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 | JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT. |
| WHAT’S DRIVING THE AMERICAN JEWISH CONVERSATION |
|  | | In this edition: The ADL, Ben & Jerry’s, President Biden, King Charles III, Jesse Eisenberg, Mike Huckabee, Human Rights Watch, Jared Kushner, Paris protesters, Dennis Prager, the University of Michigan, and the Lego store in Manhattan. |
| | |  | Rep. Matt Gaetz at the Republican National Convention this summer in Milwaukee. (Getty) |
| ‘A reckless pick’
President-elect Donald Trump sparked outrage Wednesday when he picked Rep. Matt Gaetz to serve as attorney general. The Florida Republican has a history of clashing with Jewish groups, including when he invited a Holocaust denier to the 2018 State of the Union. Earlier this year, Gaetz voted against emergency military aid to Israel, and opposed a bill aimed at addressing rising antisemitism on college campuses because it rejected the notion that Jews killed Jesus.
Gaetz, who was under investigation by the House Ethics Committee for sexual misconduct until he resigned on Wednesday, called the Anti-Defamation League “racist” in 2021 after the group urged Fox News to fire Tucker Carlson for promoting the Great Replacement Theory.
“Gaetz has a long history of trafficking in antisemitism,” said the ADL’s Jonathan Greenblatt. “He should not be appointed to any high office, much less one overseeing the impartial execution of our nation’s laws.” Rep. Max Miller, a Jewish Republican from Ohio, called it “a reckless pick.”
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| |  | President-elect Donald Trump and his recently announced appointees. (Getty) |
| More on Trump’s nominations… The president-elect chose Tulsi Gabbard, a former congresswoman from Hawaii, for director of national intelligence, a role that oversees 18 spy agencies. Haaretz says Gabbard seems to have an “Israel exception” to her America First worldview.
Our senior political reporter, Jacob Kornbluh, is tracking all the Jewish angles on the key players in Trump’s incoming cabinet and advisory circles. Check out his annotated guide ►
Plus… A leader of the Proud Boys, an extremist organization that trafficks in antisemitism, asked Trump for a pardon to vacate his conviction in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. (NY Times)
Two Democratic Jewish governors — Gov. Jared Polis of Colorado and Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois — started a group to help states oppose Trump’s policies. (NY Times)
Opinions… Mike Huckabee, Trump’s pick for the next U.S. ambassador to Israel, supports Israeli annexation of the occupied West Bank — something Alex Lederman of the Israel Policy Forum says would immediately stall efforts to expand the Abraham Accords and bring peace to the Middle East.
Peter Fritzsche, a professor of history, argues that calling Trump a fascist backfired on Democrats because it accentuated “his appeal to those American voters who loved his strongman image, and his promise to fight the system, representing its neglected victims.”
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| | |  | President-elect Donald Trump and President Joe Biden met Wednesday in the Oval Office. (Getty) |
| The latest… Human Rights Watch accused Israeli authorities of war crimes and crimes against humanity in a 154-page report released this morning. (CNN)
Israel may cut long standing financial benefits for new immigrants as it struggles to pay for the ongoing wars in Gaza and Lebanon. (JTA)
President Joe Biden and President-elect Donald Trump discussed the Gaza hostages during their two-hour closed-door meeting Wednesday at the White House. Later in the day, Biden met with the families of the American-Israelis still in captivity. (Times of Israel)
Unnamed Israeli officials said that Ron Dermer, Netanyahu’s strategic affairs minister, told Trump and Jared Kushner during a visit to Mar-a-Lago this week that Israel is putting together a ceasefire deal in Lebanon to go into effect in January as a “gift” to the president-elect. (Washington Post)
In October, the Biden administration gave Israel 30 days to increase humanitarian aid to Gaza or risk cuts to military assistance. That deadline passed on Wednesday, without the U.S. taking any action. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Israel has met most of the criteria the U.S. laid out. (JTA)
Opinion: An Israeli judge denied a request from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to delay his corruption trial. Our Israel-based columnist Dan Perry says this could be the start of a long overdue reckoning for a leader who has “deeply harmed Israel’s democracy and security.”
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| | | | ISRAEL ALONE by Bernard-Henri Lévy |
| Weaving in fifty years of experience with Israel, Bernard-Henri Lévy analyzes global responses to October 7, the new virulent waves of the oldest hatred in the world: anti-Semitism, why Israel is waging this existential war against barbarism alone, and what’s at stake for Israel and the world. |
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| | |  | Protesters clashed with police Wednesday in Paris outside a pro-Israel gala. (Getty) |
| Match point
Thousands of police officers have been deployed in Paris around tonight’s scheduled soccer match between the Israeli and French national teams. Officials from both countries are worried after last week’s violence in Amsterdam, where Israeli soccer fans were attacked in what some called a modern-day pogrom. Protests erupted in Paris Wednesday night outside a gala event raising money for the Israeli military. Bezalel Smotrich, the far right Israeli minister, was scheduled to speak, but he canceled at the last minute. (Times of Israel)
Robert Zaretsky, a Forward columnist and a professor who specializes in French history, puts the soccer match and the gala into context.
Police in Amsterdam again arrested pro-Palestinian demonstrators Wednesday. After last week's melee, the city had banned such rallies for three days. (Times of Israel)
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| | |  | Kieran Culkin, left, and Jesse Eisenberg in A Real Pain. (Searchlight Pictures) |
| Eat, pray, cry
Jesse Eisenberg’s A Real Pain follows two cousins on a heritage tour through Poland. It’s not the only recent film to take an excursion to sites of the Holocaust. Our PJ Grisar had a look at two others: Treasure, which stars Stephen Fry and Lena Dunham as father-daughter travelers, and Delegation, an Israeli film tracking high school seniors on a school trip. “Just as no film can ever do justice to the horrors, no life can equal all those lost,” he writes. “And yet we keep returning to the scene of the crime, hoping for some answer.” Go deeper ►
And: Today is the 76th birthday of England’s King Charles III, a mensch for all seasons.
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| | READERS LIKE YOU SHAPE EVERY PART OF OUR WORKWhile the Forward is now free to read, it isn’t free to produce. As a nonprofit, member-supported newsroom, we answer to our readers, not to institutions. |
| | | WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY |
|  | The Contemporary Jewish Museum’s building includes an angular annex designed by Daniel Libeskind, the star architect, next to the older brick building that makes up the bulk of the museum. (Courtesy CJM) |
| 😞 The Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco is closing for a year, citing financial woes. “We must scale back to allow ourselves the time and resources needed for re-imagining and rebuilding,” said a museum official. (JWeekly)
🇵🇸 Pro-Palestinian activists are asking the Museum of Modern Art to cut ties with its honorary chairman, Ronald S. Lauder, who is also the president of the World Jewish Congress. The WJC hosted its annual awards dinner at the museum Tuesday night. (Art News)
🎒 The University of Michigan’s student government impeached its president and vice president after they labeled critics as “Zionists,” advocated for divestment from Israel, and were accused of inciting violence. (JTA)
🎗️ Shai Davidai, an outspoken Israeli professor at Columbia who last month was barred from campus, is in the news again. He took his 8-year-old son to a Manhattan Lego store where shoppers can create custom figurines. Davidai says that the store manager would not let them put a yellow hostage ribbon on the toy. (Jewish News)
🍨 Ben & Jerry’s sued its parent company, Unilever, accusing it of trying to silence the ice-cream maker’s support for Palestinians in Gaza. The two sides have a long history of fighting over Israel issues. (Reuters)
⚖️ An Oregon man pleaded guilty to three federal hate crimes for defacing a local synagogue on multiple occasions between September 2023 and January 2024. He has agreed to pay restitution and could face up to three years in prison. (CBS 6)
📞 A California teen pleaded guilty to making nearly 400 false reports of bomb threats and mass shootings, including at religious institutions. He faces up to five years in prison. (AP, Justice Dept.)
🏥 Dennis Prager, the 76-year-old conservative Jewish commentator, is in the hospital after a serious fall. (X)
Shiva call ► Miriam Reinharth, who organized community events for the New York Jewish Week, died at 69 after being hit by an ambulance.
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| | |  | In a viral clip posted to YouTube this week, Jewish comedian Gianmarco Soresi joked about how the rise in antisemitism has ruined his act. |
| Thanks to PJ Grisar, Jacob Kornbluh and Talya Zax for contributing to today’s newsletter, and to Jodi Rudoren for editing it. You can reach the “Forwarding” team at editorial@forward.com. |
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| Without you, the Forward’s stories don’t just go unread — they go untold. Please support our nonprofit journalism today. |
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