundraising events where organizers referred to him as “a longtime friend of Detroit DSA.”

Being a college town, the only path to winning was through impressionable young voters flirting with Marxism. Last semester, El-Sayed successfully campaigned on campus with Hasan Piker, the popular, far-Left radical Maoist on Twitch who justifies 9/11, mourns Stalin, and denies and downplays the October 7 atrocities perpetrated by Hamas. While on campus, El-Sayed and Piker promoted the unsubstantiated, anti-Israel genocide accusation and described the biggest Jewish American lobbying group as using “dark money.”

In a way, I get it. We arrive at college bright-eyed idealists ready to charge ahead and change the world. But the duality of idealism is where the trouble starts. Idealism is attractive because it’s easy and seems righteous. At the same time, we have little experience dealing with real-world problems.

Instead of modulating our understanding of the world to see what creates effective change, some keep trying to impose idealistic solutions to solve real-world issues. “Collective” control over the government and economy is an attractive universal solution to those who have not studied or experienced the injustices it produces. While DSA’s socialism may seem innocuous in theory, all arguments fall apart when confronted with the horrors produced by these systems.

From what I’ve observed, the basic socialist pitch boils down to offering a cure-all for accountability. You are no longer at fault for your situation — you are now a victim of a rigged “system.” Things will get better once the corrupt system is torn down. Tell me this illusory promise doesn’t sound familiar, and I will tell you about the North Korean asylum seekers, Refusnik Jews, and Cuban refugees who risked their lives to escape.


NYC-funded puppet show turns into Israel bashing hatefest: ‘Came out of nowhere’
A Jewish mother who took her 4-year-old son to what she thought would be a family-friendly puppet show in Lower Manhattan earlier this month was horrified when the performance morphed into an Israel-bashing disgrace, she told The Post.

“The Cardboard Pizza Puppet Circus,” a show created and performed by puppet troupe the Boxcutter Collective that the ensemble describes as “a celebration of” New York City, was featured at this year’s International Puppet Fringe Festival, a multi-day celebration sponsored in part by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and New York State Council on the Arts.

“Featuring dancing skyscrapers, giant rats, fossil-fuel-fighting flowers, a live brass band, and Lady Liberty herself,” the show’s description reads.

But 15 minutes into the Aug. 13 performance, the show shifted from covering New York-centric topics into controversial political positions against the Jewish state, said the Brooklyn mom, 43, who declined to be named.

“The anti-Israel stuff came out of nowhere,” the mom said.

“It went from pizza rat and parallel parking to accusations of Israel bombing hospitals.”

The “packed” courtyard show, which the mom said was performed to a crowd of about 200 and ran for about an hour, included a skit with eight performers recreating a flotilla, which was met with enthusiastic jeers against Israel from audience members. At another point, remarks were made about American tax dollars going to Israel, she said.

“How does anti-Israel propaganda figure into a play that’s otherwise entirely about New York? Is hatred for Israel as synonymous with the City’s brand as pizza rat?” asked the “proud Zionist” mom, adding that her 4-year-old son “kept asking what was happening when he saw I was taken aback.”

A Soviet Union refugee who now resides in Windsor Terrace, the mother said her “heart was racing,” as she watched many in the crowd appear to agree with “the litany of accusations” made against Israel.

“(I was) feeling like I was surrounded by my ideological enemies,” she said.

“This particular group had very antisemitic views,” she said of the Boxcutter Collective. “It felt like a mob – the hairs on your neck stand up.”

The Boxcutter Collective proved its pro-Palestinian bona fides in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 atrocity against Israel in which 1,200 men, women and children were killed, when it performed in the “Gaza Monologues” in November 2023 – on “The International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People” – in response to the “horrific war taking place in Gaza.”

“I knew that if I shouted something against Hamas, the crowd would turn against me, so I kept my mouth shut,” the mother told The Post. “My generation is now experiencing a fresh iteration of antisemitism here in New York that my family escaped back in the Soviet Union.”
Abdul El-Sayed apologizes for past remark seen as justifying Temple Israel synagogue attack
Michigan US Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed apologized for his past comments regarding the March attack on Temple Israel in suburban Detroit during a meeting with the state Democratic Party’s Jewish caucus at the party convention on Saturday.

The anti-Israel Democratic nominee told the room that his remarks following the attempted targeting of the West Bloomfield synagogue preschool, in which he had said, in part, “Hurt people hurt people,” were intended to provide “context.”

Reflecting on them, he said on Saturday, “I made a mistake.”

“If my statement caused pain, I’m sorry. It was not what I intended to do,” El-Sayed continued. Referencing the first of two statements he had made about the attack, he added: “We issued a statement, of course, condemning it, and that just should have been it, full stop.”

El-Sayed’s initial Temple Israel comments, which many Jews interpreted as justifying the attack, have alienated Jewish voters in the state. After an initial statement condemning the attack, El-Sayed then followed up with one referencing Israel’s war against Hezbollah in Lebanon, where the attacker had lost family in an Israeli airstrike.

On Saturday, El-Sayed, a former county health director, insisted that his push for “context” to the attack was broadly appropriate, but not at that moment, explaining that such “conversations” could happen “in the fullness of time.”

“Sometimes you can’t really see context in the moment of acuity or pain,” he said. “The intention for me was not to trample that pain. It was not to discount it. It was not at all to justify any sort of domestic terrorism. That’s wrong, full stop.”

El-Sayed’s apology, which was in response to a question posed to him by a Jewish Democrat in attendance, came amid a new round of outreach efforts he has been making with Jewish voters since he won Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary earlier this month. He also plans to attend a Sunday Jewish caucus gathering honoring state Attorney General Dana Nessel with congressional nominee Jeremy Moss in attendance, both of whom the candidate has publicly been at ideological odds with over Jewish issues.

In recent days, El-Sayed has also minimized some of his harsh critiques of Israel in his stump speeches and issued a statement distancing himself from onetime campaign ally Hasan Piker, the far-left anti-Israel streamer some have accused of antisemitism.

His nomination acceptance speech later that day made only one, oblique, reference to American support for Israel: “It shouldn’t be this hard to pay your taxes and know that that money’s going to be spent on you, and your kids, and your schools, instead of being dropped in the form of a bomb on somebody else, and their kids, and their school.” Democratic nominee for US Senate Abdul El-Sayed speaks at a news conference at the base of the Spirit of Detroit monument in Detroit, August 19, 2026. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)

But skepticism was still palpable among the 30 or so Jewish Democrats in the room, a crowd that included one delegate who said his daughter and grandson had been inside Temple Israel when it was attacked.


Hasan Piker incites millions against Jews, and the silence is deafening
On a recent live stream, with a photo of Jewish Michigan congressional candidate Jeremy Moss on screen behind him, Twitch personality Hasan Piker told his millions of followers that US Jews “have it coming.”

Those who “keep putting this idea out there that they are singularly invested in Israel” should expect that “eventually someone’s going to come around and take action, not against the State of Israel, mind you, but against American Jews,” he said.

Piker called Israel “Jewish ISIS,” saying that Jews were “making antisemitism worse.”

Antisemitism has historically come in two forms. One is transactional: “Renounce whatever it is we are telling you to renounce and safety will supposedly follow.” The other is fixed: “You are the problem regardless of what you renounce, because your identity itself is the offense.”

Mistaking one for the other is how societies miss what’s happening until it is too late. Piker’s rhetoric looks like the first kind. It also smuggles in the second.

The transactional version has a long pedigree. In 1789, as France debated citizenship for Jews who had lived there for centuries, Count Stanislas-Marie-Adélaide de Clermont–Tonnerre delivered the sentence that would define it: “To the Jews as a nation, nothing. To the Jews as individuals, everything.”

In other words, he offered full citizenship in exchange for dissolving the national parts of Jewish identity, an offer Jews “could not refuse.” Every generation since has been handed some version of this, in French, in Russian, and now in the argot of Twitch.

Even the offer’s predecessor, religious-based antisemitism, was never as clean as it pretended. Medieval Europe held out baptism as the door out of persecution. Spain tested that promise and broke it.

After the mass forced conversions of the 14th and 15th centuries, the limpieza de sangre, “the purity of blood,” statutes barred anyone with Jewish ancestry, however distant, from public office, the priesthood, and social standing.

The room marked “convert, and you are free” had a false bottom. Blood, not belief, was the real test.


Pro-Palestine charity accused of promoting ‘Israel is holocaust paedophile state’ T-shirt
A Palestinian aid charity has been accused of promoting merchandise that supports terrorism and violence against Jewish people.

The Sun of Freedom charity carries a link to a website selling a range of apparel that, critics claim, displays slogans and symbols in support of terrorism and equates the actions of Israel in Gaza to those of the Nazi Holocaust against the Jewish people.

The charity is accused of promoting a range of merchandise designed by Mo Hamzeh, one of its directors, under the name Mo Hamz Collection.

One of his designs is a T-shirt sold in aid of Sun of Freedom, which accuses Israel of genocide, holocaust, paedophilia, sex trafficking, organ theft and apartheid against Palestinians.

The £35 shirt’s slogan, which the Mo Hamz Collection describes as one of its best-sellers, also accuses Western nations of “bending the knee” to Israel, in an alleged repetition of the anti-Semitic trope that Israel and Jewish people worldwide control the government of other countries.

Another of the collection’s items on sale in aid of Sun of Freedom is a “No Peace Until Freedom” T-shirt showing an inverted red triangle inserted between two fingers giving the V-for-victory sign.

The inverted red triangle has been closely associated with Hamas since the group’s military wing used it in propaganda videos to mark Israeli military targets before attacking them.

Campaigners against anti-Semitism are calling on the charity regulator to mount an investigation into the activities of the Manchester-based charity, which was set up to “relieve poverty and support vulnerable communities facing extreme hardship” across the West Bank and Gaza.

They allege that Sun of Freedom is breaching charity rules by promoting links to violent imagery targeting Israel and Jewish people more widely.


Vox Podcast Presents One-Sided Narrative on Democratic Divide Over Israel
Vox’s Today, Explained podcast episode “Why Some Dems Are Standing By Israel,” published on July 22, 2026, by Dustin DeSoto and Sean Rameswaram, examines the growing fracture within the Democratic Party over U.S. support for Israel. The episode centers on an interview with Rep. Brad Schneider (D-IL), who is presented as a pro-Israel Democrat defending his stance in the wake of a historic House vote on the Massie amendment to cut $3.3 billion in annual U.S. military aid to Israel. While the topic is legitimate and timely, the podcast’s editorial framing and its unchallenged interview claims omit critical context — including Hamas’s October 7 massacre, Hamas’s diversion of humanitarian aid, and Palestinian terrorism in the West Bank — producing a misleading picture of the conflict.

A False Symmetry on Engagement and Peace
Perhaps the most misleading statement in the podcast comes at the end, when it is asserted that, “Peace will only come when the Israelis see the Palestinians as a people worthy of engagement and a shared future, and the Palestinians see the Israeli as worthy of engagement.”

This framing implies a symmetrical failure of recognition between both sides. The historical record tells a different story. Multiple Israeli prime ministers from across the political spectrum have offered two-state solutions and made significant territorial concessions. Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza in 2005, dismantling settlements and evacuating thousands of Israelis.

Hamas, which has governed Gaza since violently ousting the Palestinian Authority in 2007, has historically rejected the Oslo Accords process and the permanent legitimacy of a Jewish state. Its founding charter called for Israel’s destruction. While some Hamas leaders have at various points signaled openness to temporary truces, the organization has never recognized Israel’s right to exist as a permanent state. Its 2017 policy document, which accepted a Palestinian state within 1967 borders as a “formula of national consensus,” simultaneously rejected “any alternative to the full and complete liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea.” That is, it accepts a two-state solution only as a temporary step toward Israel’s destruction.

To suggest that the obstacle to peace is an equal failure of “engagement” on both sides — without noting the history of the peace process and Hamas’s open calls for Israel’s destruction — is a profound distortion.

An Unquestioning Interview Format
Beyond the specific factual omissions, the podcast’s entire approach is problematic. Host Sean Rameswaram conducts the interview with Rep. Schneider without challenging or contextualizing any of his claims. When Schneider asserts Israeli actions were “illegal,” the hosts do not ask for specifics or note the legal and factual complexities. When he implies a symmetrical failure of engagement, there is no follow-up. This is not journalism; it is a platform for advocacy dressed as analysis.

Responsible coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict demands that claims by political actors be subjected to rigorous scrutiny. The Vox podcast, by allowing these statements to stand unchallenged and by framing the conflict in a consistently one-sided manner, fails its audience and contributes to the broader media pattern of inverting cause and effect in coverage of Israel.


Jew tapped to lead US Catholic Biblical Association hit by antisemitic backlash
When Amy-Jill Levine was a child in Massachusetts, a schoolmate in her predominantly Catholic hometown told her she was guilty of killing Christ because she was Jewish.

Her mother reassured her that wasn’t the case — and instead of being embittered by the encounter, the young Levine began attending a Catholic catechism class to learn more about her Christian neighbors and their beliefs.

That blossomed into a decades-long academic career in an unusual role — a Jewish scholar of Christian Scriptures. Levine has worked to improve how Christians and her fellow Jews understand each other. She’s spoken at many churches and taught students about the ancient Jewish context of Jesus’s life and teachings. She’s written numerous books, some in tandem with Christian scholars; she and a co-author even presented one book personally to Pope Francis.

But after the Catholic Biblical Association of America announced earlier this month that Levine was elected its first-ever Jewish president, an antisemitic backlash began.

Denunciations appeared in the posts and replies on social media accounts with tens of thousands of followers. Critics called her “anti-Christian,” claimed she’s trying to hijack Catholicism, denounced Jews for not accepting Jesus, and tacked on anti-Zionist comments.

While some questioned why the association would appoint anyone who wasn’t a Catholic, much of the criticism was infused with anti-Jewish statements. They come at a time of rising antisemitism in the country.

Supporters hail role in Catholic-Jewish dialogue
Her supporters and longtime Christian collaborators are appalled by the backlash.

“Unfortunately, some neither understand the role of the president nor the nature of a professional society,” said a joint statement by the association’s executive board chair, Gregory E. Sterling, and executive director, Archie Wright. “She was not elected because she is Jewish, but because she is an exceptional scholar and has played a very important role in Catholic-Jewish dialogue.”

The association is made up of Catholic and non-Catholic scholars with the stated purpose of improving the study of the scripture within the context of faith. Levine has been active in the association for decades, though she said when someone from its nominating committee asked her to consider being president, she wasn’t sure at first if it was serious. It was — with supporters citing her long history of working with Christian scholars.

The criticisms underscore the need to address antisemitism, the association statement said: “We need to live and practice the values of our faith, values that are not evident in the criticisms.” Numerous past presidents of the association signed a similar statement.


Stephen Daisley: The Jewish heroes who fought for Britain – and why their courage matters today
If long life is a reward for a life well lived, even 100 years feels too short for Jack Mann. Tributes to the centenarian, who died on August 15, have recounted his service in the Long Range Desert Group, a special forces outfit tasked with performing secret operations against the Nazis in North Africa during the Second World War.

His unit, of which he was the last surviving member, was skilled at working behind enemy lines to frustrate the Third Reich’s campaigns and sabotage their hard power as well as their routes of supply and communication. It has been credited with aiding in efforts against Rommel’s men and preventing him capturing the pivotal region, not least the Suez Canal.

Yet Mann was the very model of British modesty common to men of his generation. The radio operator once said: “I can’t say I’m a hero. My job was communications, and that’s what I did.” With respect to Mann, who later served in the SAS and SBS, this statement is plainly untrue. He was a hero whose service took place in the thick of it, under threat of certain execution if captured, and without his skills any number of assignments could well have ended in disaster.

Mann credited his decision to volunteer for these most dangerous of duties to an uncle who told him what was being done to Jews in Germany. “I joined the Army, and British intelligence soon heard I had skills with languages and came to me,” he explained.

In doing so, Mann placed himself within a long and storied tradition of British Jewish military heroism. It is a tradition which we tend to associate primarily with the Jewish Brigade and the daring feats of the thousands who answered Churchill’s call for volunteers for the British war effort from pre-state Israel.

However, there are others from that era, before, and later whose stories are not as well known.

Squadron Leader Lawrence Goodman was one of 20,000 Jews who served in the Royal Air Force during the Second World War. The RAF Museum notes that he volunteered upon hearing the news that Britain was joining the war against Nazi Germany and, initially sent to Canada as a flight instructor, requested a transfer back to the frontlines. He was assigned to Squadron 617, one year after the operation that earned them the name The Dambusters, and flew 30 sorties, including a raid that demolished the Arnsberg rail viaduct, and even turned his artillery on Kehlsteinhaus – better known as Eagle’s Nest. Squadron Leader Goodman, whose mates called him “Benny”, was made a Chevalier of the Légion d’Honneur in 2017 and died four years later, aged 100.

It has been estimated that 50,000 Jews enlisted to fight for Britain in the Great War, one of the bravest of which was surely Issy Smith, who was born Ishroulch Shmeilowitz in Egypt in 1890. The Victoria Cross Association narrates how Smith, of the Manchester Regiment, was wounded at Givenchy in 1914 and Neuve Chapelle the following year, gassed at Ypres, and later survived a torpedo attack while being shipped to the Middle East. It was at Ypres where he displayed the selfless courage that earned him his VC, with the citation describing how he “left his company on his own initiative” and ran toward the enemy to rescue a wounded comrade and carry the injured man to safety while under constant threat from machine-gun fire. According to the Victorian Association of Jewish Ex-Servicemen and Women Australia, Smith emigrated to Melbourne, where he died, aged 52, in 1940.
Archaeologists ‘absolutely’ certain they found lost city where Jesus performed miracles
It’s a testament to years of dedication.

A team of archaeologists is “absolutely” confident they have discovered the lost biblical city of Bethsaida after spending the summer unearthing an incredible trove of artifacts from northern Israel.

The Bethsaida-Julias excavation team recovered lamps, make-up tools, coins and dozens of other artifacts from the shores of the Sea of Galilee in its 10th season of digging, solidifying their longtime theory that it was once the ancient city where Jesus is said to have performed a litany of miracles.

“What we try to take into account is the accumulation of collected evidence from all the squares that paints a portrait of the historical profile of the ancient site. That picture is becoming clearer with each season,” Dr. Steven Notley, the excavation’s academic director, wrote in a blog post earlier this month.

Notley and his team have spent the past decade digging through the ruins of the historical site, today known as el-Araj.

This 10th season greatly expanded their understanding of Bethsaida-Julias in the Roman period, which ranged from the first through third century — but artifacts from other ancient eras were found scattered throughout the sprawling area.

They also found “Roman-period walls, a basalt mortar (grinding stone), coins, and a fascinating half Doric capital that likely decorated a public building” — as well as hints that an earlier Hellenistic settlement was hiding below the dirt, Notley wrote.

The team determined that the Ottoman-period Syrian owner of Beit Habek had built his stables on top of earlier Roman structures without relying on a foundation — an ancient decision that shockingly did not result in the stone walls cracking or collapsing by the time the Bethsaida-Julias team discovered them.

The crew also found chalk stoneware and several intact Herodian lamps, which were only made in Jerusalem before 70 CE — definitive markers that Jewish people lived in the city in the first century, when it transitioned from Bethsaida to a Roman-period polis called Julias, according to the blog.





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This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For 20 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.

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