Israel Brief: Sunday, April 26
Three adversaries weaker than they have been in decades — and the political calendar finally moves.
Step back from this morning’s news cycle. Two and a half years after October 7, the Hamas military command that planned it no longer functionally exists — Sinwar, Deif, Marwan Issa, every Khan Younis brigade commander gone. Operation Rising Lion erased the Iranian regional deterrent in twelve days last June. Operation Roaring Lion which launched almost two months ago now) went after what Rising Lion left standing — the supreme leader the first morning, the IRGC senior command in the same window, the regime’s command-and-control. A US naval blockade is now squeezing the Iranian economy past its breaking point. Hezbollah has lost four consecutive sector commanders in Bint Jbail since the truce took effect three weeks ago. Lebanon sits at the negotiating table for the first time since 1983 [though it’s worth less than that sounds]. The Saudi crown prince co-authored the framework Hezbollah is currently trying to break. Today’s brief covers the next moves on each front, and the Political Security Cabinet meets this afternoon.
⚡️Flash Brief: The Day in 90 Seconds or Less
Iran vise holds: Bessent ends oil waivers, Trump cancels Pakistan trip, Pentagon prepares Hormuz strike options including IRGC commander targeting.
Lebanon escalation: Netanyahu orders strikes after Hezbollah rocket-and-drone barrage; Yahalom accelerates demolition of southern Lebanon infrastructure.
Gaza ceasefire exploited: Intelligence shows Hamas continuing to rebuild under cover; IAF kills October 7 infiltrator Hazem Aidi in Thursday central Gaza strike.
Likud B forms: Edelstein, Kahlon, Haskel, and Erdan in talks for a new right-wing party as poll shows Likud out of first place.
Netanyahu discloses tumor: Two months after successful prostate-cancer treatment [disclosure held back through the war]; Hadassah confirms full clearance.
Mamdani’s first veto: New York mayor kills the school buffer-zone bill; lets the near-identical houses-of-worship version become law.
California Jew-hate under state seal: Secretary of state mails voter guide carrying Goyim Defense League boilerplate; deletes own guidelines after Jewish protest.
Fatah elections theater: “Sweeping victory”; May 14 conference credentials 20-year terror prisoners as automatic delegates.
Cabinet convenes today: Political Security Cabinet meets this afternoon on Lebanon enforcement, Iran escalation, and the Gaza decision window.
The Long Brief: The Two Middles — Open. No Paywall.
Two Middles
The Arizona Democrat — astronaut, former Navy combat pilot, the name floated in 2028 primary speculation — walked Bernie Sanders’s resolutions to the Senate floor on April 15. Forty of forty-seven Senate Democrats voted to block the Caterpillar D9 sale to Israel. Eighteen months ago, the same caucus delivered 19 votes on the same kind of resolution [the trajectory is the story; the failed resolution is incidental].
Israel was not abandoned. Israel was sorted.
Climate entered the American partisan-sorting mechanism in 1992. Immigration in 2009. Israel in 2001, inflected sharply in 2014, accelerated again after 2021. Ukraine reached a 47-point partisan gap in 28 months while running the consensus-era advocacy playbook to perfection — no settlements, no joint-session speeches, no partisan endorsements, sympathy of a Democratic White House. Israel hit a 44-point gap last month. The curve has eight to twelve years left to finish running.
Two Middles traces the mechanism, the inverted horseshoe (the extremes converge on Jew-hate; the moderate cores diverge through two different moral vocabularies), why AIPAC’s 2021 break with the no-endorsement rule is an institutional admission rather than a strategy, why the MFA’s NIS 729 million is being deployed at the wrong category of audience, and what a two-track architecture would actually look like — alongside the three other scenarios the institutional class is more likely to pick instead.
The paywall is down this week so the argument moves.
Forward it. Post it. Restack it.
→ Read it: Two Middles
Rabbi Jonathan Lieberman argued in JPost this week that calm, on its own, is not a strategy, and cited Hillel’s if not now, when? as the question Israel has kept pretending is rhetorical. Today’s items are what happens when several actors finally answer it. Trump answers by canceling the trip and putting the Pentagon planners to work. Hezbollah answers by firing on Margaliot. Hamas answers by holding municipal elections behind its own armed police. The center-right answers by drawing up an alternative ballot. Mamdani answers, in a different language, by signing one bill and killing the near-identical other. The deferrals are coming to an end.
Step back from the news cycle: that's how this Israel Brief opens, with the strategic position laid out plainly two and a half years after October 7. The full edition has the Pentagon target list that names Ahmad Vahidi by name, why Netanyahu held a cancer disclosure through the war, and the procedural sequence California's secretary of state ran after Goyim Defense League boilerplate landed in the official voter guide under state seal. Plus the Long Brief on how the Democratic caucus didn't abandon Israel so much as sort it.
Israel was not abandoned. Israel was sorted.
The Israel Brief is the Mitzpe Institute's read on Israel and the region — most mornings, Sunday through Thursday. More at mitzpe.org.