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JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.

WHAT’S DRIVING THE AMERICAN JEWISH CONVERSATION

Good morning. Today: Legal experts pressure United Kingdom to end arms sales to Israel; Trump weighs in on the war; and a challenging choice between NCAA basketball and Shabbat.

ISRAEL AT WAR

Are fears about rising antisemitism out of proportion to the actual facts? (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Opinion | The growing panic about antisemitism isn't a reflection of reality. Sunday marks six months since the horrific Oct. 7 attack. In those months, writes Jay Michaelson, American Jews have been encouraged to fixate on the supposed threat of left-wing antisemitism, especially as protests over the war have seized college campuses. But that narrative is less factually sound than it may appear — and threatens to fracture crucial alliances at a time when threats from the right are much more serious.Read his essay ➤

10 key statements that show Biden’s evolution on the war since Oct. 7. President Joe Biden called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza in a Thursday phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the strongest statement he’s yet made on the war. This week, after an Israeli airstrike killed seven humanitarian aid workers with World Central Kitchen, Biden’s language about the conflict has dipped away from his standard, strong support of Israel. We took a look back at how his public statements have evolved in the last six months — starting with an Oct. 7 speech in which he said his support for Israel's security is “rock solid and unwavering.” Read the story ➤

One of the cars in which employees from the World Central Kitchen were killed in an Israeli airstrike. (Yasser Qudihe / Middle East Images / Middle East Images via AFP / Getty Images)

Latest on the war…

Two senior Israel Defense Forces officers were dismissed, and several others censured, over their involvement with the deadly airstrike on the World Central Kitchen workers.

Israel’s government announced that it would make more aid deliveries to Gaza after Biden’s tense call with Netanyahu, including by reopening a crossing that has been closed since Oct. 7. The government did not share a planned date for the reopening.

Chef José Andrés, founder of World Central Kitchen, claimed that the fatal airstrike appeared to have been targeted. Separately, the organization demanded an independent commission investigate, saying Israel “cannot credibly investigate its own failure.”

A senior Israeli official said, in response to the aid workers’ deaths, that a culture of “shooting first and asking questions later” was developing among IDF soldiers in Gaza.

The aid workers’ deaths have also spawned a diplomatic crisis between Israel and Poland. One of those killed was Polish; on Thursday, the country’s president condemned as “outrageous” a statement by Israel’s ambassador pushing back on allegations that the strike was intentional.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told his Israeli counterpart that the aid workers’ deaths reinforced American concerns about Israel’s potential expansion of military operations in Rafah, in the southern Gaza strip.

The United Nations Human Rights Council voted to adopt a resolution saying Israel should be held to account for possible war crimes; the United States opposed the resolution.

Former President Donald Trump said in a radio interview that Israel should try to get the war “over with,” saying “you have to have a victory, and it’s taking a long time.”

More than 600 British legal experts, including three retired Supreme Court justices, demanded in a letter that the United Kingdom cease arms sales to Israel, arguing that the country must employ caution after the International Court of Justice found a “plausible risk of genocide” in Gaza.

The Chicago Bulls’ DeMar DeRozan. (Patrick McDermott/Getty Images)

An NBA star gave a jersey to an Oct. 7 victim’s family. Some fans are furious. “Before he was murdered by Hamas terrorists at the Nova Music Festival on Oct. 7, Oron Beilin was a huge Chicago Bulls fan,” writes our Louis Keene. “When DeMar DeRozan, the Bulls’ leading scorer, learned this, he autographed a special jersey for Beilin’s family with Oron’s name and the infinity symbol underneath.” But some NBA fans objected after DeRozan was photographed “accepting an award for the gesture from the Simon Wiesenthal Center,” while “standing in front of an Israeli flag and a projector screen that reads ‘Solidarity With Israel.’” Read the story ➤

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ALSO IN THE FORWARD

Caitlin Clark of the Iowa Hawkeyes. (Andy Lyons/Getty Images)

I’m obsessed with Caitlin Clark. Do I choose her over Shabbat? Clark, the star of the University of Iowa’s women’s basketball team who has helped turn collegiate women’s basketball into can’t-miss entertainment, plays a crucial March Madness game tonight. For our deputy opinion editor Nora Berman, the event marks a clash between her past self — a fiercely committed young basketball player — and her present commitment to observing Shabbat. “Shabbat and basketball both help me express parts of myself that feel raw and vulnerable: in basketball, competition; on Shabbat, a holy presence,” Nora writes.

A daughter of a Jewish father and a German mother in search of her own identity. “Was my mother’s side of the family evil? Were they Nazis and genocidal murderers?” Mia Faye Kreindler asks in a new essay probling the complexities of her mixed German and Jewish identities. “Was I inherently sinful because of my German heritage?” It turned out her maternal grandfather had been a member of the Hitler Youth when he was younger than 10. But “any inhibitions I might have had about moving to Germany were overcome, overwritten, by the strength of the relationship,” Kreindler’s father told her.

Plus…

Poll shows Rep. Jamaal Bowman trailing by double digits in his reelection bid

Nassau County’s Jewish executive calls on Democratic leader to quit for invoking Nazis

NEW FROM THE FORWARD

WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY

Former Texas Speaker of the House Joe Straus (right). (Ralph Barrera-Pool/Getty Images)

😳 A Texas GOP megadonor told the state’s Jewish former House speaker that only Christians should hold political leadership. The 2018 interaction between oil magnate Tim Dunn and former state Rep. Joe Straus, a Republican, had been long rumored; Straus confirmed it publicly Thursday. (Texas Tribune)

🎤 More than 250 Holocaust survivors joined a new speakers’ bureau launched Thursday to help combat rising antisemitism worldwide. The initiative, run through the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, will help connect survivors with students across the globe. (Associated Press)

🗳️ The Republican Jewish Coalition is challenging an Indiana Republican, in a rare instance of intra-party conflict over Israel within the GOP. Former Rep. John N. Hostettler previously served in Congress from 1995 until 2007; the RJC alleges he has an “anti-Israel record.” (New York Times)

😟 A Florida man was arrested after sending threatening messages to a woman who works at a synagogue. In one text, the suspect referred to “the nazi with a gun coming to the Jewish campus.” (Tampa Bay 10)

🇬🇧 Mazel tov, mate: The sheriff of Nottingham is, for the first time in history, a Jew. Nick Rubins was sworn into the office, made famous in legends of Robin Hood — whose populist exploits the then-sheriff notoriously opposed — at his local synagogue. (JTA)

What else we’re reading ➤Inside President Biden’s “increasingly contradictory Israel policy” … “Jewish basketball coach Lindsay Gottlieb has already changed the game” … Alfred Dreyfus: “the very private man at the center of one of the greatest public controversies of modern times.”

PHOTO OF THE DAY

An airdrop of humanitarian aid landed in Gaza on Thursday, amid renewed calls for Israel to expand pathways for aid to reach the besieged territory.

Thanks to Benyamin Cohen for contributing to today’s newsletter, and to Lauren Markoe for editing it. You can reach the “Forwarding” team at [email protected].

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