WHAT’S DRIVING THE AMERICAN JEWISH CONVERSATION

Good morning. Thousands are expected at today’s March for Israel in Washington, D.C., planned as a show of solidarity with Israel and a rally to demand the return of hostages held in Gaza. Separately, a peace activist previously thought to be held captive was confirmed to have died during the Oct. 7 attack.

ISRAEL AT WAR

The 2017 Women’s March on Washington might have helped to make slow change by increasing a sense of solidarity — can the March for Israel do the same? (Benjamin Lowy/Getty Images)

Opinion | How will today’s March for Israel measure up against history?Many movements have attempted to make change by marching on the National Mall — most famously the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, which helped lead to the passage of the Civil Rights Act. But the bulk of history suggests that such actions are largely ineffective at prompting legislative action, writes our editor-at-large Robin Washington. That doesn’t mean they’re empty gestures, though: Massive shows of solidarity can “inspire others and help sway public opinion.” Read his essay ➤

Opinion | How to talk to people who hate Israel. “Let’s face it,” writes our senior columnist Rob Eshman: “Israel is losing hearts and minds,” a fact that even a national march is unlikely to make much headway in combating. So, what might actually help supporters of Israel notch some wins in the war of public opinion? “My answer is … a question,” Rob writes. “When I realize I’m speaking with someone whose views on Israel are very different from my own, I always ask, ‘What do you want?’” — an opening that can lead to conversations that dive into the nuance of the situation, without raising temperatures. Read his essay ➤

Opinion | The March for Israel will make Jews everywhere less safe. One of the march’s goals is to combat rising antisemitism, which has spiked across the world since the onset of war. But, writes Yonah Lieberman, a co-founder of IfNotNow, Israel’s war with Hamas will extend the cycles of violence that led to Hamas’ Oct. 7 terrorist attack — not end them. That means more peril, in the future, for Israeli Jews, and “threatens the safety of Jews across the diaspora, who are being targeted by the blowback to this military operation by those who wrongly conflate all Jews with Israel.” Read his essay ➤

And:

• What is the March for Israel really for?

Supporters of Israel rallied near the U.S. Capitol on Oct. 13, 2023. (Daniel Slim//AFP via Getty Images)

The protest scene…

• Jews from across the U.S. are taking bus caravans, last-minute flights and carpools to get to today’s rally — an effort that, for at least some participants, recalls efforts of the decades-past movement to aid Soviet Jewry.

  
  

• Jewish protesters and their allies blocked access to Chicago’s Israeli consulate yesterday in an action at a major downtown transportation hub, with organizers saying the demonstration drew Jewish participants from across the Midwest.

  
  

• Some 700 protesters participated in a Monday rally demanding a cease-fire led by the anti-Zionist group Jewish Voice for Peace at the Oakland Federal Building in California. That rally followed a major Sunday protest that included calls for a cease-fire in Gaza. The Sunday event was timed to the start of a meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, which President Joe Biden is expected to attend.

  
  

• A woman in Miami Beach reportedly yelled antisemitic slurs at attendees of a pro-Israel rally over the weekend, saying “Hitler should’ve f***ing finished the job.”

Smoke rose above the northern Gaza strip this morning. (MENAHEM KAHANA/AFP via Getty Images)

Latest from the war…

• Biden called on Israel to take “less intrusive” military actions around hospitals in Gaza, as Israeli tanks made it to the gates of the Al-Shifa hospital complex, Gaza’s main medical center, which the Israel Defense Forces say is built over a major Hamas command center.

  
  

• The IDF confirmed that a 19-year-old hostage, Cpl. Noa Marciano, had died, after Hamas released a video claiming that she was killed by the Israeli bombardment of Gaza.

  
  

• Relatives of Israeli hostages are beginning a five-day march from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem to demand the government obtain the hostage’s freedom. “I demand that Benjamin Netanyahu and the cabinet give us answers and take action,” the mother of one hostage said.

  
  

• Dozens of employees of the U.S. State Department have signed three so-called “dissent memos” sent to Secretary of State Antony Blinken since the onset of war, urging that the U.S. advocate for a cease-fire and expressing concern with the Biden administration’s response to the conflict.

  
  

• The United Nations estimates that an additional 200,000 people fled Gaza’s north for its south over the last 10 days, and that more than two-thirds of Gaza’s population has been displaced since war began.

Vivian Silver, center left, marches in a demonstration with Women Wage Peace, an organization that she co-founded that centers women in Israel-Palestinian peacemaking. (Courtesy of Kenneth Bob)

Vivian Silver, 74-year-old peace activist, grandmother, and friend, confirmed dead. Silver had previously been believed to be among the hostages held in Gaza; DNA analysis has now confirmed that her remains were in her home, and she has been added to the list of victims who died in Hamas’ Oct. 7 terrorist attack. A friend of Silver’s described her to our editorial fellow Sam Lin-Sommer as “devoted” to “a view that Israeli Jews and Palestinians needed to find a way to live together.” Read the story ➤

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ALSO FROM THE FORWARD

Dr. Josef Mengele, nicknamed the Angel of Death, performed experiments on prisoners at Auschwitz and decided which prisoners would be sent to the gas chambers. (Hulton Archive/Getty)

The Lancet recommends mandatory Holocaust education to improve medical ethics. In a new report, the prestigious peer-reviewed medical journal said that training for medical professionals across the globe must “include learning about the history of medical involvement in Nazism and the Holocaust.” The report, which cites a number of ways in which medical professionals participated in “formulating, supporting and implementing” the Nazis’ “inhumane and often genocidal policies,” said that history is currently under-covered in medical curricula.

– From our Sponsor: Spertus Institute –

WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY

Elizabeth Tsurkov. (Courtesy of Elizabeth Tsurkov’s website)

😨  For the first time since she was kidnapped in Iraq in March, Israeli-Russian Princeton graduate student Elizabeth Tsurkov appeared in a video. Speaking in Hebrew and apparently under coercion, she said she was a spy for the West. (Forward)

😞  A Jewish cemetery near Cleveland, Ohio, was defaced with swastikas over the weekend; roughly 20 volunteers gathered to clean the vandalized headstones. (Akron Beacon Journal)

😰  A Michigan man pleaded guilty to making violent threats against Jews on social media. The 19-year-old had expressed a wish to attack a Jewish site and post the attack online. (Associated Press)

😮  Anti-Israel protesters disrupted the announcement of a prestigious Canadian literary prize given to a Jewish author, Sarah Bernstein, for a book featuring a Jewish protagonist. The Giller prize was founded by the late philanthropist Jack Rabinovitch and named for his wife Doris Giller; both were also Jewish. (Associated Press)

😔  A Holocaust memorial in Denmark was vandalized with antisemitic graffiti and a Palestinian flag. (Jerusalem Post)

🖼️  A Swiss museum opened a controversial exhibition that asks whether any of the included artworks were looted by the Nazis. Critics say the Kunsthaus Zurich’s display of works from the collection of arms dealer Emil Bührle marginalizes the stories of some of the pieces’ former Jewish owners, who are believed to have been forced to sell their collections or had them stolen under the Nazis. (Euronews)

What else we’re reading ➤“A town that has been a refuge for Jews and Muslims now sees divisions” … “Germany is a good place to be Jewish. Unless, like me, you’re a Jew who criticizes Israel” … “What I wish I asked my Moroccan Sephardic grandfather.”

PHOTO OF THE DAY

(AHMAD GHARABLI/AFP via Getty Images)

Ethiopian Jews in Tel Aviv prayed for the safe return of hostages from Gaza Monday. The demonstration was held as Ethiopian Israelis elsewhere expressed “grief and sorrow” about the ongoing war while celebrating Sigd, a pilgrimage to Jerusalem traditionally held 50 days after Yom Kippur.

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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