Netanyahu's supporters say Arab voters "stole the election" after Ra'am and the Joint List's unprecedented surge, and Barry Segal weighs the fraud claims against the Elections Committee's answer.

This week on VFI News, Barry Segal reports from Israel on the coalition talks for the 26th Knesset, the rise of the Arab parties Ra'am and the Joint List, the election-fraud claims and the Elections Committee's answer, and President Herzog's appeal to the party leaders. Plus the growing risk of another round with Iran, Iran's terrorist designation of Britain's Royal Navy and RAF, Palestine Action's protest in London, riots across Europe, and a good-news story of forgiveness from Nahariya.

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Israel has ordered billions of dollars’ worth of US military equipment beyond what Washington has committed to provide under the current aid agreement, a State Department document submitted to Congress and disclosed on Thursday, November 5, shows. Israel will need about $10 billion in additional funding after 2028, when the current agreement expires, to pay for orders already placed. The gap complicates President Donald Trump’s plan to end military aid to Israel.

The document covers outstanding orders as of April 1, 2026, and it is unclear whether the total has changed since. The United States has already committed nearly $7 billion in military assistance over the next two years, yet even after that money is paid out, some existing orders will still lack funding. Israel is among the largest recipients of US military aid: the current agreement, signed under the Obama administration and running through 2028, provides about $3.3 billion a year for purchases of US-made weapons and equipment, including bombs, vehicles, fighter jets and other systems. The agreement lets Israel place orders against funds Washington has promised for future years, before that money is actually transferred.

The disclosure follows Trump’s announcement on Tuesday, November 3, that he intends to end US aid to Israel. Israeli officials, including members of the defense establishment, appeared surprised, even though senior officials in both countries had discussed gradually reducing the aid for months. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has previously suggested phasing out direct US military aid within ten years.

(JPost/VFI News)

Vice President JD Vance said on Wednesday, November 4, that the Iran war and the US relationship with Israel were two of the reasons Republicans lost heavily in the midterm elections of Tuesday, November 3. Democrats won control of both the House and the Senate in a vote widely viewed as a rebuke of President Donald Trump and his policies. In a post on X, Vance attributed the Democrats’ historic gains to Trump voters who crossed party lines to vote Democratic.

“The main problem is that many people who voted for Trump/Vance in 2024 voted for Democrats in 2026,” Vance wrote. He cited respected pollsters, including one who had predicted the large Democratic gains and who asked voters who had left the Republican side what would bring them back. The top four answers, which made up nearly all responses, were ending the Iran war, focusing on the cost of living and inflation, putting America First, and changing the relationship with Israel. Vance also praised the advice of a conservative television personality who had urged the administration to resolve the Iran conflict diplomatically, writing, “It turns out her political advice was sound” — a jab at those pushing for another round of fighting.

Vance challenged critics to argue openly that the war was worth the political cost: “If you’d like to argue it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next six years was worth it, then do so.” He added that the war was the main reason for the defeat and that the president had said as much on election night: “The reason we lost is the war. The president himself said so [on Tuesday night, November 3].”

(TOI/VFI News)

On Wednesday, November 4, former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, who served under President George W. Bush, rejected Vice President JD Vance’s claim that the Iran war caused the Republican Party’s midterm defeat. Halting military operations before victory, he argued, was the real error. “The problem was not the Iran War. It was the cease fire,” Fleischer wrote in a social media post responding to Vance.

“If you start a war, you need to win it and finish it - otherwise don’t start it,” he added. Fleischer contended that the conflict should have been decisively ended six months earlier, which he said would have reopened the Strait of Hormuz, restored oil shipments and weakened Iran’s leadership enough to bring about regime change. He backed President Donald Trump’s original decision to strike Iran but criticized the ceasefire and the lingering uncertainty about Washington’s goals. “Once the decision was made, we should not have stopped until the regime fell,” he wrote.

Leaving the campaign unfinished, Fleischer said, has left the United States facing high energy prices and the continued deployment of American troops. His remarks followed Vance’s statement that the Iran conflict was one of the reasons Republicans lost the congressional elections of Tuesday, November 3.

(INN/VFI News)

Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff, a Jewish Democratic incumbent who has increasingly sought to limit military aid to Israel, won reelection on Tuesday, November 3, defeating Republican Representative Mike Collins. In his victory speech to a crowd at his Atlanta watch party, Ossoff warned about wars overseas. “Abroad, American credibility and leadership are in decay, and the world is re-arming for global conflict,” he said, adding that humanity is “fast forgetting the terrible lessons of two world wars and the Holocaust.”

Ossoff’s rising popularity has prompted speculation about a 2028 presidential run. He called the Democratic victories the “first sight of dawn” two years into Trump’s second administration, but his tone turned darker as he invoked the World War II era: “Now our task is to reawaken that great national spirit that defeated fascism and established social security.” Ossoff has been one of Trump’s fiercest national critics, especially over his foreign policy, including joining Israel’s war with Iran; like other Democrats, he accused Trump of “lying a nation into war” and of “prices soaring with his warmongering in the Middle East.”

Ossoff’s Israel voting record reflects a shift within the Democratic Party. He has supported measures to strengthen Israeli defense systems, but in 2024 he was one of the first Senate Democrats to vote to block offensive weapons sales to Israel amid growing opposition to Israel’s military conduct in Gaza. The Jewish Democratic Council of America, which endorsed him, praised him on Tuesday, November 3, as “a champion of our Jewish and Democratic values,” and its CEO, Halie Soifer, said: “We were proud to help mobilize Jewish Georgians behind his campaign and to highlight the extremism of his opponent.”

(TOI/VFI News)

Holocaust survivors in Israel live off very small stipends, and the cost of living in Israel can be a heavy burden on them. In special events that we organized for the survivors, they were able to choose from thousands of clothing items and received money vouchers to help them with their needs.

The UN General Assembly and Security Council elected five new judges to the International Court of Justice on Tuesday, November 3, drawing an objection from Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, who called some of the judges’ positions and statements examples of the body’s “institutional bias against Israel.” Danon pointed to one judge who accused Israel of “ethnic cleansing” shortly after the Hamas-led invasion and massacre of October 7, 2023, and to another who had advised a legal case against Israel.

The five judges elected to serve on the court in The Hague are Dapo Akande (United Kingdom), Francois Alabrune (France), Mahmoud Daifallah Hmoud (Jordan), Rena Lee (Singapore) and Phoebe Okowa (Kenya). The ICJ has 15 judges who each serve nine-year terms, with five chosen every three years; the newly elected judges’ terms run from 2027 to 2036. Hmoud and Okowa are already sitting ICJ judges, appointed in 2025 to fill vacancies left when their predecessors stepped down, and will now serve full terms.

“Electing judges who have previously taken positions against Israel raises serious doubts about the Court’s impartiality,” Danon wrote on X on Wednesday, November 4. One judge, his post said, “absurdly accused Israel of war crimes just one month after the October 7 massacre,” while another “served as a legal adviser in proceedings against Israel.” Danon was referring to Hmoud’s remarks at a UN Security Council session on October 30, 2023, just weeks after the Hamas attack, in which Hmoud accused Israel of “ethnic cleansing” and “war crimes” during its early offensive against Hamas in Gaza.

(TOI/VFI News)

Anti-Israel activists in Philadelphia have scheduled a bicycle ride for Sunday, November 8, to boycott Jewish-owned and Israeli-associated local businesses — the eve of the anniversary of Kristallnacht, the 1938 Nazi-orchestrated pogrom against Jewish communities, homes and businesses in Germany and Austria. The event is organized by Philly Bike On Your Left together with Boycott CookNSolo and Philly Solidarity Calendar. A promotional flyer posted on social media shows a bicycle overlaid with red prohibition symbols aimed at specific local establishments.

The graphic names six dining locations in the city — Mac Mart, K’Far Cafe, Huda, Goldie, Dizengoff and Schlesinger’s — each with a crossed-out warning icon over it. The organizers’ post says riders will circle Rittenhouse to show business owners they consider hostile what they think of them: “Ride around Rittenhouse with us as we show these zio business owners.” It adds that they will flag as many bikes as possible to express solidarity with Palestinians and “oppressed folx [folks] everywhere.” Text on the graphic reads: “No business for zionists! These zionist establishments must go! Not in our city!” The flyer and the accompanying Instagram post say the protest will begin at Rittenhouse Square.

Local community leaders and major advocacy groups — the Anti-Defamation League Philadelphia, the American Jewish Committee Philadelphia/Southern NJ, the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia and StandWithUs — strongly condemned the scheduling of the ride on the eve of Kristallnacht. “Let’s be clear: This is antisemitism. It is Jew-Hatred, plain and simple,” the organizations said in a joint statement. Marking businesses for removal, the statement says, is “an attempt to intimidate, marginalize and exclude” Jewish community members from the city’s economic and civic life, and it linked the timing to the attacks of November 9-10, 1938, when Nazi-organized mobs destroyed Jewish businesses, homes and synagogues in Germany and Austria.

(JPost/VFI News)

A social sciences student in Iran was called to a disciplinary hearing at his university after joining an anti-government protest on campus. The panel was intimidating: it included a cleric representing the supreme leader and an official who would not give his name. The questions he faced showed how seriously Iranian officials are taking the removal of dissenters from universities after the crushing of large demonstrations in January 2026 and the outbreak of war with the United States. The cleric and the official asked him about the killing of former Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in airstrikes at the start of the war on February 28, 2026 — “what did you feel?”

Scores of university students across Iran face similar hearings over their participation in protests, Iranian student unions and outside rights monitors say, amid a months-long US naval blockade and a worsening economic crisis. Iranian leaders and US President Donald Trump have both threatened a possible return to escalated fighting, and students fear the pressure on them will grow. Half a dozen student protesters facing disciplinary procedures spoke by phone and messaging apps, all on condition of anonymity because they feared retribution. Students who appear before the panels risk expulsion or a ban from studying at any university, and the consequences can extend beyond campus: some have lost their jobs, or received death threats or other harassment after their cases became public.

“It puts an extraordinary psychological pressure on people,” the social sciences student said, adding that for him the experience is unspeakable. The disciplinary measures followed campus protests that arose alongside the nationwide demonstrations that began in late December 2025 after a currency crash — the largest since the 1979 Iranian revolution. Security forces crushed them by opening fire, killing thousands and arresting thousands more.

(YNN/VFI News)

A French Jewish high-tech entrepreneur has bought two floors in a luxury residential tower under construction on Tel Aviv’s beachfront for NIS 119 million ($38 million) — the largest recorded residential real estate deal in Israel so far in 2026. The buyer, a Paris resident who was not named, purchased the units in the Daniel Tower project, located between Herbert Samuel and Hayarkon streets. The deal was signed on Monday, October 26, 2026, one day before the Knesset election.

The developer, Yossi Avrahami Group, puts the price at over NIS 145,000 ($46,600) per square meter, implying that the combined apartments total about 820 square meters (2,690 square feet). The units were sold in shell condition, so the buyer must spend several million more shekels on finishing work and architectural customization. Construction began in 2026 and is expected to finish around 2030; the developer says it has sold 40 percent of the apartments so far.

Designed by Yashar Architects, the tower will have 24 floors, 57 luxury apartments and an 81-room boutique hotel, with most apartments offering sea views and private balconies of 30 to 40 square meters. Yossi Avrahami acquired the rights to the building’s 6.4-dunam (1.6-acre) lot in 2019 for NIS 250 million.

(TOI/VFI News)

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