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Good morning. Today: Aid deliveries to Gaza have dropped by two-thirds during Rafah offensive; an attempted antisemitic attack outside a Brooklyn school; and a surprising link between Franz Kafka and the Civil Rights Movement.

ISRAEL AT WAR

A Palestinian boy searches the debris of a camp for internally displaced people in Rafah. (Eyad Baba/AFP/Getty Images)

Opinion | My fellow supporters of Israel’s war: We must grieve the horrifying deaths of innocent Palestinians in Rafah. “After almost eight months of war, those, like me, who support Israel’s war have much too often treated the act of genuinely sympathizing with Gaza’s innocents like a sort of treason, a betrayal of the war we firmly believe is just and justified,” writes Sruli Fruchter, a rabbinical student in Israel. The devastation of a Sunday Israeli airstrike that killed more than 40 Palestinian civilians in a Rafah tent camp for displaced persons, he writes, is a reminder that to argue “civilian casualties are an unfortunate reality of war is a heartless logic.” Read his essay ➤

Israel now has its own Strawberry Fields — to honor a hostage whose body was just recovered in Gaza. After the remains of Michael Nisenbaum, 59, were recovered last week, his boss at a farm that showcases “techniques that, as Israelis like to boast, make the desert bloom,” reminisced of his late employee that “everyone fell in love with him.” Uri Alon hired Nisenbaum despite his lack of familiarity with farming — his background was in computer science — and is renaming one of the farm’s most popular sections in honor of him. Read the story ➤

On Israel's southern border, destroyed buildings in Gaza are visible behind rows of early summer sunflowers. (Jack Gues / AFP / Getty Images)

Latest on the war…

Israel said it had gained complete “tactical control” over Gaza’s border with Egypt, known as the Philadelphi corridor, and found some 20 tunnels in the area; it aims to cut off external supply lines to Hamas. Separately, Israel’s national security adviser, Tzachi Hanegbi, said he expects the war to last through at least the end of the year.

Deliveries of humanitarian aid to Gaza have dropped by about two-thirds since Israel began a ramped-up operation in Rafah earlier in May, said the United Nations. Separately, the Palestinian Red Crescent, an aid organization, said two of its employees were killed Wednesday while crossing into Rafah to retrieve injured people. And, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies called Wednesday for a ceasefire in Gaza, saying a pause is desperately needed to allow aid deliveries.

U.S. officials said a $320 million temporary pier set up to allow aid deliveries, damaged by bad weather, would be operational again next week after parts undergo repairs in southern Israel.

Demonstrators at a Wednesday protest outside the Israeli embassy in Mexico City threw rocks and Molotov cocktails, causing some fires around the building and injuring 18 police officers, law enforcement said.

Brazil called back its ambassador to Israel. Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has been a vocal critic of the war, drawing backlash in February after comparing the Israeli campaign in Gaza to the Holocaust.

Two Israel Defense Forces soldiers were killed in a Wednesday car-ramming attack near the city of Nablus.

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ALSO IN THE FORWARD

Franz Kafka. (Getty Images)

How Franz Kafka can help us understand the history of segregation in America. What, you might ask, could possibly link Kafka to Brown v. Board of Education? Jack Greenberg, the lawyer who successfully argued that case in front of the Supreme Court, saw a clear connection: “A generation apart, Kafka and Greenberg gained universal views of injustice growing up Jewish in societies where antisemitism was common,” writes Allan M. Jalon. In advance of the centennial of Kafka’s death in 1924 — the same year Greenberg was born — Jalon revisited a 2009 essay in which Greenberg explored how Kafka’s experience as a lawyer focused on workplace compensation connected to his own quest for social justice.

WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY

A Brooklyn yeshiva was targeted by a man yelling “I’m gonna kill all the Jews” on Wednesday. (Alexi Rosenfeld / Getty Images)

😨 A man yelled “I’m gonna kill all the Jews” while driving over a curb toward a group of Orthodox students around a yeshiva in Brooklyn on Wednesday. Separately, a 40-year-old Brooklyn man was charged with felony assault and stalking as hate crimes, allegedly targeting people who were Jewish, female or white. (New York Post, New York Times)

😓 A Montreal Jewish school was targeted by gunfire Wednesday; no one was injured, but at least one bullet hit the building. Separately, Toronto’s mayor was among attendees at a rally at a Jewish girls’ school that was targeted by gunfire last weekend. (CBC, JTA)

👀 Sen. John Fetterman disavowed Harvard, his alma mater, as he received an award at Yeshiva University’s commencement ceremony. Fetterman said he was “profoundly disappointed” by “Harvard’s inability to stand up for the Jewish community after Oct. 7.” (New York Jewish Week)

⚖️ A law school graduate whose job offer was rescinded after she spoke out against Israeli bombings in Gaza and called Oct. 7 “not ‘unprovoked’” is suing the firm where she was supposed to start as a first-year associate in October, alleging it discriminated against her based on her Arab Muslim background. (Bloomberg Law)

Shiva call ➤ Marc Klein, a tentpost of American Jewish journalism who revitalized J. The Jewish News of Northern California, died at 75.

What else we’re reading ➤ “A nurse honored for compassion is fired after referring in speech to Gaza ‘genocide’” … “A ‘Bible Belt’ is in the works in Israel's south, despite warnings of disaster” … “Meet the New York Jewish Week’s 36 to watch 2024.”

PHOTO OF THE DAY

(Getty Images)

Student protesters against the war left their mark before being evicted from a building they had occupied at Germany’s Humboldt University, covering the walls in pro-Palestinian graffiti. One message: “Stop making Palestinians pay for your grandparents crimes.”

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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