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Good morning. Today: Ramadan in Jerusalem; Hamas presents a ceasefire proposal; and the Auschwitz Memorial defends an Oscar-winning director criticized for Gaza comments.

OUR LEAD STORY

Worshippers filter toward Jerusalem’s Al Aqsa mosque on Friday morning. (Susan Greene)

Our Israel correspondent, Susan Greene, was at the Temple Mount this morning for the first Friday of Ramadan. She writes:

​​More than 40,000 Muslim worshippers packed into and around Al Aqsa Mosque at noon today, the first day off during this year’s Ramadan observance. The crowd was quiet and solemn as people wound their way into Damascus Gate, through the Muslim Quarter to the Temple Mount. Large groups of heavily armed Israeli police and Israel Defense Forces soldiers stood aside in designated staging throughout the route, without interfering with movement of the crowd.

When exiting the old city near the Damascus Gate, some of the worshippers looked tentative, even fearful about the heavy police presence in the area. There were no Jews or tourists in the Muslim Quarter during and after the prayer. One older woman, a sack of candy in hand, recognized that I’m a journalist. She put her hand to her heart, and smiled. “Thank you for being here,” she said. “Thank you.”

Posters of Hamas hostages on a wall at Hostage Square in Tel Aviv. (Roy Rochlin/Getty Images)

A synagogue leased its space to a mosque for Ramadan. It lasted a day. Hamakom, a Conservative LA-area synagogue, and the Islamic Society of West Valley, a nearby mosque, have forged a close relationship in the past few years — one that’s persisted as the war has threatened some interfaith bonds.

But when Hamakon leased its space to the mosque for Ramadan, things took a turn for the worse. Synagogue members objected to leadership covering the posters of hostages in the building’s lobby, and to the imam’s invitation to a guest speaker who has compared Israel to Nazi Germany.

“It’s sad to see a lot of effort and time and energy and hope that’s put into formulating partnerships quickly — I don’t want to say dissolve — but it took some steps backward,” said Shaykh Suhail Mulla, the mosque’s leader.

ISRAEL AT WAR

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer drew fire over his criticism of Israel’s government. (Roberto Schmidt/Getty Images)

Schumer says Netanyahu ‘stuck in the past,’ calls for new Israeli elections. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer sent shockwaves through American pro-Israel communities when, in a Thursday speech, he called for new Israeli elections, spoke harshly of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s wartime conduct, and suggested that Israel’s war strategy is due for a rethink. A number of American Jewish organizations, including the American Jewish Committee and Democratic Majority for Israel, pushed back on Schumer’s remarks, in which he said “many Israelis have lost their confidence in the vision and direction of their government.” Read the story ➤

Observing the first Friday prayer of Ramadan in Gaza. (Ahmad Hasaballah/Getty Images)

Latest on the war…

Hamas presented a new ceasefire proposal that would initially see 700-1,000 Palestinian prisoners released in exchange for some Israeli hostages, including women, children, the elderly and ill. Netanyahu’s office called the proposal a set of “ridiculous demands.”

Twenty-one Palestinians were killed and more than 150 injured while waiting to receive humanitarian aid in Gaza City yesterday. The IDF denied claims that Israeli troops fired on the crowd, saying Palestinian gunmen were responsible. Separately, the United States called for an investigation into a Wednesday airstrike on a United Nations food distribution facility in Gaza, saying casualties included a UN worker.

A Jewish man was attacked by protesters in Chicago who were trying to block people entering a movie theater screening a documentary about the Nova Music Festival massacre earlier this week. The man, who was carrying an Israeli flag, said, “I was completely surrounded by maybe six or seven” protesters, who “started punching me in the head.”

The U.S. added three more individuals and two West Bank outposts to its list of settlers facing sanctions over alleged violence against Palestinians and peace activists.

The Auschwitz Memorial pushed back on criticism of Jonathan Glazer’s Oscars speech, in which the Jewish director accepted honors for his Holocaust film The Zone of Interest while protesting Israel’s war. Glazer “issued a universal moral warning against dehumanization,” the memorial’s director wrote.

A group of pro-Palestinian faculty members at the University of Pennsylvania are suing the school to prevent it from sharing internal material with a congressional committee looking into antisemitism on campus, calling the effort “a new form of McCarthyism.”

Columbia University is considering reinstating its chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace after the New York Civil Liberties Union and Palestine Legal filed a suit against the university earlier this week.

Some 100 students at Paris’ Sciences Po, an elite university, reportedly blocked a Jewish student from entering a lecture hall, yelling “Don’t let her in, she’s a Zionist.” The incident sparked condemnation from the French government, with President Emmanuel Macron calling the incident “unspeakable and perfectly intolerable.”

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas appointed Mohammad Mustafa, his longtime economic adviser, as the next prime minister, after the previous government resigned in late February.

Australia became the latest country to resume its funding for UNRWA, the UN agency that serves Palestinians, following Sweden, Canada and the European Union.

Netanyahu at a press conference on Oct. 28, 2023. (Dana Kopel/Pool/Getty Images)

Opinion | Israel is 5 months into a brutal war. It’s clearer than ever that Netanyahu’s government must go. Schumer isn’t the only person questioning whether Netanyahu’s government is up to the task of managing the next stages of war and recovery. Israel’s war goals are poorly defined, and clarity about how close the country is to meeting them is hard to find. “If Israelis could trust this government that things will work out as planned, then I wouldn’t be writing this,” writes columnist Dany Bahar. “But the reality is that as days turn into months, the Israeli government’s functionality — or lack thereof — has become painfully apparent.” Read his essay ➤

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ALSO IN THE FORWARD

Gene Wilder on the set of Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. (Silver Screen Collection/Getty Images)

Remembering Gene Wilder — as mensch, mad genius and the only Wonka who matters. A new documentary about Wilder, which premieres today, digs into the ways in which the beloved actor’s underlying rage fueled his greatest comic performances — including his indelible take on Willy Wonka. And it’s a touching look at how some unforgettable partnerships shaped Wilder, who died in 2016. “If I hadn’t met Mel Brooks, I would probably be some patient at some neuropsychiatric hospital today,” he says in the film.

Sympathy for the Pharaoh? A Jewish-Indian play asks us to find a soft spot for an old enemy. “Most people, I tell them, ‘Well the play focuses a lot on Pharaoh and his son’ and they say ‘Oh, I didn’t realize Pharaoh had a son,’” Misha Shulman, author of the new play Pharaoh and rabbi for the New Shul, told our culture writer PJ Grisar. “We’re missing certain obvious details about other people’s humanity for the sake of the story that we feel comfortable telling.” The play, which opens in Manhattan today, melds Jewish and Indian storytelling forms to restore some of that humanity to one of Judaism’s great traditional villains.

NEW FROM THE FORWARD

WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY

A Jewish rideshare passenger accused a former driver of punching them after saying they wouldn’t drive a Jew. (Sundry Photography/iStock by Getty Images)

🚗 A former rideshare driver was charged in connection to an antisemitic attack on a Jewish passenger in California after Oct. 7. The driver allegedly said he would not drive a Jew or Israeli before punching the victim in the face. (Washington Post)

💰 A former executive at a Long Island Jewish school was convicted of stealing more than $8 million in school funds. David Ostrove, 52, skimmed from the Schechter School of Long Island’s accounts while serving as its chief financial officer and technical officer; he reportedly used the money to buy five beach houses in Fire Island, among other lavish purchases. (New York Post)

🫢 A sign advertising Eurovision in Malmö, Sweden — the host city for this year’s competition — was vandalized with anti-Israel graffiti, days after Israel’s official Eurovision song was unveiled. Separately, a July Pride festival in England scrapped its planned Eurovision theme over backlash against Israel’s participation in the competition. (Times of Israel, BBC)

Shiva call ➤ James Whitbourn, the British composer of Annelies, a choral adaptation of The Diary of Anne Frank, died at 60.

What else we’re reading ➤ Philip Roth, Fran Ross and more authors of “The Great American Novels” … “Evangelical Christians are fierce Israel supporters. Now they are visiting as war-time volunteers” … Philip Roth, Fran Ross and more authors of “22 of the Funniest Novels Since Catch-22.”

VIDEO OF THE DAY

Our senior political reporter Jacob Kornbluh appeared on LiveNow from Fox yesterday to discuss Sen. Schumer’s harsh criticism of Netanyahu. Schumer “is considered a great friend of Israel,” Jacob said, “and until recently even a close friend of Prime Minister Netanyahu.”

Thanks to Benyamin Cohen and Jacob Kornbluh 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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