WHAT’S DRIVING THE AMERICAN JEWISH CONVERSATION

Good morning. Today: Biden outlines plans to make military assistance conditional on humanitarian aid; charges against Northwestern students who published parody paper about Israel dropped; and a dust-up between Israel and Ireland over basketball.

ISRAEL AT WAR

“I felt I needed to do something more than write a check,” Alison Leigh Cowan writes of her volunteer trip to Israel. (Penina Blazer; Ilana Sherizen; Stephen Bodurtha)

‘One of those moments in Jewish history’: 10 days as a wartime volunteer in Israel. “It’s practically a cliché by now: American Jew goes to pick produce on an Israeli farm in the aftermath of Oct. 7,” writes Alison Leigh Cowan. And yet in that cliché, Cowan, whose recent volunteer experience in Israel took her across the country — from roadside food stations for soldiers to ritzy hotels turned into compounds families evacuated from Israel’s south — found profound meaning. “This is one of those moments in Jewish history when everyone is called upon to serve,’’ said Rabbi Yosie Levine, who led part of Cowan’s trip. Read the story ➤

A protester wears a shirt with anti-occupation slogans at a Friday demonstration by Israeli and Palestinian activists in the West Bank. (HAZEM BADER/AFP via Getty Images)

Latest on the war …

• President Joe Biden will require that countries receiving U.S. military aid not impede the delivery of humanitarian aid during war, per a Thursday security memorandum that does not specifically mention Israel. “I’ve been pushing really hard, really hard to get humanitarian assistance into Gaza. There are a lot of innocent people who are starving — but innocent people — or in trouble and dying,” Biden said in a Thursday press conference. “And it’s got to stop.”

  
  

• 35 Israeli human rights groups have called for an immediate ceasefire in a new joint statement, writing that Israel must “allow unfettered entry and delivery of humanitarian aid and goods into and throughout Gaza,” and “Hamas must unconditionally release all people taken hostage on Oct. 7.”

  
  

• The Minneapolis City Council overrode Mayor Jacob Frey’s veto to pass a resolution calling for a ceasefire in the war. Frey, who is Jewish, said he supports calls for a ceasefire, but had concerns about the resolution, in part because of rising antisemitism.

  
  

• Progressive members of Congress who have spoken out against the war in Gaza have received record-high donations since the outbreak of war, per a new report.

  
  

• The stabbing that injured a Palestinian American man in Austin last weekend met the definition of a hate crime, authorities said.

  
  

• Following backlash, prosecutors dropped charges against two Northwestern students who published a spoof of the university’s student newspaper that lambasted the school’s approach to Israel and the war.

Israelis featured on the @israelsowhite Instagram account. (Courtesy of Ben Younger)

Instagram’s ‘IsraelSoWhite’ mocks notion of Israelis as ‘white colonizers’. Is Israel a European “settler colonialist state,” as critics of the war have sometimes claimed? According to the new Instagram account @israelsowhite, the answer might appear to be yes — except that the Israelis appearing in posts to repeat the message are people of color. Ben Younger, the film director behind the account, told our Beth Harpaz that his goal in creating it was to help those unfamiliar with Israel “to understand who we are.” The idea that Israel is a colonial entity, he said, “is actually so easily refutable. I just chose the visual path.” Read the story ➤

The Ireland-Israel women’s basketball antisemitism controversy, explained. A qualifying match for a European basketball tournament turned into an international controversy when Ireland’s team snubbed Israel’s pregame, after an Israeli player called the Irish team antisemitic without providing evidence; the Ireland squad then refused to shake hands after Israel won the game by more than 30 points. “Sports need to bring together and bridge,” said Israel’s coach, critiquing the other team’s actions. Read the story ➤

Plus:

• For an Israeli Chicago Bulls’ fan slain on Oct. 7, a final gift from that team’s star forward

  
  

• After losing friends on Oct. 7, this Israeli NCAA basketball player looks for an escape on the court

ALSO IN THE FORWARD

Students participate in a protest in support of Palestinians outside of the Columbia University campus on Nov. 15. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Opinion | DEI needs to be reimagined, and Black Jews are the ones to do it. “No relationship is more primed for a reset right now than the one between America’s Blacks and Jews, who’ve seen their always-tenuous allyship stress-tested without reprieve since the Hamas attack on Israel last Oct. 7,” writes David Kaufman, who is Black and Jewish. Part of the needed solution: rethinking the diversity, equity and inclusion frameworks that much of the U.S. embraced after widespread 2020 protests over the police killing of George Floyd. “Although DEI was never meant to be perfect, it was always intended to be fair,” Kaufman writes. “But fair now feels far different than it did before Oct. 7.”

In an election year, it’s time to ramp up the fight on abortion rights — and Jewish religious freedom. Tonight marks the start of Repro Shabbat, an initiative by the National Council of Jewish Women to support reproductive freedom. And in the first presidential election year since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, writes Lux Alptraum, honoring and advocating for Judaism’s “complex and nuanced take on abortion” is particularly essential. “For American Jews,” she writes, “the abortion debate is one more reminder that we have to fight to protect our freedom.”

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WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY

Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis speaks with King Charles III during a ceremony marking the 85th anniversary of Kristallnacht on Nov. 9, 2023. (AARON CHOWN/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

🇬🇧  The United Kingdom’s chief rabbi released a prayer for the recovery of King Charles III, who was this week diagnosed with cancer. The prayer by Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis, who has a warm relationship with the king, wishes Charles “a perfect healing, and a speedy recovery” so that “he may continue to rule over our nation in good health and happiness.” (Forward)

😮  A Vermont ski resort fired five employees who posed in swastika armbands. The Peruvian laborers, who were photographed wearing the Nazi insignia last weekend, also had their visas terminated. (WCVB)

😨  A Swedish official said the country had thwarted Iranian terror plots, after deporting two Iranians over a years-ago plot to kill Swedish Jews. Iran “has been preparing and conducted activities aimed at carrying out a so-called physical attack against someone or something in Sweden,” said the head of counterespionage efforts at Sweden’s domestic security agency. (Associated Press)

👀  Tucker Carlson pressed Russian President Vladimir Putin on the plight of Evan Gershkovich, an American Jewish journalist who has been jailed in Russia for almost a year. Putin’s response to Carlson, the first Western media figure to interview him since Russia invaded Ukraine two years ago, was guarded: “We have done so many gestures of good will out of decency that I think we have run out of them,” he said. (New York Times)

Shiva call ➤ Si Spiegel, a Jewish World War II hero who helped invent and popularize mass-produced artificial Christmas trees, died at 99.

What else we’re reading ➤ “Navigating Israel’s war when one spouse is Jewish, and one is not” … “Blinken’s make-or-break tour of the Middle East” … “An ode to the most iconic Jewess comedian, Gilda Radner.”

PHOTO OF THE DAY

(Franco Arland/Getty Images)

Israel’s Nili Block sparred with Helene Connart of Belgium Thursday during the Kickboxing World Championship in Paris.

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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