Rachel Avraham is the CEO of the Dona Gracia Center for Diplomacy and an Israel-based journalist. She is the author of “Women and Jihad: Debating Palestinian Female Suicide Bombings in the American, Israeli and Arab Media.”
(Oct. 12, 2026 / JNS)
When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took the podium at the United Nations on Sept. 24, he gave a name to a conflict with no conventional battlefield. Israel, he said, was fighting an “eighth front”—a struggle over international opinion, fought through universities, social media and foreign governments. Then he singled out Turkey, calling it the latest “superspreader of antisemitic lies.”
Less than a week later, U.S. ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee described what sounded like the same war. He warned of a “propaganda machine” working against Israel, naming Qatar. In a longer version of his remarks, Russia and China also appeared. Turkey did not.
The omission is worth examining. Turkey matters because its confrontation with Israel is unusually public. Ministries issue statements, security bodies weigh in, courts pursue cases and government messaging travels through a sympathetic media environment. Yet when senior American officials describe the foreign forces shaping hostility toward Israel, Turkey occupies a different place in the conversation.
The Dor Moriah Analytical Center’s September 2026 expert survey provides context for that discrepancy. Its panel of 11 specialists described Turkey’s campaign as systematic rather than episodic, with nine saying it operates through standing state institutions. The volume of messaging changes with events, but the institutions remain in place.
Recent months illustrate the pattern. Turkey’s Foreign Ministry has compared Netanyahu to Hitler. Turkish judicial and government officials have pursued legal action against the Israeli prime minister. The country’s National Security Council has accused Israel of violating Syrian sovereignty, while the Defense Ministry has condemned Israeli-related activity on the Temple Mount. These actions belong to different institutional spheres and should not be portrayed as a single operation. Together, however, they show why Ankara’s confrontation with Israel cannot be reduced to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s speeches.
Huckabee has repeatedly argued that foreign money and organized messaging contribute to hostility toward Israel in the United States. Speaking to the Republican Jewish Coalition in August, he attacked what he called the “cold, brutal cash” flowing into Middle East studies at American universities from the Muslim Brotherhood, Qatar and other countries. But, again, Turkey was not among the countries he specifically identified.
That absence is notable because Huckabee himself has become a target of Turkish media. On Sept. 30, the Yeni Şafak newspaper columnist Taha Kılınç attacked Huckabee’s claim that biblical illiteracy was contributing to declining American support for Israel. A newspaper column is not a government directive, and Yeni Şafak should not be equated with the Turkish state. It operates, however, in a broader environment where official institutions generate confrontational messaging about Israel and sympathetic media amplify it.
Netanyahu has placed Turkey explicitly on Israel’s information war map.
The contrast became sharper with U.S. ambassador to Turkey and special envoy for Syria Tom Barrack, who works on issues where Turkish security interests increasingly intersect. After Israel struck the Abu al-Duhur airbase in northern Syria in August, Barrack described the attack as an unnecessary escalation and discussed several possible explanations.
One explanation caused controversy in Israel. Barrack said a “postulated theory” was that the Israelis had been “baiting the Turks,” perhaps in a move that could resonate during an election campaign. He did not present this as an intelligence finding, and the facts were disputed: Barrack said U.S. checks had found no Turkish troop movement toward the base, while Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said Israel had intelligence concerning Turkish intentions and shared the relevant information with Washington.
It would be easy to turn these episodes into a claim that two American ambassadors have consciously chosen Turkey over Israel. The evidence does not support that. What it reveals is a difference in emphasis. Huckabee identifies other foreign actors when discussing anti-Israel propaganda without mentioning Turkey. Barrack questioned important elements of Israel’s account of its confrontation with Ankara in Syria and emphasized the dangers of escalation.
Washington has reasons for caution. Turkey remains a NATO ally and has become increasingly important to U.S. diplomacy in Syria. The Trump administration has explored closer defense ties with Ankara. Netanyahu opposed Turkey obtaining F-35s, while Trump dismissed the objection in July, saying, “Nobody tells me what we should be selling or not.” No F-35 transfer has been completed, and Turkey’s Russian S-400 system remains a major obstacle to it.
The issue is larger than a dispute over messaging. Washington is managing relations with two partners whose interests increasingly diverge. Turkey is useful to the United States in areas where Israeli officials view Turkish ambitions with suspicion. Thus, it is in U.S. interests to contain Israeli-Turkish friction rather than automatically adopt Jerusalem’s interpretation of every confrontation.
Dor Moriah’s research is relevant precisely because it treats Turkey’s information activity as an institutional phenomenon rather than a series of angry statements. That doesn’t prove that Turkish messaging is responsible for declining American support for Israel or that Washington is deliberately shielding Ankara. American public opinion is shaped by many factors, and claims about political motives require evidence not available here.
What the public record shows is a widening difference in perception. Netanyahu has placed Turkey explicitly on Israel’s information war map. Huckabee, when identifying foreign sources of anti-Israel propaganda, has looked elsewhere. Barrack approaches Ankara as a partner whose confrontation with Israel must be managed rather than intensified.
That may be the more important story. Israel increasingly sees Turkey’s rhetoric, regional ambitions and institutional activity as parts of a broader strategic challenge. Washington sees a difficult NATO ally whose cooperation it needs. Huckabee’s omissions and Barrack’s interventions do not prove an American policy of protecting Turkey, but they reveal how differently Washington and Jerusalem have begun to define the same problem.