A Cluster Bomb on a School Hike
A boy was killed near the Lebanon border. Michigan's Jewish Democrats start to drift.
A school hike near Lebanon ended with a boy dead. An explosion Monday killed a boy of about 14 and injured 24 on an ORT Ma'alot high school hike. The IDF said it was likely a Hezbollah cluster bomb left over from fire on the area since Oct. 7, 2023. Police Commissioner Danny Levy said such school trips may be banned. 1
Anti-Jewish hate crimes rose 10% in England and Wales. Government data for the year to March 2026 shows a spike after last October's Heaton Park synagogue attack in Manchester. Jews face the highest rate of recorded religious hate crime of any religious group. The government pledged £250 million over three years to protect Jewish communities. 2
Michigan's debate cost Abdul El-Sayed some Jewish Democrats. At the Oct. 8 debate, El-Sayed said he wouldn't vote for defensive aid to Israel even under fire. Dennis Bernard of the Jewish Federations of North America told Jewish Insider that six lifelong Democrats he spoke with Saturday all plan to vote for Republican Mike Rogers. 3
Hero: Nim Shapira. His documentary TORN: The Israel-Palestine Poster War on NYC Streets, about the hostage-poster fights on New York sidewalks, won best documentary at the New York Emmys on Saturday. The week before, Shapira wrote for JTA about "the reluctance of some viewers to see Israeli victims as worthy of sympathy." 4
Villain: MK Yitzhak Kroizer. Police suspect the Otzma Yehudit lawmaker of hitting an officer during an Oct. 1 riot at the Mitzpe Yeriho settlement, where a crowd pulled a settler suspected of attacking a Palestinian village out of a police car. The attorney general approved questioning him, which rules out immunity. Kroizer says police assaulted him and calls the probe political. His party leader, Itamar Ben Gvir, reportedly backed the rioters. Lawmakers who side with a mob against the police shouldn't be writing the laws. 5
This week's parsha is Noach. 6 Spare a belated Columbus Day thought for Abraham Zacuto, the Salamanca-born rabbi whose 1496 astronomical tables let sailors fix their latitude by the noon sun. Expelled from Spain and then pushed out of Portugal, he died in Jerusalem. The moon has a crater named for him. 7
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