Today at noon ET: Guy Haran has been taking people around Israel's wineries since 2006. He's on live from Israel to talk about the land, the people who make the wine, and a few Israeli bottles for your Thanksgiving table. Online and free.
"If I had to do it again, I'd have to do it again," Trump says of the Iran war, and the newest people telling him it wasn't worth it are in his own party. In Jerusalem, President Isaac Herzog, consulting the parties after the 27 October election, asked United Torah Judaism this morning whether men who aren't studying should enlist. Yitzhak Pindrus, a UTJ MK, answered with Torato Umanuto, Torah as a man's whole occupation. And it's Kristallnacht week, which a bike club in Philadelphia has picked to ride past six restaurants it's crossed out on a flier.
Flash Brief: The Day in 90 Seconds or Less
Iran: Israel plans for three ways the war could go, one a Hormuz deal that leaves Iran's missiles and uranium alone. See The War Today.
Lebanon: An IDF drone hits two men watching troops from outside the security zone, the first such strike in weeks. See The War Today.
Gaza: The IDF and Shin Bet say they killed Jamal Abu Saeed, Hamas's operations chief, who held Omer Shem Tov captive. See Briefly Noted.
The mandate: United Torah Judaism recommends nobody to Herzog, and the Joint List's backing would put Eisenkot at 67. See Briefly Noted.
Ayman Odeh: The Shin Bet checks whether the former Joint List leader took Palestinian Authority money, and starts briefing police. See Inside Israel.
Jericho: Eight Jewish families move into houses they bought outright on state land at the edge of Jericho. See Inside Israel.
The blame: Vance blames the Iran war and Israel for his party's loss, and Israel's UN ambassador calls the war America's decision. See Israel and the World.
Arms orders: The State Department counts $10 billion in Israeli weapons orders beyond what the aid agreement covers. See Israel and the World.
Montreal: A kosher bakery burns a day after surviving an arson attempt, and the hate crimes unit joins the case. See Israel and the World.
Germany: Federal police count 670 Islamist antisemitic crimes in 2025, the most on record, against 16 in 2022. See Briefly Noted.
Prague: The Czech Republic arranges to buy four more of Rafael's Spyder air-defense systems, on top of the four from 2021. See Briefly Noted.
This Shabbat we read about Avraham buying the cave at Machpelah. Ephron offers it as a gift, and Avraham insists on paying b'chesef maleh, the full price, so nobody can come back later and say it wasn't his. Israel Gantz, who heads the Yesha Council, used those same two words yesterday about houses in Jericho. It's a good week to remember why Avraham bothered. A good share of Israel's American weapons were ordered against money Washington had promised, and now the Congress Trump's party just lost gets to decide whether it ever arrives.
The full brief — The War Today, Inside Israel, Israel and the World, Briefly Noted, and Developments to Watch — is on mitzpe.org for members. Membership comes through the Atlanta Israel Coalition.
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This week's Watchwords
President Trump told Fox & Friends on Election Day morning that American military aid to Israel stops in December, and that Netanyahu had "brought it up." Democrats won the House and the Senate that night. From January the argument moves past the aid to every weapon Israel still buys, one sale at a time, in front of committees Democrats will chair.
President Trump said on Tuesday that American military aid to Israel stops at the end of this year, and by Wednesday morning the Democrats had won both houses of Congress. He said it on Fox & Friends, phoning in on the morning of the midterms. "We give Israel $4 billion a year — and we made a deal months ago that we're stopping," he said, adding that Netanyahu "brought it up". He gave a reason, too. Ending the aid was a campaign promise from Democrats like Abdul El-Sayed, who was running for the Senate in Michigan, and Trump didn't see why Republicans should "suffer the slings from lunatics like an El-Sayed" over it. El-Sayed won anyway. The money in question is the last two years of the aid agreement Washington signed with Israel in 2016: $3.3 billion a year for weapons, plus $500 million a year for missile defense, Iron Dome and David's Sling among it, through 2028. Netanyahu told The Economist in January he wanted to "taper off military aid within the next 10 years," and by June he wanted it to start "in the last two years of the Trump administration." Trump picked December. Israel can still buy American weapons, and from January every big sale goes past Gregory Meeks, the New York Democrat in line to chair the House Foreign Affairs Committee, who held up a $2.8 billion sale of 2,000-pound bombs in September, along with Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, the top Democrat on Senate Foreign Relations. And the people who wanted the aid gone have already moved on. Darializa Avila Chevalier, a Democratic socialist just elected to the House from New York, said within hours that ending it "is not enough" and asked for "a full arms embargo, and the Palestinian right of return." Congress still gets a say on the money, and Netanyahu was already planning to bring it down. What's being asked for now is every sale after it, screened by a chairman who's used a hold before, and then millions of people with a claim to move into Israel, which would be the end of the Jewish state.
Below the line: the week's deployable language — what to say when the reporter asks, how to answer the donor worry, the claims you'll field, and the traps that lose the room. Members read the full brief.
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YouTube: David Sussman: Why Abraham Insisted on Paying Full Price
