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WHAT’S DRIVING THE AMERICAN JEWISH CONVERSATION

Netanyahu goes on American media blitz, why Duke had an absence of campus protests, Woody Harrelson to star in a movie about Hitler’s second-in-command, and why Jewish NBA fans are cheering on Kyrie Irving after his antisemitic antics.

ISRAEL AT WAR

Linguist Uri Horesh was sacked from his job teaching at Achva Academic College after making social media posts that included accusing Israel of genocide. (Courtesy)

A campus conflict of another kind: Israeli teachers who criticize the war have been yanked from the classroom — and thrown in jail

Our Susan Greene reports this morning from Israel…

Sabreen Msarwi lost her job teaching Arabic at a middle school in Ganei Tikva last week after marching, as she does every year, to commemorate the Nakba, the displacement of some 700,000 Palestinians around Israel’s 1948 founding.

She is one of dozens of Israeli educators, some Palestinian and some Jewish, to be suspended or fired from local schools and universities since Oct. 7 for voicing critical opinions of Israel’s prosecution of the war in Gaza, support for Palestinian resistance, and other views the government finds objectionable. Civil rights groups and defense lawyers count at least 46 indictments over the past seven months of people in academic settings who have expressed dissent, and said that at least 28 of them spent time in jail.

“There is no freedom of speech for teachers just now,” said Msarwi, who has been teaching for 23 years. “We’re being persecuted for expressing our views.”

Smoke rises after Israeli attacks Tuesday on the northern Gaza Strip. (Getty)

Opinion | There’s a real outrage involving the International Criminal Court, Israel and Hamas. It isn’t what you think:In seeking to arrest both Israeli and Hamas leaders, people are focused on whether the ICC is treating both parties as equivalent. That misses the point, argues Emily Tamkin. “Equivalence between war crimes isn’t the point; the war crimes themselves are,” she writes. “Not everyone who comes before the court is equal or equivalent, but their alleged victims are equally deserving of justice.” Read her essay ➤

AP incident…

The Israeli government confiscated and then returned equipment belonging to the Associated Press under a new law that it recently used to shutter the offices of Al Jazeera. Yair Lapid, the Israeli opposition leader, called it “madness,” adding: “This is not Al Jazeera, this is an American media outlet that has won 53 Pulitzers.”

Opinion | Israel made a terrible tactical blunder in targeting the AP — one it’s made many times before: “Some in Israel fear that AP’s own coverage might now become unfriendly — but that betrays a lack of understanding of how the serious media operates,” writes Dan Perry, who used to be AP’s chief editor for Europe, Africa and the Middle East. “The truth is both more subtle and more devastating: Behave this way often enough, and journalists will stop treating the country as a developed democracy, meaning that its officials will be more often disbelieved.” Read his essay ➤

Plus: A group of right-wing Jewish activists trashed an aid shipment bound for Gaza: tearing open bags of flour, puncturing tires and throwing food to the ground. But their tactics have sparked controversy and proven divisive even among their putative allies.

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CONFLICT ON CAMPUS

Students who support Israel at Duke University, where roughly 12% of the students are Jewish, said the campus has not been rocked by the kind of protests that have swept other schools around the country, allowing them to focus on proactive programming. (Getty)

At Duke, pro-Israel Jewish students go ‘on the offense’:Jewish students at Duke say they haven’t had to deal with kind of raucous protests against Israel that have swept other elite schools since Oct. 7, allowing those who support the Jewish state to instead focus on winning more allies. “We’re not consistently defending ourselves as Jews at Duke,” said Nicole Schwenk, a senior from Long Island. Read the story ➤

Plus…

An overwhelming majority of New Yorkers believe the recent campus protests have gone too far and crossed the line into antisemitism, according to a new poll published Wednesday.

A Jewish alumni group at MIT, upset with the university president’s handling of antisemitism and pro-Palestinian protests, have devised a plan to oust her.

The University of Michigan on Tuesday cleared an encampment with the help of law enforcement. The fire marshal prompted the school to quell the demonstration as soon as possible, as it said the protesters were “overloading power sources” and “using open flames” after repeatedly being told that they might start a fire resulting in “catastrophic loss of life.”

Students at Wesleyan University voluntarily took down their pro-Palestinian protest encampment after negotiations between the demonstrators and school administrators.

NEW FROM THE FORWARD

WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY

Karen Frostig has been working for nearly two decades to build a memorial at Jungfernhof, the Latvian site where the Nazis likely murdered her grandparents. (Courtesy Mike E. Dunne)

🇱🇻 Nearly 4,000 Jews died at Jungfernhof, a Nazi camp in Latvia. Now a Boston artist, with family roots at the camp, is fighting for a memorial to them. (JTA)

🎒 A Manhattan Jewish day school removed a teacher who was arrested last week on charges of raping a teenage girl. The alleged rape took place in 2022, before the teacher joined the faculty. (NY Jewish Week)

🌊 A Christian religious group that has closed its beaches on Sunday mornings for decades to honor God is temporarily relenting, allowing beachgoers onto the sand while it fights a court case with New Jersey. (AP)

🎞️ Actors Andy Serkis and Woody Harrelson will star in a new movie about the chronically ill Heinrich Himmler, Hitler’s second-in-command, and the doctor who treated him. “Using his medical skills as a weapon,” a description reads, “the doctor manages to influence Himmler, turn him against Hitler, and, in turn, save many thousands of lives.” (Deadline)

VIDEO OF THE DAY

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu went on a media blitz Tuesday appearing on ABC, CNN, and other news outlets about the International Criminal Court’s threat to issue arrest warrants for him and Hamas leaders. On MSNBC, speaking with host Stephanie Ruhle, he said it would be the equivalent of, during World War II, issuing arrest warrants for both FDR and Hitler. “It’s absurd,” Netanyahu said. “It’s a travesty of justice.” Watch the interview above.

Thanks to Mira Fox, Jacob Kornbluh, Lauren Markoe, Arno Rosenfeld and Talya Zax for contributing to today’s newsletter, and to Beth Harpaz for editing it. You can reach the “Forwarding” team at [email protected].

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