WHAT’S DRIVING THE AMERICAN JEWISH CONVERSATION

Good morning. The United Nations General Assembly will vote today on a nonbinding resolution calling for a cease-fire, as humanitarian officials warned that Israel’s resource blockade on Gaza had stretched basic services in the territory to their limit. More of the latest from the war, below.

OUR LEAD STORY

Kimberly Faught, known as the Gypsy Violin Queen of Squirrel Hill, performs in front a Giant Eagle supermarket in Pittsburgh. (Benyamin Cohen)

Postcard from Pittsburgh: 5th anniversary of Tree of Life falls amid broader grief. Five years ago today, a gunman killed 11 people at the Tree of Life synagogue — the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history. In a visit to Squirrel Hill, the heavily Jewish neighborhood in which the attack took place, our news director Benyamin Cohen found a community grappling with the continuing repercussions of the shooting at a time when, following Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel, Jews worldwide have entered “a state of collective mourning.” Standing outside a supermarket, he spoke with a violinist who, after the 2018 massacre, played “Jerusalem of Gold” on a street corner. To this day, she said, “I get goosebumps when I hear it.” Read the story ➤

Plus:

• She survived the worst antisemitic attack in US history. Finally, she’s ready to talk about it

  
  

• Opinion | Covering the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting and its aftermath tested me as a Jewish journalist

  
  

• After synagogue gunman’s death sentence, Pittsburgh’s Jews feel relief, resilience — and gratitude

ISRAEL AT WAR

Palestinian students attend a national education lesson at the Dar Al-Arqam school in Gaza City, founded by Hamas, in 2006. (Abid Katib/Getty Images)

Opinion | The roots of Hamas’ terror attack can be found in Gaza’s schools. “At the core of the tragedy unfolding in Gaza is a question,” former Congressman Steve Israel writes: “When Israel withdrew from the coastal Palestinian enclave in 2005, why did the romantic vision of it as a place that would function as a fit home for its citizens turn into the hellish reality of a failed state run by a terrorist organization?” His answer: Gaza’s education system has taught students to turn away from any possibility of peace with Israel  — a tactic that, combined with the dire combination of poverty and conflict-related trauma that affects many Gazan children, “is a recipe for radicalization.” Read his essay ➤

What if thousands of Gaza residents breached the border fence carrying only Palestinian flags?Our editor-in-chief, Jodi Rudoren, who spent four years as The New York Times’ Jerusalem bureau chief, has found herself returning to one question in the days since the Oct. 7 attack: “What if Hamas broke through that wall from Gaza into Israel but didn’t kill or kidnap anyone?” Prompted by the visceral reactions many around the world had to the image of Palestinians breaking through the wall, she envisioned what a contemporary nonviolent Palestinian resistance might look like — one of countless “what ifs” about whether and how a brutal war might have been avoided. Read her essay ➤

And:

• Signs showing a Star of David in a trash can are suddenly everywhere. Hamas used the image 10 years ago

  
  

• How to conduct a Jewish wedding when Israel is still burying its dead? These rabbis did it

  
  

• At a Dead Sea hotel, refugees from Kibbutz Be’eri count their dead and grieve

  
  

• Popular kids video game Roblox has become gathering space for pro-Palestinian protests

Firefighters and members of Israel’s security service respond to an apartment building hit by a rocket fired from Gaza in Tel Aviv on Friday. (Alexi J. Rosenfeld/Getty Images)

Plus…

• The U.S. conducted two airstrikes on facilities used by Iran and its proxies in Syria, after days of attacks on American soldiers in Iraq and Syria. Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III said the U.S. “has no intention nor desire to engage in further hostilities.”

  
  

• The IDF made a second ground entrance into Gaza, in a raid involving tanks and troops. Separately, an unidentified drone crashed in an Egyptian town on the Red Sea, injuring six. An IDF spokesperson said an aerial threat had been identified in the area, but did not provide further details.

  
  

• An Israeli poll found that nearly half of Israeli citizens think Israel should pause plans for a ground offensive in Gaza, with 22% undecided — a split that reflects deep divisions in Israel’s government over how, and even whether, to approach a ground campaign.

  
  

• Two Jewish congressmen urged Israel to enact “humanitarian pauses” to reduce the toll of war on Palestinian civilians in Gaza, echoing a previous call by Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

  
  

• The White House spoke out against the escalating antisemitism on college campuses, citing “protests and statements on college campuses that call for the annihilation of the state of Israel; for genocide against the Jewish people.” Separately, two student statements at Brandeis University pushed back on the student senate’s rejection of a resolution condemning Hamas, with one stating, “Failure to denounce these atrocities without reservation is a moral stain.”

  
  

• The House of Representatives passed a resolution condemning Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack with overwhelming support.

  
  

• Airstrikes killed several members of the family of Al Jazeera’s bureau chief in Gaza. The Committee to Protect Journalists has so far documented the deaths of 27 journalists on both sides of the war.

Stay informed: You can follow our partners at Haaretz for live updates throughout the day. And we’ve taken down our paywall for coverage of Israel’s war with Gaza. Read all of our stories here.

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ALSO FROM THE FORWARD

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) on Thursday. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Newly elected GOP House speaker once likened abortion to the Holocaust. Mike Johnson, a four-term Republican congressman who became speaker of the House on Tuesday, wrote in a 2005 op-ed that legal abortion was “a holocaust that has been repeated every day for 32 years, since 1973’s Roe v. Wade.” Several Republican politicians have drawn fire for similar comparisons in the past.

My friend David Lehrer died when we need him most. Lehrer, once a longtime official with the Anti-Defamation League in California and a beloved community activist, died unexpectedly on Wednesday. “He loathed hypocrisy, on the right or left,” our senior columnist Rob Eshman writes in a remembrance, reflecting on the particular cruelty of Lehrer’s loss at this heightened moment: “While he defended the civil liberties of American Muslims — he suspected that was a reason for his dismissal from the ADL long ago — he sharply criticized Muslim leaders who appeared to rationalize terror.”

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WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY

(Noam Galai/Getty Images)

😨  A teen reportedly screamed “I will kill you, Jew” at a 9-year-old at a New York City playground, and threatened the child with a knife. Separately, a swastika was found carved into playground equipment at a suburban Chicago elementary school. (New York Post, Associated Press)

👀  The Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual meeting, traditionally a stop for presidential candidates, happens this weekend. The conference experienced a late surge of sign-ups after the Oct. 7 attack. (New York Times)  

😞  The suspect in the murders of 18 people in Maine reportedly liked election conspiracies and other far-right content on social media. A massive manhunt is underway for the accused shooter, Robert Card. (Messenger)

🙄  A Kansas City political candidate repeatedly compared a public utilities board to Nazis, using the phrase “Hail Hitler.” (Kansas City Star)

What else we’re reading ➤“My grandmother is a hostage. I want her back, and I want peace” … “‘They're fighting to destroy a people’: Holocaust survivors disturbed by rising antisemitism” … “Is this the end of the Netanyahu era?”

PHOTO OF THE DAY

(Timothy A. Clary/AFP via Getty Images)

A coalition of Jewish groups debuted an installation in Times Square Thursday featuring a 222-seat table, laid for Shabbat dinner, with chairs and place settings for the hostages held by Hamas. The confirmed number of hostages held continues to grow; the IDF said Friday that at least 229 civilians and soldiers are being held hostage.

Thanks to Beth Harpaz for editing today’s newsletter. You can reach the “Forwarding” team at editorial@forward.com.

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