J Street Just Broke Its Own Record

J Street just made its biggest campaign bet ever, aimed at AIPAC's candidates. The liberal group will spend $3 million, a record for it, to defeat five House Republicans, including Ohio's Max Miller and Georgia's Mike Collins. President Jeremy Ben-Ami called it "a new era." AIPAC called it dark money. ¹

A Jewish jeweler from New York is out of Iran's most notorious prison, and still can't leave the country. Kamran Hekmati walked free from Tehran's Evin Prison on September 5, after Iran charged him for visiting Israel once, 13 years earlier, for his son's bar mitzvah. His passport isn't back. ²

An Israeli soldier shot a Palestinian man who "posed no apparent threat," and the army is investigating its own. It happened near the West Bank village of Faqoua during a clash between Palestinians and settlers from a new outpost. Footage shows him standing several meters off when he was hit in the leg. ³

The most Oct. 7-focused season of "Fauda" yet just became the #1 show on Netflix in Lebanon. Season five, which creators Lior Raz and Avi Issacharoff rewrote after October 7 to follow characters two years past the attack, also hit #2 in Jordan and #3 in Egypt and the UAE. The countries with the most reason to hate an Israeli spy show are the ones watching it the most. The season is dedicated to a crew member killed serving in Gaza; star Idan Amedi, badly wounded doing reserve duty there, sat this one out. Hezbollah entered the war a day after October 7, and the fighting displaced more than a million people in Lebanon. ⁴

Today is the second day of Rosh Hashanah, the one holiday observed two days everywhere, Israel included, when every other Jewish holiday there gets just one. Blame the ancient calendar: news of a confirmed new moon couldn't travel fast enough before the holiday started. ⁵⁶