WHAT’S DRIVING THE AMERICAN JEWISH CONVERSATION

Today: IDF recovers bodies of two hostages, police charge suspect in death of pro-Israel demonstrator in Los Angeles, and how to talk to friends who hate Israel. Plus: Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene says she’s trying to help rebuild the biblical Temple in Jerusalem.

ISRAEL AT WAR

A protest on Wednesday outside the Columbia University campus. (Getty)

Opinion | I teach at an Ivy League university. The tolerance for antisemitism has become unbearable: “Amid the current tensions, here is a message to all my faculty colleagues,” writes Dany Bahar, a Forward columnist who is a professor at Brown and the grandson of a Holocaust survivor. “You can take whichever side you want on this conflict, even if you — as is often the case — have no stake whatsoever in this part of the world. But if you do not start by outright condemning terrorism and calling out antisemitism whenever you see it as soon as you see it, then you are part of the problem, not the solution.” Read his essay ➤

Also on campus…

• New York University is launching an antisemitism research center, which will be funded by a recent seven-figure donation. The news comes after three Jewish students filed a discrimination lawsuit against the school earlier this week.

  
  

• More than 2,000 Jewish alumni of Harvard formed a new group to press for a more robust response to antisemitism on campus, with at least 240 alumni signing a pledge to donate a single dollar to the university to show their diminished willingness to support it.

  
  

• Meanwhile, more than 100 Harvard professors signed a letter objecting to the university president’s recent focus on issues of antisemitism on campus, arguing that she has given in to donor pressure to suppress criticism of Israel.

  
  

• Special report: What’s it really like to Jewish on campus right now?

Soldiers carry the coffin of Noa Marciano, a soldier in the IDF, at a cemetery today in Israel. (Getty)

The latest…

• The body of Yehudit Weiss, 65, who was abducted by Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7, was extracted by IDF troops near the Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza. In the same structure, soldiers also found military equipment including Kalashnikov rifles and an RPG missile.

  
  

• Israel raided other Hamas sites in Gaza overnight, finding more caches of weapons. IDF soldiers also recovered the body of Cpl. Noa Marciano, 19, three days after announcing she had been killed in Hamas captivity.

  
  

• Police charged a man with involuntary manslaughter in connection with the death of Paul Kessler, a pro-Israel activist who died after a confrontation at a rally in Los Angeles.

  
  

• Gunmen killed one Israeli soldier and injured five others Thursday at a Jerusalem checkpoint. Security has increased since the war began, leading to longer lines. “Anybody who wants to do harm can just go into that traffic jam,” said a nearby Israeli mayor.

  
  

• Osama bin Laden’s antisemitic “Letter to America” has gone viral on TikTok. “Everything he said was valid,” said one user among many promoting the screed.

  
  

• Jewish celebrities and social media influencers confronted TikTok executives on a private call Wednesday night to urge them to tackle the surge of antisemitism on the platform. “Shame on you,” Sacha Baron Cohen said.

Israeli President Shimon Peres in 2013. (Lynsey Addario)

Pulitzer-winning war photographer on the Mideast conflict – and being kidnapped (twice): “Many people are demanding we take a side or post our opinions about the atrocities on either side on social media, which completely contradicts the ethics of journalism,” Lynsey Addari, who has covered Israel throughout her career, told our Beth Harpaz. “No one demanded this of me when I was covering the genocide in Darfur, or the civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, or any of the other wars I have covered.” Read the story ➤

Opinion | How to talk to friends and coworkers who hate Israel: “The one immutable fact of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is that the day after every battle, every terror act, every act of retribution, the other side is still there,” writes our senior columnist Rob Eshman. So Rob asks a simple question of them: “What do you want?” Read his essay ➤

Opinions…

• Antisemitism on the left demands of Biden another Charlottesville moment

  
  

• In Washington, Jews managed to rally around an intentionally murky message. Will the unity last?

  
  

• How the war has (and hasn’t) upended cancel culture

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ALSO FROM THE FORWARD

“My Savior is a Jewish carpenter who died on the cross for my sins, and I have no antisemitic sentiments whatsoever,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene writes in her new book. (Getty)

Marjorie Taylor Greene says she donates to help reconstruct the biblical Temple:The Republican congresswoman has a new response to those who accuse her of antisemitism: she’s working to rebuild the Temple — yep, the one originally built by King Solomon — by giving money to the Temple Institute in Israel. It’s just one of the revelations from Greene’s forthcoming book, in a chapter in which she defends her infamous suggestion on social media that a Jewish-funded space laser had sparked wildfires in California in 2018.

How a Jewish producer — haunted by the Holocaust — gave us Judy Garland’s MGM swan song: Joe Pasternak fled from Hungary to the U.S. as the Nazis rose to power, but much of his family was unable to escape. Perhaps in spite of that trauma, Pasternak placed a premium on happy endings when he arrived in Hollywood. A new book goes behind-the-scenes of Summer Stock, one of his most memorable films.

Love lost: What do you do when someone writes a mean song about you? Our Bintel Brief advice column says you take a cue from one of Taylor Swift’s ex-boyfriends; he shrugged it off.

– From our Sponsor: Spertus Institute –

WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY

“I have flaws,” said Rep. George Santos. (Getty)

🇺🇸  Rep. George Santos, Republican of New York, said he would not seek reelection after a House ethics report blasted him for criminal activity and lying to voters. The report did not mention his fabrications about his Jewish heritage and relatives who died in the Holocaust. (JTA)

💻  IBM said it would stop advertising on X, formerly known as Twitter, after its ads appeared next to antisemitic content. Other advertisers have expressed concern after Elon Musk endorsed an antisemitic post this week. (Washington Post, New York Times, Forward)

🖼️  Two Holocaust-themed street murals in Milan — one featuring Anne Frank and the other an iconic image of a boy in the Warsaw Ghetto — were defaced with pro-Palestinian messages. (Jerusalem Post)

🏈  A high school football coach in Georgia was removed from his position after he baptized 20 players. He is still employed as a teacher. (WSB-TV)

🫄 Missouri lawmakers attempted to “impose their religious beliefs on everyone” when they passed a restrictive abortion ban, lawyers for a group of religious leaders said in a court hearing on Thursday. (AP)

What we’re reading ➤  A new book by a historian at Yeshiva University remembers Marty Glickman, the Jewish broadcasting icon famously benched at the Berlin Olympic.

What else we’re reading ➤  The “U.S. wasn’t always Israel’s strongest ally – what changed and why?” … Popular mega pastor launches online hub to aid faith leaders with mental health tools … “Toward a unified theory of Natalie Portman.”

PHOTO OF THE DAY

(Getty)

More than 1,000 vehicles destroyed in the Oct. 7 attacks are contained in a compound, seen in this aerial photo taken Thursday in Israel. Police, forensic teams and volunteers are continuing to identify the cars and determine if they contain the remains of victims, including people who are still registered as missing since the attacks.

Thanks to Beth Harpaz and Jacob Kornbluh for contributing to today’s newsletter, and to Talya Zax for editing it. You can reach the “Forwarding” team at editorial@forward.com.

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