Israel strike wrecks Gaza water plant amid crisis

Strike hit Sheikh Radwan neighborhood in northern Gaza City today

Palestinian sources say missiles destroyed the Al Radwan desalination plant that served local residents

IDF claims it targeted a Hamas weapons storage site and issued evacuation warnings

Plant was small and recently operating in an already heavily damaged area

Gaza faces severe ongoing water shortages with most infrastructure damaged from years of fighting

Hamas called it part of a plan to dry out civilian life

https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/idf-says-it-strikes-weapons-depot-in-gaza-city-as-mosque-desalination-plant-reportedly-hit/

Katz: Israel won’t leave Syria buffer zone so long as ‘jihadist threats’ remain

Defense minister, visiting troops, tells Syrian president ‘when you wake up in Damascus and see IDF on Mount Hermon, know we’re here to defend our communities and border’

Defense Minister Israel Katz on Tuesday told troops in southern Syria that the Israeli military would not leave its buffer zone there as long as “jihadist threats” remain, issuing a belligerent message to Damascus as the US tries to secure a security deal between the countries.

“We will not move from Mount Hermon and the security zone as long as there are jihadist threats to the State of Israel,” he said.

“The message to the president of Syria is clear — when you wake up in the morning in the palace in Damascus and look up at Mount Hermon and see the IDF, you know that we are here to defend our communities and our border.”

Katz added that Israel “acted against a Turkish attempt to establish itself in Syria, while putting Israel’s security interests at risk,” referring to last week’s strikes on the Abu al-Duhur airbase in Idlib.

“We made this clear and will stand by it in the future as well,” he added.

Israeli troops have been operating in areas up to around 15 kilometers (9 miles) deep into Syria, aiming to capture weapons that Israel says could pose a threat to the country if they fall into the hands of “hostile forces.”

The two countries, which have no formal relations and are officially in a state of war, held historic direct talks last year aimed at reaching a groundbreaking security agreement that ultimately failed to materialize. However, contacts between the sides have been ongoing.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/katz-israel-wont-leave-syria-buffer-zone-so-long-as-jihadist-threats-remain/

Ex-spy Jonathan Pollard announces Knesset run on Haskel’s ‘Israel First’ slate

Pollard, a former US intelligence analyst jailed for 30 years for passing secrets to Israel, has called for imprisoning hostages’ families and pushed for the forcible transfer of Gazans

Wall in Jerusalem, in a picture distributed on August 23, 2026. (Courtesy Israel First)

Former spy Jonathan Pollard announced on Sunday that he will run for Knesset as a member of former deputy foreign minister Sharren Haskel’s Israel First party, declaring in a joint statement filmed at the Western Wall that Israel needs “a new government that’s dedicated to the preservation of the land and people of Israel.”

“I wasn’t the exception to the rule. My abandonment and betrayal was not the exception. On October 7, I saw that the entire country had been abandoned and betrayed,” Pollard, 72 said in English, referring to the years he languished in prison.

Many lawmakers “talk a very good game” but failed to take responsibility for Hamas’s attack, he asserted, telling Haskel that “the only way we’re going to reassure ourselves that that won’t happen is if we get people like you back into responsible positions of authority in the government.”

Haskel’s new Israel First party is a member of the so-called “third bloc” of center-right parties aimed at forcing a compromise between Likud and the Zionist opposition parties to create a broad Zionist unity government. None of the bloc’s parties have managed to pass the electoral threshold in recent polls.

“The Israel First party is receiving a significant boost today from Israeli hero Jonathan Pollard, who paid a very heavy personal price for his commitment to Israel and the Jewish people,” said Haskel, an ex-Likud MK who recently left Gideon Sa’ar’s New Hope faction over its merger with her former party.

“We believe in a Jewish, Zionist, strong, and prosperous Israel that defends itself, strengthens settlement, guards Jerusalem, and grants its citizens the opportunity to build a better future here. We do not apologize for who we are and we do not forfeit our right to build the future of the Jewish people here,” she said.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/ex-spy-jonathan-pollard-announces-knesset-run-on-haskels-israel-first-slate/

UNIPARTY

Jeffries defends meeting with Kushner

Jeffries is facing criticism from fellow Democrat, who see the meeting as an effort to comprise with the Trump White House, not to hold it accountable.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries is making efforts to justify his meeting this past weekend with President Donald Trump adviser Jared Kushner, amid backlash from his Democratic Party.

"He asked for a meeting and I took it," he said in a video he posted Tuesday. "We discussed the affordability crisis that exists, that is not a hoax."

Kushner and Jeffries met on Sunday to discuss such issues as housing and "affordability" ahead of the November midterms, in which Democrats could take control of the House from Republicans.

"I shouldn't have to say it, but I am: 'No one is going to get a pass. We're going to hold every single member of the Trump cartel accountable, beginning on day one," Jeffries also said in the video. "No one from the Trump Cartel is getting a pass."

Tommy Vietor, a President Barack Obama aide and now a co-host of the podcast Pod Save America, said about the meeting: “Jared Kushner has no actual government job, he just uses his family connections to get money from Gulf autocrats and fund corrupt deals. The only way Jeffries should work with him is with demands for documents and subpoenas,” Vietor said.

Also on Tuesday, Jeffries told CNN the meeting was "just a high-level, topical conversation.”

"As we have repeatedly indicated as House Democrats from the beginning of this Congress, we're committed to pushing back on the extremism that has been unleashed on the American people." he also told the cable news outlet.

“At the same time, of course, we have a responsibility to solve problems and sometimes that means meeting with people on the other side of the aisle to figure out what the opportunities will be in order to address the things that the American people definitively want us to address, which, from our standpoint, is the reality that the cost of living in this country is way too high."

While Kushner currently serves as a special envoy for the Trump administration and has played a role in diplomatic negotiations with Iran and in the Middle East, he is less involved with the White House than in his father-in-law's first term.

https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/jeffries-explains-meeting-jared-kushner-no-one-will-get-pass

Fringe rabbis recruit Jewish clergy to lobby against US military aid to Israel, halt weapons sales

The coalition, called 'Rabbis for Block the Bombs, ' launched publicly on 23 August and so far has 92 signatories.

A coalition of progressive rabbis is recruiting fellow Jewish clergy to endorse H.R. 3565 – Block the Bombs Act, which calls for a partial arms embargo on Israel.

The coalition, called Rabbis for Block the Bombs, launched publicly on August 23 and so far has 92 signatories.

It is centered on support for the Block the Bombs Act, a proposed US bill that aims to block the sale and transfer of seven of the most lethal offensive weapons to Israel. These are BLU-109 bunker-busting bombs, MK80 series bombs, GBU-39 small-diameter bomb variants, Joint Direct Attack Munitions, SPICE gliding bomb assemblies, 120-mm tank ammunition, and 155-mm artillery ammunition, including white phosphorus munitions.

The new website features a mission statement alongside the words “You shall not murder” from Exodus 20:13.

The statement reads “we, the undersigned Jewish clergy, implore members of Congress to support H.R. 3565 […] a necessary step toward ending US complicity in the Israeli military’s excessive violence, and in moving towards a just peace and true safety for both Palestinians and Israelis.”

Jewish Voice for Peace, IfNotNow, New Jewish Narrative support bill

This stance, the coalition says, is guided by the Jewish values of pikuah nefesh, the obligation to save lives, and b’tzelem E-lohim, the belief that all humans are made in the image of the Divine.

“Our horror at the deadly and ongoing assaults in Gaza and the West Bank and the realization that we, as Americans, have a hand in enabling those assaults lead us to support the Block the Bombs Act.

“Supporting the Block the Bombs Act is both a moral imperative and a strategic step toward protecting lives in Gaza,” it continues.

While the campaign is unbranded, its FAQ lists Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), Center for Jewish Nonviolence, IfNotNow, Jews for Racial & Economic Justice, New Jewish Narrative, and Rabbis for Ceasefire as groups supporting the bill.

These groups are widely disavowed by mainstream Judaism, and several have attracted significant controversy for their anti-Israel campaigning and BDS support.

Among the signatories are Rabbi Alissa Wise, former co-director of organizing for JVP and founder of Rabbis for Ceasefire; Rabbi Brant Rosen, co-founder of the JVP Rabbinical Council; Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb, longtime activist with JVP; and Rabbi David Mivasair, prominent activist with JVP and Independent Jewish Voices Canada.

Wise was previously photographed hugging Rasmea Odeh, who planted a bomb in a Jerusalem supermarket, killing two and wounding nine.

https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/article-906552

Organ harvesting, dog rape: How an anti-Israel report turns allegations into 'systemic' abuse

The report calls the graphic accounts of the rape of Israeli women on October 7, 2023, "fabricated" and intended to depict Palestinian men "as barbaric and depraved."

A new report by the Palestinian Feminist Collective (PFC), supported by Progressive International (PI), argues that Israel has a documented history of systematic sexualized and gendered violence against Palestinians “across detention centers, homes, military operations, and systems of surveillance, from the Nakba of 1948 to the present.”

Among other things, the 187-page report, “A Predatory State: Israeli Systemic Sexualized and Gendered Violence Against Palestinians,” advances as fact the claim that Israel trains dogs to rape Palestinians. It adds that this is “an essential indicator of Israel’s operationalized intent to dominate and destroy Palestinian life and the Palestinian right and will to resist.”

The dog rape claim was published in a May 2026 New York Times opinion column by Nicholas Kristof and sparked global condemnation, accusations of modern-day blood libel from groups such as the American Jewish Committee (AJC), and a threatened lawsuit from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“Sexualized violence, including rape and sexual enslavement, has been used by Zionist militias during the 1948 Nakba and later by the Israeli state as a method of displacement and domination over Palestinians. After 1967, such violence intensified against prisoners and detainees, laying the groundwork for the systematic sexual torture documented since October 2023,” the PFC report says.

It also pays particular attention to Israel’s purported “preponderance of attacks targeting Palestinian men, particularly their sexual and reproductive organs.”

CODEPINK’s Feminists: Stand with Palestine campaign has subsequently called on the Center for Reproductive Rights to share the reports in its networks and “uplift the findings regarding maternity health and sexual violence as it affects Palestinian women and families.”

The PFC is a US-based anti-Israel collective of Palestinian and Arab feminists that describes its work as advancing Palestinian social and political liberation through an anti-colonial and feminist framework.

On October 7, 2023, PFC posted on X/Twitter: “We affirm the right to resist settler-colonial dispossession, militarization, and occupation.”

PI is an international anti-Israel political network that seeks to organize progressive movements around a vision it describes as democratic, decolonized, egalitarian, anti-capitalist, and anti-imperialist. CODEPINK is a US-based, women-led grassroots anti-war and anti-Israel organization that supports Palestinian rights.

Report based on alleged testimonies framed as fact

The report is based on alleged testimonies that purportedly serve as evidence that sexualized violence took place at distinct times over the last two years, across multiple sites. The assaults were allegedly enacted by the “Israel Occupying Forces,” affiliated with multiple agencies, including soldiers, prison guards, police, and intelligence officers.

“Patterns of the documented sexualized violence include, but are not limited to the following: sexual slurs, forced nudity, forced stripping, forced witnessing of sexual acts, threats of sexual assault, sexualized comments or touch meant to degrade; physical torture that is sexualized in character or targets sexual or reproductive organs, including groping, squeezing, punching, and applying pressure to the genitals, forced oral sex, or being sexually abused while in stress positions; and cases of rape, including simulated rape, rape by IOF personnel, rape with a range of objects such as batons, phones, metal rods, sticks, or other objects, and rape by trained dogs.”

The patterns and methods used in the assaults reveal, “beyond a reasonable doubt, that sexualized violence is a systemic Israeli practice, which has accelerated in frequency and degree of brutality alongside the acceleration of genocide since 2023,” the report adds.

This alleged sexualized and gendered violence is framed throughout the report as a “colonial mechanism” deployed to destroy the “indigenous” Palestinian people.

https://www.jpost.com/international/article-906438

Flock CEO claims his AI surveillance cameras are all about ‘safety,’ but that’s not what his U.S. patent papers say

For the truth about Flock’s AI spy cameras, look at the product description in its U.S. Patent Office filing from August 16, 2022.

The CEO of Flock Group, the Atlanta-based maker of AI Flock cameras and other surveillance tools, went on Fox News over the weekend to defend his Orwellian company against the massive public backlash that has been gaining steam for months, to the point where some Americans are vandalizing and chopping down the ubiquitous Flock cameras that blanket more than 6,000 U.S. cities and towns.

Garrett Langley, the CEO of Flock, told Fox News on Saturday that he hopes there can be a national “compromise” that allows the AI spy cameras to continue operating while also honoring people’s right to privacy.

In classic limited hangout form, Fox News again let itself be used as a propaganda organ, conceding that Americans are fed up with Flock but then allowing this sinister company’s CEO to have the last word and come across as a man who seems sympathetic to Americans’ desire to retain their privacy rights.

For the truth about Flock’s AI spy cameras, look at the product description in its U.S. Patent Office filing from August 16, 2022.

The CEO of Flock Group, the Atlanta-based maker of AI Flock cameras and other surveillance tools, went on Fox News over the weekend to defend his Orwellian company against the massive public backlash that has been gaining steam for months, to the point where some Americans are vandalizing and chopping down the ubiquitous Flock cameras that blanket more than 6,000 U.S. cities and towns.

Garrett Langley, the CEO of Flock, told Fox News on Saturday that he hopes there can be a national “compromise” that allows the AI spy cameras to continue operating while also honoring people’s right to privacy.

In classic limited hangout form, Fox News again let itself be used as a propaganda organ, conceding that Americans are fed up with Flock but then allowing this sinister company’s CEO to have the last word and come across as a man who seems sympathetic to Americans’ desire to retain their privacy rights.

“Automated license plate readers, known as Flock cameras, are used by law enforcement in dozens of states to record vehicle data that can aid criminal investigations, but residents in communities with the cameras have raised concerns about privacy and potential misuse by law enforcement.”

For starters, these Flock cameras are not just reading license plates. They are picking up everything about your vehicle that makes it unique to your ownership and tracking it everywhere, creating a storable digital footprint of your travels.

Flock also has cameras that watch walking paths, biking paths, public parks and commercial parking lots. Flock is even in the process of rolling out a new line of spy drones that will respond to suspicious activities citywide and notify police of exactly what’s going on, most of which is perfectly innocuous everyday life. Then there’s the Flock Raven system that listens to what’s being said through super sensitive speaker devices.

But if you listen to Fox News, it’s just license plate reading that Flock is engaged in.

Speaking on “Saturday in America,” Langley argued the technology is vital for safety and called for compromise.

“When people talk about just one of these, privacy or safety, they’re prioritizing the wrong thing, and what we have to prioritize as a country is compromise,” Langley told Fox News. “How do we have our safety, and how do we balance privacy?”

Flock Safety’s website describes the tools as “technology that helps communities deter crime, respond to emergencies, and investigate safety incidents.” The company’s website states that it aims to balance public safety and privacy.

Padfield pointed out to me an obvious fact that I haven’t heard anywhere else about Flock.

The company markets itself under the name Flock Safety but that is not its legal name. That is just the name of its website, FlockSafety.com, and part of its branding. They’re supposedly all about “safety.” Langley and all other company spokespersons hammer that home in every media appearance: safety, safety, safety. They’re all about safety.

No, they are not. That’s nothing but a clever marketing gimmick that our local politicians and law enforcement have latched onto.

The company’s real name is Flock Group Inc.

https://www.theburningplatform.com/2026/08/25/exclusive-flock-ceo-claims-his-ai-surveillance-cameras-are-all-about-safety-but-thats-not-what-his-u-s-patent-papers-say/

https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/77/9a/03/7b3b26499077d4/US11416545.pdf