Israel Brief: Wednesday, July 29
Iran's missiles land in Jordan and the answer lands in Iraq, while Israel spends the day arguing over who gets to enforce its own law.
This edition is late, and I'm sorry to have kept you waiting for it. It was an eventful day at my end, and a heavy one on the page — what came in today needed the hours it took, and I would rather hand you the whole of it late than half of it on time.
— Uri
Iran fired ballistic missiles onto an American base in Jordan last night, and American and Saudi aircraft answered two hours later on militia depots across seven Iraqi provinces. Every round in that exchange landed on somebody else's ground. None of it came at Israel, and Washington is still withholding approval for the Iranian energy targets Jerusalem wants. What the country governs on its own it spent the day contesting with itself — the defense minister voided the restraining order his Central Command chief then went to court to keep, and the bench held the haredi arrest freeze suspended while enlistment climbs on the enforcement the coalition legislated against.
Flash Brief: The Day in 90 Seconds or Less
Iran: Tehran fires missiles at a Jordanian base hosting Americans, and American and Saudi jets answer across seven Iraqi provinces. See The War Today.
Lebanon: A Hezbollah drone hits an IDF vehicle on the ridge the ceasefire keeps Israeli ground troops from taking. See The War Today.
Gaza: The cabinet grants the stabilization force legal immunity as Rafah rehabilitation opens with no condition on Hamas's weapons. See The War Today.
Judea and Samaria: Katz voids an administrative restraining order his Central Command chief and the prosecution go to court to keep. See Inside Israel.
Haredi draft: Enlistment passes 4,000 for the year as the High Court keeps the arrest-freeze law suspended. See Inside Israel.
Press attacks: A masked man puts bricks and a death threat through Channel 12's doors, and the Shin Bet joins the case. See Inside Israel.
The Netherlands: The widest European ban yet reaches the Golan and can jail a Dutch citizen who buys beyond the Green Line. See Israel and the World.
Rome: Twenty-five delegations open the two-state alliance's first working session and adjourn it into a seminar on interfaith dialogue. See Israel and the World.
ICC polling: Forty-nine percent of Americans want Netanyahu arrested on the warrant, ahead of the 47 percent who call him guilty. See Israel and the World.
Diaspora: Seven countries count twenty Jews murdered in a year, the deadliest for the diaspora since the 1994 AMIA bombing. See Israel and the World.
New York: Mamdani seats eighteen judicial screeners with no Jew among them, in a city where Jews absorb half the hate crimes. See Israel and the World.
Nothing came off the table today except where somebody physically took it off. Israeli engineers pulled a 55-meter Hezbollah command route out of the ground at Haddatha, and in the pilot zones Israel handed to the Lebanese army no prosecutor has yet signed a single house-search warrant. Amsterdam wrote six years in prison into an ordinance that never reached the floor of the States General, and the twenty-five delegations that convened in Rome to deliver a Palestinian state produced a stocktaking.
Today: an Iranian salvo answered on Iraqi soil, a defense minister overruling his own Central Command chief, and Europe's widest ban on Israeli goods yet.
The Jewish State — Mitzpe's eight-session live course on Israeli history from the Mandate to October 7, taught the way the brief reads. Cohort 1: eight Sundays from Oct 11. mitzpe.org/the-jewish-state