WHAT’S DRIVING THE AMERICAN JEWISH CONVERSATION

Good morning. Today: Israel’s credit downgraded, tunnel discovered under UNRWA headquarters and Biden official expresses regret over handling of war.

ISRAEL AT WAR

Former hostage Louis Har embraced his loved ones after returning to Israel Monday following a major rescue operation in Rafah. (Courtesy of the Israel Defense Forces)

Hostages rescued: The Israel Defense Forces rescued two Israeli hostages, Fernando Simon Marman and Norberto Louis Har, during an early Monday raid in Rafah. Marman, 61, and Har, 70, were transferred to a hospital in Israel and have been reunited with their loved ones; both are said to be in good condition.

Rafah assault: The hostage rescue operation was accompanied by airstrikes on Rafah that Gaza officials said killed 67 Palestinians. In a Sunday phone call, President Joe Biden told Netanyahu that Israel should hold off on a major campaign in Gaza’s southernmost city until there is a “credible” plan to keep civilians safe. Separately, Israeli officials are trying to calm their Egyptian counterparts, who have expressed serious alarm over the potential displacement of Gazans during a Rafah assault; Egypt has reportedly threatened to withdraw from its peace treaty with Israel if the attack goes forward.

Financial woes: Israel’s credit rating, an important metric for investors, was downgraded by Moody’s for the first time ever in a minor change; the country is still listed as investment-worthy. In a Friday announcement, the agency deemed the outlook for Israel’s economy to be “negative,” and explicitly cited the costs of the war with Hamas as a primary factor in the change. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shrugged off the downgrade, and said Israel's economy would rebound “the moment we win the war.”

UNRWA: Israel said forces found a Hamas tunnel under the Gaza City headquarters of UNRWA, the embattled United Nations agency tasked with aiding Palestinians, which recently faced an international wave of funding withdrawals after the revelation that several of its employees were alleged to have participated in the Oct. 7 attack. Separately, UNRWA’s commissioner general said the employees in question were fired without an investigation.

People ferry water at a makeshift tent camp for displaced Palestinians in Rafah. (AFP/Getty Images)

We have three timely perspectives on the shifting war landscape …

Opinion | Rafah was Gaza’s last safe zone. The Israeli ground assault will lead to a humanitarian disaster there. There are international fears of an unprecedented human toll in Rafah, which ordinarily has 150,000 residents, and has come to host 1.3 million displaced Palestinians since the onset of war. Israel has presented assurances that civilians will be given safe passage out, but the question of where they would go remains unanswered. For Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, a Palestinian American who grew up in Gaza, there are three possible solutions — including Israel itself. Read his essay ➤

Opinion | Israel’s economy desperately needed the failed GOP bill. With $17.6 billion in U.S. aid to Israel in question after the House of Representatives’ failed votes last week, our columnist Dany Bahar tallied up exactly how much Israel needs that money. With U.S. funds in limbo, and Israel’s credit rating newly downgraded, he writes, “Israel risks not just immediate economic hardship but a prolonged period of financial instability that could echo the lost decade of the 1970s.” Read his essay ➤

Opinion | How aid to Israel fell victim to the cult of Trump. How exactly did the Republicans, a party for which support of Israel has long been a policy tentpole, come to a place where a bill they themselves proposed for Israel aid was scuppered by some of their own members? Well, “this isn’t the first time in recent memory that Jewish priorities have been used as a political tool by Republicans,” Jay Michaelson writes. Read his essay ➤

The U.S. is one step closer to sending a major aid influx to Israel — but obstacles remain. (Samuel Corum/Getty Images)

More from the war …

The Senate passed a $95 billion emergency aid bill for Ukraine and Israel in a bipartisan vote, an important step after the House of Representatives failed to pass aid for both countries in multiple votes last week. The future of the aid package in the House remains uncertain.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, leader of the Palestinian Authority, arrived in Doha on Sunday to pursue ceasefire talks moderated by Qatari authorities. CIA chief Bill Burns is expected to travel to Egypt this week for further discussions, and Biden reportedly spent much of his Sunday call with Netanyahu discussing the framework for a hostage release and prolonged pause in fighting.

Meeting with Arab American leaders in Michigan, one of Biden’s top foreign policy aides said that the administration had made mistakes in its response to the war, which has been strongly supportive of Israel, and that he lacked confidence Israel was open to taking “meaningful steps” toward Palestinian statehood. Jewish groups including the Anti-Defamation League objected to the inclusion, in the meeting, of the publisher of a Detroit-area Arab American newspaper who said of Hamas that “the fact it is not a terrorist organization” after the Oct. 7 attack.

The 19 Brown University students engaged in a hunger strike to try and compel the school’s administration to consider divesting from businesses “associated with human rights abuses in Palestine” broke their fast Friday after eight days, when the administration meeting they aimed to influence passed with no action. Ariela Rosenzweig, one of the strikers, told the Forward last week that she felt she had to “do anything that I can because the situation in Palestine is so dire and has been for so many years.”

ALSO IN THE FORWARD

The Talmud: Secretly kind of sexy? (Graphic by Mira Fox/iStock)

Sex tips from the Talmud, just in time for Valentine’s Day. “In Judaism — especially in the Talmud — sex rules the day,” writes our Mira Fox, although you may want to disregard the examples set by some of the more carnally motivated figures in Jewish tradition. (King David’s playbook is best left unexplored.) But other advice from the sages isn’t just good, but downright progressive. “The rabbis of the Talmud compare the idea of limiting sex within a marital relationship with a man who has bought meat or fish — no one is going to tell him how he can spice it,” Fox writes.

In a Jewish art dealer’s Paris apartment, a jaw-dropping collection of 20th-century masterworks. Léonce Rosenberg was a significant French art dealer of the first part of the 20th century, with a particularly strong taste for Cubism and other avant-garde forms. Now, the Picasso Museum in Paris has partially reconstructed the collection that graced Rosenberg’s 1920s apartment, 11 rooms filled with art by the likes of Max Ernst and Giorgio de Chirico, in a startlingly ambitious show.

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WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY

Ozzy Osbourne: A cross-wearing champion of the Jewish people. (Scott Dudelson/Getty Images)

🎵 Kanye West removed a sample of an Ozzy Osbourne song from his new album after the rocker blasted him as an “antisemite.” Osbourne said that West, who has changed his name to Ye, “was refused permission” to use the clip “because he is an antisemite and has caused untold heartache to many” — but the snippet still played during a Thursday preview of the album. (Rolling Stone, CBS)

😨 A Jewish chaplain at the University of Leeds, in the U.K., went into hiding with his family after receiving “hundreds” of threats of death and rape over his wartime service as a reservist in the IDF. Separately, protesters against the war at the University of Birmingham reportedly chanted “death to Zionists” during a protest last week. (Times of Israel, Jewish Chronicle)

😰 The Australian Jewish community was hit by threats after pro-Palestinian activists shared the information of hundreds of supposed “Zionists” on social media; an Australian Jewish lawmaker said that at least one family had gone into hiding after the list’s release.

😮 An Air National Guard general fired in 2023 accused California Gov. Gavin Newsom and other California officials of antisemitic harassment in a new lawsuit. Retired Brig. Gen. Jeffrey Magram was fired after reports that he had employed troops on personal errands like taking his mother shopping. (New York Post)

👀 The U.K. followed the lead of the U.S. and sanctioned four Israeli settlers “who have violently attacked Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.” Only one settler appears on both the U.S. and U.K. lists. (Times of Israel)

Shiva call ➤Robert Badinter, a French Holocaust survivor and crusader against antisemitism who led the fight to abolish the death penalty in his home country, died at 95.

What else we’re reading ➤ “These Israelis and Palestinians are still working for peace. Just quietly” … “Inside Meta, a debate over when the word ‘Zionist’ is hate speech” … “Einstein on the run: how the world’s greatest scientist hid from Nazis in a Norfolk hut.”

VIDEO OF THE DAY

A Super Bowl ad promoting the campaign Stand Up to Jewish Hate, founded by the billionaire Robert Kraft, featured the civil rights icon Clarence Jones. Our Arno Rosenfeld spoke to Jones about the ad and his advocacy against antisemitism last week: “There’s no way in hell we would have been able to transform this country without the support of the Jewish community,” Jones said.

Thanks to Benyamin Cohen and Jodi Rudoren for contributing to today’s newsletter, and Beth Harpaz for editing it. You can reach the “Forwarding” team at editorial@forward.com.

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