WHAT’S DRIVING THE AMERICAN JEWISH CONVERSATION

Our office will be closed on Monday for Presidents Day. The next edition of Forwarding the News will arrive on Tuesday. In today’s edition: Matisyahu claims antisemitism at play as shows are canceled; hostage families protest government’s rejection of ceasefire talks; terror attack in Israel kills two.

ISRAEL AT WAR

Pro-Israel activists counterprotest a pro-Palestinian rally in New York City. (Stephanie Keith/Getty Images)

Opinion | How to talk about Israel with someone you disagree with. Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove has found the last four months morally clarifying. He knows exactly what he believes about the war: It is just, and at the same time, as Gazans continue to face profound loss and suffering, “to not be heartbroken is to be inhuman.” But there is only so far knowing your own mind takes you, he writes: “The challenge we face is how to relate to those for whom the truths that I hold to be self-evident are not self-evident at all.” Among the ground rules for approaching that challenge in ways that are productive: “ask a good question.”

A makeshift camp for displaced Palestinians near the border fence between Gaza and Egypt. (Mohammed Abed/AFP via Getty Images)

Latest from the war…

A recently circulated internal Israel Defense Forces report warns that Hamas is likely to survive the war, stating that “authentic support remains” for the group among Gazans, and warning that the government’s lack of a clear postwar plan for Gaza means it “will become an area in deep crisis.”

Two were killed and four wounded in a terrorist attack at a bus stop in southern Israel.

Families of the hostages remaining in Gaza protested outside Tel Aviv’s Defense Ministry headquarters, with some handcuffing themselves to its gates, after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday instructed Israeli officials to stop participating in talks in Cairo for a deal for a ceasefire and hostage release.

Netanyahu issued a statement rejecting “international dictates regarding a permanent settlement with the Palestinians” after a 40-minute call with President Joe Biden, whose administration is reportedly close to developing for a Palestinian state. Several Israeli ministers also spoke out against the plan, with far-right finance minister Bezalel Smotrich saying it would give Palestinians “a prize for the terrible massacre they carried out against us.”

The head of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs sparked outrage after saying “Hamas is not a terrorist group for us” in a Wednesday interview.

Israel’s ambassador to the Holy See formally complained over a senior Vatican official’s Tuesday remarks referring to “carnage” in Gaza.

American investigators visited the West Bank to look into the recent shooting deaths of two Palestinian American teenagers. In the U.S., Biden issued an executive order stating that immigration officials should not attempt to deport most Palestinian immigrants, saying the war in Gaza and escalating violence in the West Bank have made the situation there too dangerous.

Matisyahu in concert in Austin. (Rick Kern/Getty Images)

Matisyahu claims venues canceled his shows due to antisemitism. Matisyahu, a Grammy-nominated reggae artist whose music features heavily Jewish themes, took to social media on Thursday to say two of his recent concerts had been canceled in reaction to the war, alleging that staffers at venues in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Tucson, Arizona, had refused to work his shows. “They do this because they are either antisemitic or have confused their empathy for the Palestinian people with hatred for someone like me who holds empathy for both Israelis and Palestinians,” Matisyahu wrote, saying that he was rejected after offering to pay for temporary staff to help out. Read the story ➤

It happened one flight: The Israeli love affair that changed my life. It was a meet-cute right out of Hollywood: Sharon Rosen Leib’s tall Israeli seatmate on a 1985 flight to Switzerland accidentally elbowed her so hard she dropped her book. The months of young love that followed were enrapturing — and, for Leib, raised questions about the kind of Jewish future she could envision for herself, ones that she’s revisited in the painful months since Oct. 7. “I wondered, if I had stayed, if my alternate-reality children would have been at the Nova music festival,” she writes, “where Hamas hunted down and killed young adults in their 20s like them.” Read her essay ➤

ALSO IN THE FORWARD

Kylian Mbappe. (Catherine Steenkeste/Getty Images)

9 reasons global superstar Kylian Mbappe should join my synagogue soccer team. You might know Mbappe, 25, from his flabbergasting performance in the 2022 World Cup final, in which he scored three goals. But if our Louis Keene has his way, the soon-to-be free agent’s next act will take him to even greater heights: to Hapoel YP, Louis’ synagogue team, which “hasn’t won a game since joining our LA rec league last fall.” Among Louis’ reasons for the star, whose current salary is $72 million, to consider a modest (read: entire) downgrade in income: “Hapoel YP’s passionate fanbase of spouses and small children has zero tolerance for hate. Even when we’re losing 7-0, they never boo.”

From a Jewish home in Queens to ‘Sesame Street,’ Broadway, ‘Succession’ and ‘Job.’Peter Friedman has had a stellar run in his acting career over the past several years, including a plum role on Succession and a major part in the last season of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. He couldn’t have come by his latest endeavor — an off-Broadway play in which he plays a crisis therapist experiencing something of a crisis of his own — in a more Jewish way. “My daughter, Sadie, went to Hebrew school with one of the young producers,” Friedman, 74, said in an interview.

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WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY

Former President Donald Trump and Jared Kushner in the White House in 2020. (Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images)

👀 Jared Kushner said he would not take a role in a second Donald Trump administration. Kushner, who is married to Trump’s daughter Ivanka, said he has “really enjoyed the opportunity as a family to be out of the spotlight.” (Forward)

⚖️ The brother of a deceased man suspected in four 2019 Boston-area arsons that targeted Jewish institutionspleaded not guilty to charges that he obstructed investigations into the incidents. (Associated Press)

😞 Police are investigating after a city council meeting in West Orange, NJ was “Zoom-bombed” with antisemitic and racist comments amid conversation on a proposed resolution supporting a ceasefire in the war. The city, one of an increasing number around the country to consider such a resolution, eventually tabled it. (Patch)

😨 Police arrested a suspect in the Monday-night stabbing of a Jewish man in Paris. The suspect is a one-time friend of the victim, who was stabbed six times; the victim had previously filed a complaint with police over antisemitic threats from the suspect. (Algemeiner)

What else we’re reading ➤ “Jewish identity with and without Zionism” … “Why the most educated people in America fall for antisemitic lies” … “The Jewish American and Palestinian American scientists who’ve been partnering for 14 years on science’s toughest challenges.”

PHOTO OF THE DAY

(Ahmad Gharabli/AFP via Getty Images)

Relatives of Israeli hostages held in Gaza lit flares and blocked roads with their supporters during the Thursday demonstration in front of the Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv.

Thanks to Benyamin Cohen 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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