The US Just Sank Five Tankers

The US Navy sank five Iranian oil tankers Tuesday night, a day after Iran's Revolutionary Guard missed an American warship with ballistic missiles. The ship evaded them; no one was hurt, per Central Command. Iran fired on a US base in Jordan. Secretary of State Marco Rubio: "for every time they do that, they're going to lose tankers." ¹

A Long Island man locked up in Iran for visiting Israel is reportedly free, but he still can't leave. Kamran Hekmati spent a year in Tehran's Evin Prison over a trip to Israel 13 years ago, for his son's bar mitzvah. Iran hasn't confirmed the release, and a travel ban keeps him there. ²

Rep. Jared Moskowitz says pro-Israel Democrats have gone lonely in their own party. He told Jewish Insider that colleagues face pressure from their consultants to distance from AIPAC, driven more by harassment than policy disputes. Moskowitz blames a bot campaign for turning an "80-20 issue" into a "20-80" one. ³

The final season of "Fauda" landed on Netflix Tuesday with a score built entirely around October 7. Composer Gilad Benamram rewrote the music after the massacre; track titles include "Ten Seven," "Never Forget," and "I Will Wait for You," with vocalist Marina Maximilian featured throughout. Benamram calls the main theme "the mother of all the musical themes we've used," and most of the season is set two years after the attack, still living with what he calls a sadness "imprinted on all of us now." The show dedicated its first episode to crew member Matan Meir, killed in Gaza in December 2023. ⁴

Wednesday is 27 Elul on the Hebrew calendar, two days from Rosh Hashanah. Sundown Friday starts the year 5787, opening the Ten Days of Repentance that run through Yom Kippur on September 21. ⁵⁶⁷