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JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT. |
| WHAT’S DRIVING THE AMERICAN JEWISH CONVERSATION |
|  | | Today: Trump speaks at National Prayer Breakfast • Jewish nonprofit lays off 15 after federal funds frozen • Australia passes new anti-hate laws after surge in antisemitism • Philadelphia shul picks woman to lead Orthodox congregation • And much more. |
| | |  | President Donald Trump spoke this morning at the National Prayer Breakfast at the U.S. Capitol. (Getty) |
| Fallout continues
President Donald Trump posted this morning on his social media platform that Israel would hand over the Gaza Strip to the U.S. at the “conclusion of fighting.” By then, he said, Palestinians “would have already been resettled in far safer and more beautiful communities, with new and modern homes, in the region.” He said that no U.S. soldiers would be needed, but instead “great development teams from around the world” would build “the greatest and most spectacular developments of its kind on Earth.” (Truth Social) White House officials on Wednesday clarified that the displacement of Gaza’s 2 million Palestinian residents would be temporary. (Washington Post)
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Trump’s plan “remarkable” and “the first good idea I’ve heard.” (JTA)
Palestinians are rejecting Trump’s call to expel them from Gaza. “I won’t leave,” said Mustafa al-Gazzar, 80. “Put that in your brain.” (AP)
Palestinian-Americans expressed horror at the idea of expelling people from Gaza, with one leader at a D.C.-based think tank calling the plan “outrageous, criminal, harebrained.” (New York Times)
Mainstream pro-Israel groups have mostly been stunned into silence. (JTA, Religion News Service)
Sen. Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, joined other lawmakers who are skeptical of the Gaza plan. “I thought we voted for America First,” he posted on social media. (X)
In Thursday’s Truth Social post, Trump referred once again to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer as one of “the Palestinians”; he’s also said Schumer is a member of Hamas. Schumer is neither, but he is America’s highest ranking Jew elected to public office. (Forward, Truth Social)
Analysis | Reaction to Trump’s radical proposal hinted at a realignment of Jewish political influence in which fringe Zionist activists and their ideas are replacing the establishment groups that have long held sway in Washington. “This is too miraculous,” Mort Klein, the longtime head of the Zionist Organization of America, told our senior political reporter, Jacob Kornbluh. “It is enough to make you keep Shabbos, lay tefillin and keep kosher.” Go deeper ► |
|  | At left, an Iraqi Jewish family in Baghdad in 1910. At right: Hen Mazzig in Israel with his mother, Cami, and his grandmother Hela, a Jewish refugee from Iraq who was forced to leave her home in Baghdad in 1951.(Getty Images/Reli Abrahami) |
| Opinion | Hen Mazzig, a social media influencer known as the “whisperer to the stars on the Middle East conflict,” is the son of refugees from Iraq and Tunisia, part of the million Jews expelled from Middle Eastern countries who sought refuge in Israel. He called Trump’s proposal “political theater” and writes that “while my family may have found security in Israel, that doesn’t mean the original trauma was justified. Nor does it account for the cultural and communal annihilation that came with it.” Read his essay ►
More reactions… Trump had been talking privately about the idea for weeks, but his hasty announcement came as a surprise to many senior members in his administration. It was also a shock to Netanyahu, according to sources. (New York Times)
In Israel, people responded with shock, skepticism and dark humor. One Israeli-American quipped on Facebook, “Ooh, can we bring Target? And Starbucks and Sephora?” to which another replied, “Let’s dream big: Nordstrom.” (JTA)
Arab Americans for Trump, a Michigan group that helped with voter outreach during the campaign, is changing its name to Arab Americans for Peace after the president said the U.S. would take over Gaza. The group has ties to Massad Boulos, the Lebanese-American father-in-law of Trump’s daughter Tiffany and now a senior adviser to the administration on Arab and Middle Eastern affairs. (AP, Forward)
The Princess Bride’s Wallace Shawn compared Israeli actions in Gaza to Nazi atrocities, adding that “in some ways, it’s worse because they kind of boast about it. Hitler had the decency to try to keep it secret.” The actor, who is Jewish, has been a vocal critic of Israel since the war broke out. (Hollywood Reporter)
Culture | Fifty years before Trump proposed that the U.S. should take over Gaza, Saturday Night Live — in its very first episode on Oct. 11, 1975 — introduced a land swap solution to Middle East peace: The state of Israel and the state of Georgia could switch places. I wrote about the short film by Albert Brooks and how it foreshadowed SNL’s later news parodies. Read my essay ► |
|  | Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth at the Pentagon on Wednesday. (Getty) |
| More on Netanyahu’s visit… Netanyahu on Wednesday met with Vice President JD Vance; Mike Waltz, the U.S. national security adviser; and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who praised Israel’s achievements over the last 15 months of fighting. (JNS, Times of Israel)
During his White House visit, Netanyahu reportedly gifted Trump a golden pager to commemorate the September operation that caused thousands of Hezbollah’s pagers to suddenly explode. (Times of Israel)
Plus… Trump spoke this morning at the annual National Prayer Breakfast for lawmakers at the Capitol and is now at the Washington Hilton for a separate larger prayer breakfast. “We have to bring religion back,” Trump said, recalling that when he was a child his father took him to see a revival by Rev. Billy Graham at Yankee stadium. (AP)
A delegation of Ukrainian pastors is attending the second breakfast in the hopes of convincing conservative American Christians to keep military aid flowing. (New York Times)
Vice President Vance, who is Catholic, spoke at a religious freedom summit on Wednesday, as some faith groups criticized the administration for cutting their federal funding. (Religion News Service)
Jewish Family Services of Western New York laid off 15 staff members this week, blaming the impact from suspension of federal funding for foreign aid programs. (WIVB-TV, Facebook)
Dept. of clarifications: Yesterday, we shared a timeline about who “owns” Gaza. We wanted to clarify that Hamas has overseen Gaza since 2007; it won a plurality of votes in a 2006 election, then wrested control of the territory in a coup the following year. |
| |  | | |  | Friends of Marla Bennett, killed in a 2002 bombing at Hebrew University, grieve around her coffin. (Getty) |
| Painful release
Some American Jews are grieving as Hamas terrorists convicted of murdering their friends in attacks decades ago are set free as part of the ceasefire deal. “As I’ve been trying to process it all I just keep thinking about how Jewish it all feels,” said Amanda Pogany, whose best friend, Marla Bennett, was killed in the 2002 bombing at the Hebrew University cafeteria in Jerusalem. “We are a people that is constantly navigating joy and sorrow simultaneously.” Go deeper ►
The latest… Two Israeli soldiers were killed and eight wounded when wind brought down a surveillance platform in Gaza. (Haaretz, Times of Israel)
Fourteen Jewish groups are urging the Supreme Court to allow American victims of Palestinian terrorists to sue in U.S. courts. (AJC)
United Airlines plans to resume flights from the U.S. to Israel in March. Delta plans to follow in April. (Globes)
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| | WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY |
|  | Susie Ratner, the president of Congregation Sha’arei Orah in Philadelphia, watches as Rabbanit Leah Sarna signs her contract to be the Orthodox synagogue’s new spiritual leader. (Courtesy) |
| On campus…
🏫 Georgetown Law’s Students for Justice in Palestine plans to host an event next week with a convicted member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, who was imprisoned for withholding information about a deadly 2019 bombing that killed an Israeli teen. (Jewish Insider)
⚖️ A federal judge ordered Cooper Union, a private Manhattan college, to face a lawsuit alleging the school failed to protect Jewish students who barricaded themselves in a library amid pro-Palestinian demonstrations. (Reuters, Times of Israel)
🎒 A conference held this week at Brown University — focused on the prevalence of non-Zionist Jewish traditions — received more than 1,500 emails in protest, forcing organizers to increase security measures for the two-day event. (Brown Daily Herald)
In Australia…
🥓 Police arrested a Melbourne man for allegedly scrawling antisemitic graffiti, spitting on a passerby and throwing a packet of bacon at them. It’s the latest in a spate of anti-Jewish crimes in Australia. (JTA)
🇦🇺 Australia on Thursday passed new anti-hate crime laws, in an effort to combat the recent surge in antisemitism. Among other things, people who give a Nazi salute in public will get a minimum of 12 months in jail. (Reuters)
🤔 Australia, a haven for Jews for generations, has seen a significant increase in antisemitic attacks since October 2023 — including vandalism, arson, and threats against Jewish institutions, prompting authorities to investigate potential foreign involvement. “This is a time of national crisis,” said one local politician. (AP, Wall Street Journal)
And elsewhere…
🕍 Philadelphia’s Congregation Sha’arei Orah became the fifth Orthodox shul in the world to be led exclusively by a woman, Rabbanit Leah Sarna. (Philadelphia Jewish Exponent)
Shiva call ► Anson Rabinbach, one of the world’s leading historians on Nazi culture, died at 79.
What else we’re reading ► This rabbi-in-training wants every Jew to know how to use the life-saving drug that reverses opioid overdose (New York Jewish Week) … How Mark Wahlberg went from “meathead” to making Christian movies (Slate) … In a new book, New York Times columnist makes case for why everyone should be religious (Religion News Service)
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| | |  | The documentary Free Exercise: America’s Story of Religious Liberty spotlights six communities — Quakers, Baptists, Black churches, Catholics, Mormons and Jews — who faced persecution before carving out their place in U.S. society. Watch the trailer above, and stream the whole movie on PBS. |
| Thanks to Jacob Kornbluh and Talya Zax for contributing to today’s newsletter, and to Julie Moos for editing it. You can reach the “Forwarding” team at editorial@forward.com. |
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