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Good morning. Today: New documentary examines agony of life in the West Bank; Israeli forces kill Islamic Jihad leader; and yes, Nobody Wants This is getting a second season.

OUR LEAD STORY

Omri Miran and his wife, Lishay Lavi. Miran has been held captive by Hamas since Oct. 7, 2023. (Courtesy of Lavi-Miran Family)

On Yom Kippur, my brother-in-law is still a hostage. How do I atone for that? One of the great sins we must atone for this Yom Kippur: The fact that we have failed to rescue the 101 hostages who remain in Gaza, writes Moshe Emilio Lavi, whose brother-in-law, Omri Miran, is among those still held captive. The always-somber holiday invites particularly difficult questions this year, Lavi writes: “Have we done enough for those we have lost? Have we done enough for those we can still save?” Read his essay ➤

Plus:

• How a silent meditation retreat changed my view of Yom Kippur

  
  

• I fast on Yom Kippur but don’t go to synagogue. And there are many Jews like me

  
  

• My non-Jewish husband doesn’t fast for Yom Kippur. We spend the day in shul together anyway

  
  

• One year after Oct. 7, a Yom Kippur ritual of communal mourning takes on fresh meaning

ISRAEL AT WAR

A scene from No Other Land, which had its U.S. premiere at the New York Film Festival. (Courtesy of New York Film Festival)

In a searing new documentary, unimaginable pain and suffering in the West Bank. The new film No Other Land chronicles years of Israeli efforts to forcibly evict the residents of Masafer Yatta, a region in the West Bank — ending with a glimpse of the escalating violence that has seized the area since the onset of the Israel-Hamas War. Making the documentary was in itself a risky endeavor, one of the filmmakers told our editorial intern Olivia Haynie: “They beat us up or hit us, and they smash cameras many times,” Basel Adra, who was raised in Masafer Yatta, said. “It happens from settlers and Israeli soldiers.” Read the story ➤

Latest from the war…

• Jon and Rachel Goldberg-Polin, parents of slain hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin, said Israeli leaders spent months dismissing them when they raised concerns that hostages could be killed by Hamas, as their son eventually was.

  
  

• Israeli officials said the Israel Defense Forces had killed the leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror group in a Wednesday airstrike. The previous leader was killed in August.

  
  

• The Israeli Police and Shin Bet announced they had arrested five Arab Israelis suspected of participating in a car bombing plot targeting a Tel Aviv mall.

  
  

• Israeli soldiers fired on United Nations peacekeeping forces in Lebanon, ramping up tensions that have been building between the two militaries over the past week.

  
  

• A Hezbollah leader targeted by an Israeli airstrike on central Beirut escaped; 22 others were killed, as the Lebanese Health Ministry said that 2,100 people have been killed in Lebanon in the past year of war.

Tom Haviv, the creator of the Hamsa Flag Project. (Photo-illustration by Ella Pennington / Tom Haviv / Canva / Samuel Eli Shepherd)

What if there was a flag that both Israelis and Palestinians could take pride in flying? “A year into the current Israel-Hamas war, symbols representing Israel and Palestine have become more powerful, and also more politically charged,” writes Samuel Eli Shepherd, another editorial intern. Among those symbols are, of course, the Israeli and Palestinian flags. As those emblems have become increasingly controversial, some attention has turned to the Hamsa Flag Project, which proposes an alternative to both that envisions Israelis and Palestinians living under the same banner. Read the story ➤

Plus, from the Opinion desk:

• I’m a Holocaust survivor. Here’s why I celebrated my 80th birthday protesting at an Israeli prison

  
  

• Netanyahu’s government is serving Iran’s strategy — not fighting it

ALSO IN THE FORWARD

Roy Cohn, circa 1959. (Getty Images)

How my cousin Roy Cohn was responsible for creating Donald Trump — and me. “Forgive me if I’m cynical about humanity,” writes David L. Marcus, “I just stumbled into sunshine from the darkness of a screening of The Apprentice, the stunning fictional-yet-fairly-factual film about Donald Trump and his mentor Roy Cohn. That’s Roy Marcus Cohn, my odious cousin.” Scandalous family ties meet a film that the Republican presidential candidate whose New York City rise it depicts slammed with a cease and desist? How could you resist?

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WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY

Ta-Nehisi Coates has been calling Israel an apartheid state and accusing it of genocide during his book tour. (Zach Gibson/Getty Images)

🎤  Ta-Nehisi Coates reflected on what the war in Gaza meant for Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign and potential presidency, saying in a new interview that Democratic support for Israel meant asking voters to accept “apartheid and genocide” in exchange for domestic priorities like abortion rights. (Forward)

😧  Graffiti reading “serve the nation, kill a Jew” was written on a Buenos Aires monument; Argentina is home to the largest Jewish population in South America, with some 200,000 Jewish citizens. (JTA)

😔  Swedish police are investigating a shooting near an outpost of an Israeli electronics firm in the city of Gothenburg; no one was injured. (Reuters)

✡️  Fordham, a Catholic university, has hired its first Jewish chaplain. Rabbi Katja Vehlow was raised Protestant in Germany, and converted to Judaism in 2001. (NY Jewish Week)

📺  Nobody Wants This was renewed for a second season with Netflix. The first season of the hit rom-com about a surprising interfaith relationship between a sex podcaster and a rabbi has drawn controversy, with some saying its representation of Jews, and particularly Jewish women is derogatory. (JTA)

📹  Comedian Alex Edelman signed on to join a spinoff of The Office, which will also star Domhnall Gleeson and Sabrina Impacciatore. (People)

What else we’re reading ➤ “On Yom Kippur, a Jewish case for fossil fuel divestment” … “3 Jewish converts react to Nobody Wants This” … “How Lore Segal saw the world in a nutshell.”

VIDEO OF THE DAY

Learn all the Yiddish terms you might want to discuss Yom Kippur — including how to refer to someone overindulging at the break-fast.

Dept. of corrections: We incorrectly stated in Thursday’s Forwarding that the Jewish owner of Manny’s Cafe in San Francisco is Israeli. He was born and raised in Los Angeles.

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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