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Last Thursday’s Michigan Senate debate, where Democratic nominee Abdul El-Sayed framed Israel as a threat to the United States comparable to Iran and said he would not vote to send defensive aid to Israel even if it were under fire, proved to be a breaking point for some Jewish Democrats who were holding out hope that the Democratic nominee would moderate his views in the general election.
Community leaders said that they’re hearing from some previously undecided Jewish Democrats that, after they debate, they now plan to back Republican Mike Rogers.
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Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas postponed the PA’s upcoming elections, slated for late November, to Sept. 11, 2027; Abbas has repeatedly postponed Palestinian legislative elections, which were last held in 2006.
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Airports in Saudi Arabia and Yemen were struck on Sunday as Riyadh and the Houthi militia continued to trade strikes, a day after Houthi attacks on a Saudi airport killed at least a dozen people.
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Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed denied on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he or any of his family members has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood — accusations his opponent Mike Rogers made during the first Michigan Senate debate last week.
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The Pentagon quietly raised the number of servicemembers killed during this year’s hostilities with Iran from 18 to 21, with 865 wounded.
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At least 12 people, including one American, were killed and more than 300 were injured in Houthi strikes targeting the King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, marking a serious escalation in the ongoing fighting between Saudi Arabia and the Iran-backed terror group in Yemen.
President Donald Trump said after the attacks that the U.S. “may” join Riyadh in striking the Houthis. “We will make a decision. We move very quickly,” he told reporters.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio condemned the strikes in a statement, calling them “reprehensible attacks: that “demonstrate a blatant disregard for innocent civilian life. They must stop now.”
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The barrage of Houthi strikes has put into question Saudi Arabia’s marquee fall conferences, the World Petroleum Council Energy Congress this week and the Future Investment Initiative, known as “Davos in the Desert,” two weeks later. According to the Financial Times, executives are weighing whether to attend after the U.K. advised against all but essential travel to Riyadh and several airlines suspended flights to the capital. FII organizers told participants on Friday night that the summit will go ahead with “comprehensive security measures,” though a person familiar with their thinking told the FT the energy congress will serve as a bellwether for whether the flagship summit proceeds.
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AIPAC’s super PAC, United Democracy Project, entered the Michigan Senate general election, spending nearly $100,000 on direct-mail ads opposing Democratic nominee Abdul El-Sayed. The mailers, being sent to 130,000 Jewish voters, highlight El-Sayed’s response to the terrorist attack on Temple Israel in West Bloomfield earlier this year.
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Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) will campaign with Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed next week on a bus tour through the Upper Peninsula, with stops planned in Escanaba, Iron Mountain and Marquette. Ocasio-Cortez, who endorsed El-Sayed in the primary and appeared with him at a New York fundraiser this week, is also set to hold rallies in Rochester and Ypsilanti and a “Latinos for Abdul” event in Detroit.
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The U.S. Army has begun rolling out Bradley Fighting Vehicles equipped with Elbit Systems’ Iron Fist active protection system, marking the system’s entry into operational service with American forces. The rollout follows a $228 million contract awarded in January to equip Bradleys with the Israeli-made technology, which is designed to intercept incoming missiles, rockets and drones.
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Katie Zacharia, a conservative commentator and former Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman, has been selected as the next White House press secretary, succeeding Karoline Leavitt, according to The New York Times.
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A plume of smoke rises during a reported airstrike by the Saudi-led coalition on the Houthi-controlled Yemeni capital Sanaa, on October 9, 2026.
Worthy Reads
Articles and items across the web that are worth reading
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Hatred on the March
In Fox News, Jeff Miller and Stuart Eizenstat, respectively the current and former chairs of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, raise concerns about the rise of antisemitism, aided by malign actors. “Furthermore, state actors like Iran, Qatar, China and Russia spread antisemitic and anti-Israel conspiracy theories and Holocaust denial to stir hatred of Jews and sow chaos in democracies. They are succeeding. Antisemitism is no longer lurking at society’s fringes. It is marching openly through its institutions. Violent antisemitism is at levels not seen since the Holocaust.”
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Facing the Palestinian Question
In The New York Times, Shira Efron, a senior fellow at RAND, posits that Israel’s next government must address questions around the Palestinians in order to improve the country’s global social standing. “No amount of walking is going to make the Palestinian question go away. The current government tried to settle the matter for good, seeking to bury the idea of the Palestinian question once and for all. Instead, this government may have exhumed it, turning it into a domestic issue in nations around the world and leaving whichever government comes next no choice but to finally reckon with it.”
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The Meaning of Mourning
In The Wall Street Journal, Kenneth Brander, the president and rosh yeshiva of Ohr Torah Stone, reflects on Jewish mourning practices. “We need the dead to take on an enduring role in the lives of the living. That takes time, and the shaping of time spent mourning is one of the purposes of ritual. In Jewish practice, when one says the name of a deceased person, one adds the phrase “may his memory be a blessing.” The goal of mourning is to make that phrase true: The memory of the dead actually improves our physical lives and our moral selves.”
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No Direction Home
In eJewishPhilanthropy, the Hadar Institute’s Rabbi Avi Killip reflects on the feeling of political homelessness increasingly felt by American Jews. “Those who once felt comfortable on the left are facing the antisemitism that has been there for years but now become impossible to overlook or excuse. Those who found a home on the right, grateful for leaders willing to acknowledge and defend Israel and Israelis, have watched that support waffle and wane with the winds of the moment.”
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Mamdani’s Message
In The Free Press, Eli Lake weighs in on New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s statement on the Oct. 7, 2023, terror attacks, which drew bipartisan criticism for its focus on Israel’s war in Gaza. “These are not the errant ravings of a fringe activist or edgy podcaster. This is the mayor of New York sounding like the hate-filled radicals that swarmed American campuses in 2023 and 2024. One should have grace for the youth and the terminally online. But the mayor is a civic leader. When he spreads this poison, he mainstreams it.”
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Back Home, For Now
In The Atlantic, Amir Tibon, whose family survived the Oct. 7 attacks in their Nahal Oz home, ties his decision to permanently relocate back to the kibbutz on the outcome of the upcoming elections. “Emigration, of course, is always easier to imagine than to execute, and there are many people in this land who would suffer if this government returns to power but who have nowhere to go. … Yet for many Israelis who do have options abroad, starting over somewhere else, with all of its difficulties, seems a better choice than four more years of Netanyahu’s corruption, Ben-Gvir and Smotrich’s extremism, and the ultra-Orthodox parties’ shameless plunder of public funds, all amid a regional ‘forever war’ with no end in sight.”
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