Israel votes Tuesday, and it's tied
51 seats a side, ten short of a majority. Also: a Netflix rabbi graded on his Judaism.
A Jewish man was stabbed in the back in the Diamond District. The Orthodox man from Crown Heights, attacked Wednesday on 47th Street, is in stable condition. Shomrim footage shows someone crowding him and jabbing a hand into his back. No arrest yet. Jews are the targets of 53% of the city's hate crimes this year. 12
Six pipe bombs in a Utah bedroom. Federal prosecutors charged Skyler AJ Rose, 22, with a hate crime over a December 2025 post that read "I wanna blow up a synagogue." Police found the bombs and two rifles at his family's home. His phone showed a Google Maps search for a synagogue three miles away. 3
Settler extremists danced at a wedding to an anti-Zionist anthem. Kan aired footage of hilltop youth at a Gush Etzion wedding this week dancing to a song popular with Neturei Karta, one waving what appeared to be an IDF-supplied automatic weapon. Afterward, settlers reportedly torched a car in nearby Beit Ummar and spray-painted "Regards, Dahari and mazal tov." No arrests were made. 4
A tie with four days to go
Israelis vote Tuesday, Oct. 27, and the final Zman Yisrael/Times of Israel poll has nobody winning. Gadi Eisenkot's Yashar gets 23 seats and Netanyahu's Likud 21. Each bloc lands at 51, ten short of a majority, with Arab-led parties holding the balance. Almost 60% of respondents say Netanyahu should retire if he can't form a government. 5
Iran hangs over the last week. Channel 13 reported that IDF chief Eyal Zamir told a private meeting, "We do not see any indications of a need to strike Iran before the election." Critics accuse Netanyahu of wanting a war that would delay the vote; he denies it. 6
Then there's the counting. The High Court ruled 2-1 that party-appointed polling officials can't count voters during the day and send the totals to campaign headquarters in real time, which Likud had asked to do. 7
Thursday was also the state memorial for Yitzhak Rabin, 31 years after his assassination. President Isaac Herzog told candidates "Words kill" and said Yigal Amir must "spend the rest of his life in prison." Netanyahu, who has skipped the ceremony since 2019, stayed away again. 8
On Election Day, relatives of Oct. 7 victims will stand outside polling stations with signs. Yocheved Lifshitz, whose husband Oded was murdered in captivity, will hold one that reads, "My husband was killed in captivity, remember him in the voting booth!" The organizers say they back no party. 9
Season 3 of "Nobody Wants This" is out on Netflix, and the Jewish press is grading it. Hey Alma's Evelyn Frick gives it 4.5 out of 5 hot rabbis for Jewish accuracy and calls Joanne's mikveh in the Pacific "moving and authentic." Writing for Kveller, Frick also argues the show works better when it does less Judaism. 1011 Hanging over all of it is Adam Brody's line to GQ: "Put me down as thinking it's a genocide." Rabbi Steve Leder, who consulted on season one, called the comments shocking and disgusting. Tovah Feldshuh says viewers "know where I stand." She is still the best reason to watch. 12
Britain accepted 27 recommendations from Sir David Bell's review of antisemitism in English schools, and the National Education Union is already fighting the part about the IHRA definition. 13 Our view: the union picked the wrong fight. Bell found that three in five Jewish students had faced antisemitism at school, mostly jokes and stereotypes, and that about half never reported it because they didn't think anyone would take them seriously. The core of the plan is training staff and recording incidents, which goes straight at that problem. The union's own general secretary, Daniel Kebede, points out that 65% of teachers got no antiracism training in the past year. That's a case for more training, and this plan delivers some. Argue about IHRA after the teachers have had the course.
Dan Osborn, the Democrat-backed independent running against Sen. Pete Ricketts in Nebraska, released an ad saying Ricketts "knows whose side he's on: AIPAC and defense contractors." At one point a smiling Ricketts stands in front of a building labeled "Hospital for Orphans & Puppies" as a bomb blows it up. Polls show the race tightening. 14 Rep. Don Bacon, a retiring Republican who co-chairs the House antisemitism task force, called the messaging anti-Jewish, and he's right. It's also bad filmmaking. Somebody in that campaign office decided orphans alone wouldn't land, added puppies, and then wrote both on the building in case the viewer missed it.
Hero: Robert Kraft. His Blue Square Alliance Against Hate held its first benefit gala Wednesday night at the Waldorf Astoria and raised more than $32 million, the most the group has brought in on a single night. Kraft shared the stage with Tom Brady and Cardinal Timothy Dolan. "Silence is hate's greatest ally," he said. The ADL counted 9,354 antisemitic incidents in 2024, its highest in 46 years of counting. 15
Villain: Pal-Awda. The group, which has bragged about forcing a Jewish community event out of Queens, says it will now protest an Israeli real estate event in Riverdale, a heavily Jewish part of the Bronx. Rep. Ritchie Torres, Borough President Vanessa Gibson, and both Dinowitzes, Jeffrey in Albany and Eric on the City Council, answered with a joint letter calling the campaign "an attack on Jewish New Yorkers." Our view: they're right, and the choice of neighborhood is the tell. 1617