 | JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT. |
| WHAT’S DRIVING THE AMERICAN JEWISH CONVERSATION |
|  | | Good morning. Today: Tough questions and visible frustration at yesterday’s Congressional hearing with college presidents; Gaza’s largest hospital may shut down; and hundreds of Harvard students stage commencement walkout. |
| | |  | A Mexican flag hangs near a memorial site for Orión Hernández Rado at the site of the Nova Festival massacre, after the IDF recovered Rado’s body from Gaza. (Amir Levy/Getty Images) |
| The Israel Defense Forces have recovered the bodies of three more hostages, after recovering the bodies of four hostages last week. Michel Nisenbaum, 59, Hanan Yablonka, 42 and Orión Hernández Rado, 30, were all killed on Oct. 7, and their remains transported to Gaza. Rado was the partner of Shani Louk, whose body was recovered last week.
Here’s more of the latest from the war: The International Court of Justice is expected to rule today on a South African appeal for the court to order Israel to adopt a ceasefire, with a particular focus on the ongoing operation in Rafah. Separately, Israel’s government criticized German authorities for saying they would arrest Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if the International Criminal Court issues a warrant for him.
Gaza’s Health Ministry announced the strip’s largest hospital is at risk of an imminent shutdown, as the onslaught in Rafah has made generator fuel increasingly difficult to obtain.
CIA director William J. Burns will attempt to resuscitate stalled ceasefire talks during a trip to Europe this weekend to meet with David Barnea, head of the Mossad.
The IDF is investigating a number of incidents of Israeli soldiers burning books, including a Quran, in Gaza; soldiers posted video of the book burnings to social media.
All European Union donors to UNRWA, the United Nations agency that serves Palestinian refugees, have resumed their funding for the group after pausing it amid allegations that UNRWA staff participated in the Oct. 7 attack.
Colombia, which has cut diplomatic ties with Israel over the war, announced it will open a new embassy in Ramallah, in the West Bank. Separately, the World Bank announced Thursday that the Palestinian Authority, which runs the West Bank, is at risk of “fiscal collapse.”
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|  | Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during a joint meeting of Congress on May 24, 2011. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images) |
| Analysis: The risks and rewards of inviting Netanyahu to address Congress. After Speaker of the House Mike Johnson announced Thursday that Netanyahu will shortly address a joint session of Congress, our Jacob Kornbluh writes, the big question is “who could this speech benefit, and who could it hurt?” Some senior Democratic leadership fear the speech will give Republicans more fodder for their claim to be the only party that truly supports Israel. “If he’s going to come here and pick a fight with Democrats, I don’t know that that helps anybody,” said Sen. Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut. Read the story ➤
This 94-year-old Holocaust survivor recommended arrest warrants for Israeli and Hamas leaders. “By the age of 14, he had survived the Holocaust; by 44, he was an Israeli diplomat; now, at the age of 94, Theodor Meron recommended the International Criminal Court seek arrest warrants of Israeli and Hamas leaders for war crimes and crimes against humanity,” writes our contributor Andrew Silverstein. Meron, the only IDF veteran on an eight-person ICC panel investigating possible war crimes by both Israel and Hamas, has a long history of challenging Israeli moves against Palestinians: After the 1967 War, he authored “a secret memo that the construction of Israeli settlements in the West Bank or other territories Israel had captured was illegal under international law.” Read the story ➤
Dept. of Corrections: Yesterday’s newsletter included an inaccurate translation of an Arabic word Hamas terrorists used in video footage of five female soldiers being abducted on Oct. 7. The word is sabaya, and the video subtitles, provided by the Israel Defense Forces, translated it as “women who can get pregnant.” Samuel Liebhaber, chair of the Arabic department at Middlebury College, says the term actually means captives, or prisoners of war.
The Times of Israel article we were quoting from notes that the translation was provided with the video, which we should have also noted, but did not. It also referred to the translation Liebhaber provided, and said the term was “previously used by Islamic State terrorists to refer to sex slaves.”
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| | | |  | Michael Schill, president of Northwestern University, at a Thursday House hearing. (Michael A. McCoy/Getty Images) |
| |  | “All our rabbinical students are required to engage and grapple with Israel,” writes Rabbi Deborah Waxman, president and CEO of Reconstructing Judaism. (iStock by Getty Images) |
| | | |  | (Courtesy of Howard Reich) |
| How my story about Nazi-looted art inspired an opera by one of America’s greatest composers: “It isn’t often that a newspaper series becomes an opera — let alone a Holocaust-themed opus by one of America’s most revered composers,” writes Howard Reich. “But that’s about to happen to a collection of articles I published more than two decades ago in the Chicago Tribune, where I covered music from 1978 to 2021.” In those articles, Reich drew out the remarkable story of the unexpected heir to an extraordinary group of paintings, and how he made contact “with a long-lost relative” — the artist Emil Freund — “he’d never known he had.” |
| | | WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY |
|  | Author Viet Thanh Nguyen, who had a planned talk at Manhattan’s 92NY cancelled in October after he signed a letter demanding “an end to the violence and destruction in Palestine.” (Paul Marotta/Getty Images) |
| 🗺️ A new online tool aims to map the ways in which the war has reverberated through the cultural sector, by indexing every artistic cancellation to take place since Oct. 7. (ARTnews)
😞 Almost 20% of American Jewish households are in financial difficulty, a new report found, with 2% saying they are unable to make ends meet, and 17% saying they find doing so challenging. (eJewishPhilanthropy)
😳 A Chicago alderman used her personal Facebook page to seek suggestions for an “anti zionist” pediatrician, sparking outrage from Jewish groups. (Forward)
👀 A prominent German far-right party took action against one of its top candidates for European Parliament after he said, in an interview with an Italian newspaper, that not all members of the Nazi SS were war criminals. (Washington Post)
👗 Model Bella Hadid wore a dress fashioned out of kaffiyehs at the Cannes Film Festival. The kaffiyeh has become a symbol of pro-Palestinian protesters; Hadid, whose father is Palestinian, has been an outspoken supporter of Palestinian rights. (The Cut)
Shiva call ➤ Painter Joe Zucker, known for his use of unexpected materials like cotton balls and squeegee handles, died at 82.
What else we’re reading ➤ “In Egypt, a piece of Jewish pottery suggests a woman’s role that was stolen from history” … “In a city of ancient Jewish mysticism, Israelis arm for a fight” … “A peace deal that seems designed to fail.”
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| |  | | |  | (Rick Friedman/AFP via Getty Images) |
| Before the mid-commencement walkout, graduating students walked past pro-Palestinian protesters on their way into Harvard Yard for Thursday’s ceremony. |
| Thanks to Benyamin Cohen for contributing to today’s newsletter, and to Beth Harpaz for editing it. You can reach the “Forwarding” team at editorial@forward.com. |
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