The General Wanted It in Writing

Israel's army chief reportedly pushed back on Netanyahu. Channel 12 reported that IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir resisted the prime minister's instruction for a military action that defense officials feared could set off a fight with Iran before Tuesday's election. Zamir asked for the legal authorization in signed documents. Netanyahu called the report "nonsense." Avigdor Liberman called the prime minister's conduct "tantamount to treason." ¹

Bill Ackman wants Ben Gvir and Smotrich out. The billionaire Trump donor, who supports Netanyahu, wrote on X that the two far-right ministers "have caused Israel enormous reputational damage" and should not serve in the next government. Netanyahu will almost certainly need both to form one. ²

Britain's Board of Deputies declares the Green Party racist. The vote Sunday was 118-1, three weeks after the Greens adopted a motion calling Zionism racism. The Board will treat the Greens like other parties it considers racist; its president, Phil Rosenberg, said the motion "gives prejudice against Jews a political license." Green leader Zack Polanski, who is Jewish, neither spoke against the motion nor voted on it. ³

CAIR goes after a Reform camp. Greenwich Public Schools is sending sixth graders on a four-day trip to Eisner Camp in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. CAIR Connecticut urged the district to stop using it; board chair Farhan Memon wrote that the camp's programming "incorporates connections to Israel"; parents had seen photos of Israeli flags and yellow ribbons. Superintendent Toni Jones said the district "will not take a political or religious stand," and the trip is on. Four of the program's seven sites are affiliated with Christian organizations, and CAIR went after the Jewish one. Our view: the district got it right, and a yellow ribbon for hostages is not a political display. Asking a Jewish camp to look less Jewish before it hosts other people's kids is chutzpah of the bad kind. ⁴

This week's parsha is Vayera. For the table: Oscar Levis, a Jamaican-born pitcher for the Negro Leagues' Cuban Stars who threw the first no-hitter in Cuban baseball history in 1924, came from a Sephardic family on his father's side. A 1926 headline called him "a Spanish Jew." With Negro League stats now counted, he ranks eighth in career WAR among Jewish pitchers. ⁵⁶