OK, then here’s a simple historical fact: There were DOZENS of synagogues at the time of Christ. I know some people (Kee, etc.) have tried to deny the existence of these synagogues, insisting that their presence in the New Testament is anachronistic. That’s was an unreasonable assertion in the 1990s when Kee made it, and has been easily refuted by the discovery of many of these synagogues since then.
This is in addition to the Samaritan synagogues, and the fact that the Jews in Christ’s time in diaspora regular refer to houses of prayer using the same Greek word used for Samaritan synagogues suggest that Jews in diaspora likely had synagogues similar to the Samaritans. (If they disparaged the Samaritan synagogues, why would they use the same name for their own?) So it’s reasonable to assume there were synagogues in literally every Jewish settlement across the entire Hellenic world (see Mordecai Aviam, for instance).
So yeah, the entire issue is created by Jews and anti-skeptics to cast doubt on both Christian scripture and the authenticity of Christian worship, but is a complete and utter deliberate, indefensible lie.
And that’s why I noted that this mainstream publication was siding with indefensible bigotry in the way it worded things, in spite of the fact that the news item they were covering is added proof of that the claims are incontrovertably nonsensical and ideological deceit.