WHAT’S DRIVING THE AMERICAN JEWISH CONVERSATION

Good morning. The conflict playing out on campuses over the Israel-Hamas war escalated, as an emergency United Nations Security Council meeting showed deep rifts over the war. That and more of the latest, below.

ISRAEL AT WAR

As Jewish students studied inside the Cooper Union library Wednesday, a pro-Palestinian protest formed on the other side of the glass. (Courtesy of Abigail Mottahedeh)

On campus …

Jewish students told to hide as pro-Palestinian protesters banged on doors of locked library. At Cooper Union, a New York City arts and engineering college with fewer than 1,000 students, a pro-Palestinian protest saw Jewish students trapped in the library Wednesday, with one telling our reporter Louis Keene, “I really, truly believe they would have done physical assault if they came in.” Read the story ➤

Pro-Palestinian students project anti-Israel slogans on George Washington University library. At George Washington University, students projected pro-Palestinian messages including “Glory to our martyrs” on a school library named for Jewish donors. The slogans appeared for almost two hours; in a statement, the university said it had intervened to stop them, and that the projections “in no way reflect the views of the university.” Read the story ➤

Opinion | Many universities fumbled reactions to Hamas’ attack. Here’s how one got it right. As college campuses have become a focal point of American reactions to the war, our senior columnist Rob Eshman writes, many have something to learn from Dartmouth’s “radical, out-of-the-box approach to an emotional, complex issue” — educating its students. In the wake of the Oct. 7 terrorist attack, a group of academics from Israel, Lebanon and Egypt, in addition to the U.S., organized two forums to discuss the crisis and answer student questions. “We can be morally outraged at brutality,” one of the professors said at the first event. “And we can try to understand what leads to it, where it comes from, what explains it.” Read his essay ➤

And:

At Brandeis U, founded as a nonsectarian Jewish university, a resolution to condemn Hamas failed the student senate

92NY, a storied cultural center in Manhattan, imploded over its cancellation of an event featuring an author critical of Israel

Friends and family of Israeli hostages held in Gaza rallied in Tel Aviv on Wednesday, as the government formally notified the families of 224 hostages of their status. (Alexi J. Rosenfeld/Getty Images)

Plus…

Israeli tanks briefly entered Gaza overnight, an operation the IDF said aimed in part to “prepare the battlefield.”

In televised remarks, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu suggested a ground invasion of Gaza was imminent, and said that “everyone will have to give answers” — including himself — on Israeli intelligence failures leading up to the Oct. 7 attack. But, he added, such an accounting would have to wait until after the war.

The U.S. and Russia faced off at a meeting of the U.N. Security Council, with each vetoing resolutions on the Israel-Hamas war put forward by the other. Russia and China accused the U.S. of being out of step with global sentiment by not calling for an explicit cease-fire.

President Joe Biden’s administration has continued to reject such calls, although Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Tuesday that the U.S. supports the idea of “humanitarian pauses” in the fighting.

Separately, Biden said the U.S. continues to support the goal of the war fundamentally changing the Israeli-Palestinian status quo: “When this crisis is over, there has to be a vision of what comes next,” he said, “and in our view it has to be a two-state solution.”

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan praised Hamas as a “liberation group” and canceled a planned trip to Israel, as French President Emmanuel Macron met with Netanyahu and spoke in Tel Aviv with French and French-Israeli family members of Hamas' victims.

The NYPD recorded 33 antisemitic hate crimes in the first three weeks of October, nearly double the monthly average of 18 this year.

Religious youth rallied in Jerusalem’s Old City on Thursday. (ARIS MESSINIS/AFP via Getty Images)

Listen: The Forward’s opinion editor, Laura E. Adkins, currently reporting on the ground in Israel, spoke with NPR’s 1A yesterday about the ways in which the war might change Israel’s political ecosystem.

Opinion | What the end of the Purim story teaches us about Israel’s war against Hamas. Jews who feel queasy about Israel’s war on Hamas would do well to revisit the Purim spiel, writes Josh Katz, in which “the Jews hunt down Haman’s sons and all other enemies in the kingdom” after narrowly escaping a genocide. “If you are troubled by the killing in the Purim story, you’re missing the point,” Katz writes: “It’s a roadmap for ethical defense of our faith and our families.” Read his essay ➤

Stay informed: You can follow our partners at Haaretz for live updates throughout the day. And we’ve taken down our paywall for coverage of Israel’s war with Gaza. Read all of our stories here.

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ALSO FROM THE FORWARD

Congressman Dean Phillips, a Minnesota Democrat, at the American Conservation Coalition’s 2022 Summit on June 16, 2022. (Gage Skidmore)

Jewish Democratic congressman plans to challenge Biden in 2024. Rep. Dean Phillips, 54, has long highlighted his Jewish heritage as a major factor in his political career, and aligned himself with the Democratic Party’s pro-Israel mainstream. In the lead-up to announcing his campaign, he said he was motivated by concerns over Biden’s age and low approval rating: “I will not sit on the sidelines and be quiet and stand down when I see the writing on the wall.”

Why a secret Danish boat lift 80 years ago still matters today. Almost all of Denmark’s Jews were saved from the Holocaust by their fellow citizens, who organized safe passage to Sweden in advance of a planned Nazi round-up. “There are important lessons Americans can take from the Danish rescue effort of 1943,” Jeffrey Metzger and Robert Lavine argue: “Many of our leaders fear to speak out or act as their consciences dictate on political and legal issues for fear of losing their political power,” but “the Danish leaders of 1943 ignored possible retribution from an occupying government known to rely on terror.”

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WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY

Jack Lew, President Biden’s nominee to be ambassador to Israel. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

👏 The Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted to advance the nomination of Biden’s proposed ambassador to Israel, Jack Lew. The Senate may begin considering his candidacy today. (New York Times)

😨 A Jewish family in LA experienced a home invasion by a man who yelled “free Palestine” and reportedly threatened to kill them because they were Israeli, although the family’s country of origin is currently unknown. (Fox 11 Los Angeles)

😢 The mother of a 6-year-old Palestinian boy who was murdered in a Chicago suburb shared a call for peace. The boy was killed in an attack related to the Israel-Hamas war; his mother was injured in the same attack. (Associated Press)

👀 Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis ordered state universities to disband chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine, accusing the student group of supporting a “terrorist organization.” (Associated Press)

🗳️ A Tennessee politician who refused to disavow neo-Nazi supporters lost her run for mayor of the city of Franklin. (Guardian)

What else we’re reading ➤ “Jews, Palestinians and Muslims in the US say they’re experiencing growing fear about rising bigotry and hatred” … “How Philip Roth’s raunchiest novel made it to the stage” … “Serving up love: Israelis see war as catalyst to matchmake.”

PHOTO OF THE DAY

(Leon Neal/Getty Images)

As Israel’s Defense Ministry reportedly plans to extend evacuations of border communities with Gaza and Lebanon through the end of the year, civilians across Israel have been organizing donation centers, like this one in Tel Aviv, to supply the displaced with necessities.

Thanks to Jaclyn De Bonis and Jay Ehrlich 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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