Buckle up, a lot went down yesterday: Last night, two terrorists shot people at the light-rail in Jaffa, Tel Aviv, Israel. Seven people were killed and 17 reportedly wounded. One of the victims was Inbar Segev-Vigder, who had her 9-month-old strapped to her body via carrier at the time she was shot. Another light-rail passenger apparently heard the baby crying and took him to the hospital. His name is Ari, and he is safe, but he will grow up without his mom, who eyewitnesses say shielded him from harm.
7 people were murdered in this attack a few minutes south of where I sit in Tel Aviv. One of them was Inbar Segev, a 33 year old Pilates Instructor. Inbar and her dog were shot; a good samaritan grabbed her 9-month-old baby from his carrier unharmed and took him to safety. ???? pic.twitter.com/HlTAa5bXgY
— Yael Bar tur ????️ (@yaelbt) October 2, 2024
“The two terrorists, Muhammad Chalaf Sahar Rajab and Hassan Muhammad Hassan Tamimi, from Hebron [but not Israeli citizens], were shot dead by members of a Tel Aviv-Jaffa Municipality security patrol unit and citizens using personal firearms, according to the police,” according to The Jerusalem Post. Those citizens using personal firearms included Lev Kreitman, the head of Israel’s Burning Man equivalent, who was wearing flip-flops when he neutralized one of the terrorists.
“I carry a personal weapon because I’m a reservist,” said Kreitman. “I was sitting, having a drink, when suddenly I heard gunshots. I ran toward them and shot the terrorist.”
Happy New Year, now head to the bomb shelters: Most Israelis are getting ready for the start of Rosh Hashanah, which begins tonight at sundown. Unfortunately, Iran decided to send nearly 200 ballistic missiles their way, forcing pretty much the entire country into bomb shelters for a portion of yesterday evening.
“Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps said the hourlong assault was retribution for the recent assassinations of the heads of Iranian proxy groups, Hezbollah and Hamas,” reports The New York Times. “Mohammad Bagheri, Iran’s top military officer, said the missiles had been aimed at three military bases and the headquarters of Mossad, Israel’s intelligence service.” (Indeed, video footage shows explosions near Mossad, showing that the strikes got close to their targets.)
Iran and Israel last exchanged strikes in April, in what most observers considered a symbolic show of force following an April 1 Israeli air strike on a Syrian embassy compound that resulted in the death of one of Iran’s top military generals. In April, the United States and other allies helped Israel shoot down Iranian missiles. Last night, the same protocol played out, but there’s reason to believe this most recent escalation will play out differently than it did several months ago.
For one, Israel has recently started a ground invasion in Lebanon, trying to stamp out the terrorist group Hezbollah, an Iranian proxy, which has grown increasingly emboldened. Last week, Israeli forces assassinated Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s longtime leader; Iran said explicitly that last night’s attack was meant as retribution for Nasrallah’s killing, a death that was mourned throughout much of the Middle East.
“Make no mistake, the United States is fully, fully, fully supportive of Israel,” said President Joe Biden following news that U.S. naval destroyers positioned in the Mediterranean had helped Israeli forces shoot down the ballistic missiles. Biden had, in recent months, grown more critical of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Now, it seems his support for defending Israel during its time of need is ironclad; what remains to be seen is how Israel responds to Iran, and whether that response will draw scorn from allies or be seen as sufficiently measured.
Meanwhile, a vice-presidential debate happened: And, turns out, Donald Trump’s running mate, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, is really good at this. A sampling:
Every American should watch every second of JD Vance fielding a question on abortion ???? pic.twitter.com/TDoR0BxFCR
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) October 2, 2024
He seemed to turn away from his philosophy-bro podcast-appearance personality, which is frequently snarky and callous, and toward a much more palatable and compassionate persona. He seemed poised and articulate. Broad swaths of the internet—or maybe just the portion of the internet I occupy?—found him hot.
“The key thing that Vance accomplished was demonstrating that you can behave on a national stage in a manner that restores pre-Trump standards of political conduct while persisting in Trumpish political heterodoxies,” opined writer Wesley Yang.
The moderators appeared to be pretty staunchly biased in favor of Walz and against Vance, but it didn’t end up mattering much since Vance held his own. Case in point:
Historically awful moment for @CBSNews here, interrupting JD Vance as he was rebutting a misleading D talking point from Margaret Brennan, who a) isn’t supposed to debate the candidates and b) shut off his mic rather than allow his true statements pic.twitter.com/Shwqy1A4Y0
— Kyle Smith (@rkylesmith) October 2, 2024
I largely disagree with Vance but he has every right to jump in and address the moderators when they attempt to blithely assert that he is factually incorrect. They said they wouldn’t do that. It’s Walz’s job, not theirs.
— Robby Soave (@robbysoave) October 2, 2024
The debate was policy-oriented, but there was nothing new revealed; everyone was semi-antagonistic toward free trade, no one properly diagnosed the issue with housing costs, there was a little bit of surprising/nice lip service toward gun rights, and Vance at one point admitted how his party has lost the trust of many voters on the issue of abortion. But the debate wasn’t really about policy; I’d hazard a guess that anyone watching a vice-presidential debate already knows how they’re going to vote. It was about demeanor. Both men treated each other with mutual respect, which was oddly refreshing, but more than anything it was a proving ground for Vance, who showed that he has a lot of potential (for better or worse) as the heir to Trumpism.
Scenes from New York: A walk down memory lane…all the corrupt New York City mayors throughout history. Yay, government!
QUICK HITS
Kamala Harris running mate/Minnesota Governor Tim Walz was caught in another hilarious lie, this one about whether he was in Tiananmen Square on the day of the massacre in June 1989. “Walz suggested [in a House hearing in 2014] that he was in the then-British colony of Hong Kong in May 1989, but he appears to have been in Nebraska. Public records suggest he left for Hong Kong and China in August of that year,” reports the Associated Press, which also dug up “a 2009 congressional transcript about Tiananmen Square in which Walz seemed to insinuate that he was in Hong Kong during the day of the massacre.” When asked about it in the debate last night, Walz gave a bunch of pablum and ultimately admitted he “misspoke” which is an odd way to say “lied.” A good thread detailing how both candidates get housing so very wrong:
“You’ve got housing that is totally unaffordable because we brought in millions of illegal immigrants to compete with Americans for scarce homes,” argues @JDVance. Why are the homes scarce? There is not a fixed supply of homes. We can build enough homes!
— M. Nolan Gray (@mnolangray) October 2, 2024
“More than 38 container vessels were already backed up at U.S. ports by Tuesday, compared with just three on Sunday before the [longshoremen] strike, according to Everstream Analytics,” reports Reuters. “The walkout could cost the American economy roughly $5 billion a day, JP Morgan analysts estimate.” (And how do our ports compare to, say, China’s? Not so great, guys. Not so great.) True:
There are not quite 50K longshoremen on strike. For $50B — chump change, really — we could give them each $1M to retire in 5 years while we spend some multiple of that to fully automate all the ports. I bet they’d take it, then we could just move on.
— jonstokes.(eth|com) (@jonst0kes) October 1, 2024
Also true:
— Richard Morrison (@RichardMorrison) October 1, 2024
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