Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa speaks during a joint press conference with French President Emmanuel Macron after a meeting at the Elysee Palace in Paris, France, May 7, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Stephanie Lecocq/Pool

Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa announced that Damascus is holding indirect talks with Israel through mediators, confirming earlier reports of negotiations between the two countries amid escalating regional tensions.

As Syria’s new leadership seeks regional support to address its growing conflict with its southern neighbor, al-Sharaa said the indirect talks — reportedly mediated by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) — were aimed at “easing tensions and preventing the situation from spiraling out of control for all involved parties.”

Speaking at a press conference in Paris on Wednesday after meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron, the Syrian leader also said that “the Israeli intervention constitutes a violation of the 1974 agreement” between Jerusalem and Damascus.

Following the fall of long-time Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in December, Israel deployed troops into a buffer zone along the Syrian border to establish a military position aimed at preventing terrorists from launching attacks against the Jewish state.

The previously demilitarized zone in the Golan Heights was established under the 1974 Disengagement of Forces Agreement between Damascus and Jerusalem that ended the Yom Kippur War. However, Israel considered the agreement void after the collapse of Assad’s regime.

Earlier this year, al-Sharaa became Damascus’s transitional president after leading the rebel campaign that ousted Assad, whose Iran-backed rule had strained ties with the Arab world during the nearly 14-year Syrian war, with an offensive spearheaded by al-Sharaa’s Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group, a former al-Qaeda affiliate.

During the press conference in Paris, al-Sharaa also revealed that his government is reaching out to countries with diplomatic ties to Israel, urging them to pressure Jerusalem to stop what he described as “IDF [Israel Defense Forces] interventions and attacks” in Syria.

Earlier on Wednesday, Reuters reported that the UAE was facilitating a backchannel for indirect talks between Jerusalem and Damascus.

Since 2020, as part of the Abraham Accords — a series of historic US-brokered normalization agreements between Israel and several Arab countries — the UAE and Jerusalem have strengthened their diplomatic relations and cooperation, positioning Abu Dhabi as a key avenue to address this regional dispute, given the absence of direct relations between Israel and Syria.

These mediation efforts follow Israel’s recent strikes in Syria, which Israeli officials have framed as a message to the country’s new leadership in response to threats against the Druze, an Arab minority sect whose religion, originally derived from Islam, has adherents in Syria, Lebanon, and Israel.

Jerusalem has pledged to defend the Druze community in Syria with military force if they come under threat.

For its part, the Syrian government has accused Israel of fueling instability and interfering in its internal affairs, while the new leadership insists it is focused on unifying the country after 14 years of conflict.

Following his meeting with al-Sharaa in Paris, where he promised to lift long-standing sanctions on Syria, Macron condemned Israel’s military campaign in the south of the country.

“You can’t ensure your country’s security by violating the territorial integrity of its neighbors,” the French leader said in a press conference.

For years, Israel has conducted strikes in Syria as part of a covert campaign to undermine Iran and its proxies, including Hezbollah, the Iran-backed terrorist group in Lebanon that expanded its influence after intervening in Syria’s civil war in support of Assad.

Since the fall of Assad’s regime last year, Israel has ramped up its military operations in southern Syria, with officials asserting that the strikes are aimed at targeting Islamist militant groups. These actions have included bombings of military sites and the deployment of ground forces along the Golan Heights buffer zone.

Although al-Sharaa has repeatedly pledged to unify Syria’s armed forces and restore stability after years of civil war, the new leadership continues to face major hurdles in convincing the international community of its commitment to peace.

Incidents of sectarian violence — including the mass killing of pro-Assad Alawites in March — have deepened fears among minority groups about the rise of Islamist factions and drawn condemnation from global powers currently engaged in discussions on sanctions relief and humanitarian aid.

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Peter Beinart, a prominent anti-Israel writer, being interviewed in January 2025. Photo: Screenshot

One of the big problems with New York Times coverage of Israel and American Jewry is the extent to which it relies on a single voice who is out of the mainstream and who isn’t a particularly reliable guide — Peter Beinart.

How far beyond the pale is Beinart? A Times columnist who is more sensible, Bret Stephens, recently wrote in Sapir about an invitation that involved “a well-known Jewish writer whose political views had, over the years, shifted from center-left Zionism to far-left anti-Zionism. The two of us had previously appeared in at least a dozen public events and, notwithstanding our deep political differences, had an amicable offstage relationship. There was also a generous honorarium on offer.”

Stephens wrote, “This time, however, something in me revolted at the thought of seeing my name next to his. I told the organizer that I would not share a platform with him. Not after October 7. Not for any amount of money. Never again.”

It was clearly a reference to Beinart. Stephens wrote, “To call now for the end of Israel invites the destruction of the Jews. That’s not a position that deserves a stage, particularly when it isn’t even made forthrightly. It fails the test of intellectual seriousness and honesty.”

Yet the New York Times has given Beinart a stage — with at least 11 Times bylines after October 7. I’ve called him the New York Times‘s favorite Jew.

Beinart’s latest piece for the Times was published April 18, complaining about what he calls a “redefinition of Jewishness” to include Zionism.

He claims that “in New York alone, at least 10 non-Zionist or anti-Zionist minyanim, or prayer communities, have sprouted in the past several years.” As much as Beinart may insist or attempt to portray anti-Zionism as authentically Jewish, these communities are going to have issues when they confront the actual words of the Hebrew Bible, with its story of the journey of the Jewish people to the land God promised and verses such as “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning.” The ones redefining Judaism are the anti-Zionists, not the Zionists.

Some of these anti-Zionist groups billing themselves as “Jewish” exist “with organizing support from Christians for a Free Palestine.” Or they are funded with money from the non-Jewish Rockefeller Brothers Fund (on whose board Beinart sits, a fact not disclosed to Times readers). There’s nothing wrong with Jewish groups taking non-Jewish money for Jewish purposes, but taking it to undermine Israel or to redefine Judaism as anti-Israel activism is something else. The Beinart column talks extensively about Jewish Voice for Peace without disclosing to Times readers that Beinart is on the board of a foundation that is one of its main funders.

If the regular appearances of Beinart’s column in the Times weren’t enough, the Times book review recently ran a piece that deifies Beinart, referring to his writing as “scriptural” and fawning about his supposed courage. “For years, and at great personal cost, Beinart has been one of the most influential Jewish voices for Palestine,” the Times book reviewer writes. Beinart may have paid a personal cost, but professionally, he’s done okay for himself: he’s a contributing opinion writer at the New York Times, a $182,710 a year distinguished professor at the City University of New York, and runs around giving speeches at Stanford, Princeton, and Harvard.

The Times briefly came to its senses and dumped Beinart as a contributing writer in April 2021 as part of a broader housecleaning, but he’s since regained the title. A year ago, when I wrote about this, I said Beinart’s utility at the Times was commercial: “Some portion of the Times online readership — alienated graduate students and other young, college educated liberals, along with increasing numbers of non-Americans — are looking for someone to give them a pass to hate Israel, basically to excuse their antisemitism. Beinart serves that function.” In that sense, Beinart himself is the New York Times version of those Jewish anti-Israel protesters on college campuses that he devotes his column so ardently to defending.

Good for Bret Stephens for giving Beinart the “never again” treatment. Eventually maybe the people running the New York Times will wise up and make the same call.

Ira Stoll was managing editor of The Forward and North American editor of The Jerusalem Post. His media critique, a regular Algemeiner feature, can be found here.

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Then-US Reps. Cori Bush (left), Jamaal Bowman (right), and Rashida Tlaib (center). Tlaib is still in office. Photo: Reuters

Former US Democratic Reps. Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman praised anti-Israel organizations and encouraged left-wing activists to continue speaking up in favor of “Palestinian liberation” and against the so-called “genocide” in Gaza during the latest episode of their new show.

“I want to especially appreciate all of the organizations that are out, and when you protest you also protest to save lives in Gaza. You also are standing for Palestinian liberation; you’re also speaking up against the genocide,” Bush said on a new episode of their show, “Bowman & Bush,” on the Zeteo network.

Bush added that “what we need right now” is a mass mobilization effort behind the pro-Palestinian cause. She encouraged activists to become engaged in foreign affairs, comparing the war in Gaza to the ongoing crises in Haiti and Congo. 

In the 19 months following the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, in which Palestinian terrorists murdered 1,200 people and kidnapped 251 hostages, left-wing activists across the US have organized an unremitting barrage of demonstrations condemning the Jewish state for its military response in Hamas-ruled Gaza.

US federal agencies have established a link between domestic anti-Israel protests and adversarial foreign actors such as Iran. Then-Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said in July, for example, that the Iranian regime has organized “influence efforts” to undermine trust in American institutions, adding that “actors tied to Iran’s government” encouraged and provided financial support to rampant protests opposing Israel’s defensive military operations against the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas in Gaza.

Bowman also took shots at Israel during his show, saying that liberals need to “fight for democracy everywhere,” including within the Jewish state. He slammed progressive American groups for refusing to speak up about the supposed “apartheid” to which he claimed Israel subjects Palestinians.

“If you’re fighting for American democracy you have to fight for democracy everywhere. You can’t support apartheid in one country, but American democracy here,” Bowman said. “That’s not how that works, and there’s a lot of people and a lot of organizations who are completely silent on apartheid in Israel.”

The former congressman lamented America’s close ties with Israel, accusing the Jewish state of perpetuating “white supremacy” and being an outpost of “Western imperialism.” He argued that Israel misuses American tax dollars to advance “apartheid, repression, and oppression.”

Following Hamas’s Oct. 7 invasion of and massacre across southern Israel, both Bush and Bowman issued intense criticism of the Jewish state’s defensive military efforts in Gaza.

The progressive former lawmakers called for a ‘ceasefire” between Israel and the Hamas terrorist group less than a month removed from the Oct. 7 massacre. They each falsely accused Israel of engaging in an array of war crimes in Gaza, including “genocide,” “ethnic cleansing,” and imposing a “famine.” The duo also dismissed Israel’s counterterrorism initiatives in the West Bank as “apartheid.”

Bowman specifically declared the mass rapes of Israeli women on Oct. 7 a “hoax,” before walking back his comments following widespread backlash. He has accused Israel of advancing “white nationalism” and “settler colonialism” and also suggested he may no longer support Israel’s unequivocal right to exist or defend itself. Bowman also later expressed remorse for voting in favor of Iron Dome funding, claiming that Israel weaponizes its air defense system to “continue apartheid, oppression, open-air prison, occupation, and now the genocide.”

Bush ultimately lost her reelection campaign to St. Louis attorney Wesley Bell in August while making her opposition to Israel a key talking point of the race. Bowman came up short against Westchester County executive George Latimer. 

Zeteo, the network on which “Bowman & Bush” airs, has positioned itself as a major source of anti-Israel content creation. Mehdi Hasan, the network’s founder and main host, has declared the ongoing war in Gaza a “genocide” and repeatedly pressured US lawmakers to implement an arms embargo against the Jewish state. Hosts on Zeteo have also downplayed Hamas’s attacks against Israel, oftentimes referring to the terrorist group as a “resistance.”

The post Former US Reps. Cori Bush, Jamaal Bowman Encourage Left-Wing Organizations to Push for ‘Palestinian Liberation’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.