What Happened Today

November 21, 2023

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The Big Story

Finally, a hostage deal appears to be here. The United States- and Qatar-brokered deal, which by The Scroll’s publication time had been approved by the Israeli cabinet and war cabinet and was being debated by the government, would see Hamas release 50 hostages—30 children, eight mothers, and 12 women—in exchange for a four-day cease-fire and the release of 150 Palestinian prisoners, according to press reports. Hamas will free the hostages in phases, with the potential for additional hostage releases in exchange for further extensions of the cease-fire. 

Although the final terms have not yet been made public, several press reports have confirmed additional elements of the deal. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the Knesset that the International Red Cross will visit the hostages who were not released and provide them with medical care. The Israelis have also reportedly agreed to a Hamas demand for daily pauses in IDF drone surveillance of Gaza, a stipulation Hamas claims it needs in order to locate the remaining hostages, some of whom were captured by other groups such as Palestinian Islamic Jihad. According to The Washington Post’s John Hudson, who cited conversations with an unnamed Middle East diplomat, the Israelis also plan to resume an “aggressive” bombing campaign in southern Gaza after the cease-fire expires. Much of Hamas’ leadership is believed to have fled there prior to Israel’s invasion of the north. Netanyahu vowed Tuesday that the “war will continue until all our goals are achieved,” including the destruction of Hamas and the return of all the hostages. 

The Scroll will continue to follow the story as more details become available.

IN THE BACK PAGES: A Scroll original from @kilovh on the Haredi community’s newfound openness to Israel in the wake of Oct. 7

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The Rest

→U.S. National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby announced Tuesday that Washington would oppose the expansion of IDF operations into southern Gaza unless the Israelis come up with “a clearly articulated plan for how they’re going to protect the lives of the hundreds of thousands of people that have now been added to the population [in the south] because they were asked to leave by the Israelis.” The IDF had confirmed Friday that it planned on operating in southern Gaza and “wherever Hamas exists,” after reports emerged last week that it was dropping leaflets on the southern city of Khan Younis, warning residents there that anyone who was close to terrorists was “putting their life in danger.” 

→U.S. forces killed “several” fighters from Iran-backed militias in Iraq late Monday and early Tuesday, the first time since Oct. 7 they have struck Iranian proxies outside of Syria. On Monday night a U.S. AC-130 gunship opened fire on Iranian-backed militants responsible for a ballistic missile attack on the al-Asad airbase west of Baghdad, in what Pentagon officials described as a “self-defense strike.” Separately, early Tuesday morning, the U.S. conducted a drone strike on a highway west of Baghdad targeting two pickup trucks “linked” to the Iran-backed Kataeb Hezbollah militia, killing at least one. According to a Washington Post report published over the weekend, the United States had previously been avoiding strikes on Iraq for fear of exacerbating “anti-American sentiment there.” Iranian proxies have struck U.S. targets in Iraq and Syria at least 66 times since Oct. 17.

→A member of the Maryland hate crimes commission and director of the state chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations is under fire for Facebook posts in which she praised Hamas terrorists as “freedom fighters” and described Israel as an “inherently evil and violent” “apartheid government” that “sits on the graves of martyrs,” while also likening it to Nazi Germany. Zainab Chaudry, director of the Maryland chapter of CAIR, was named in August as a member of the Maryland Commission on Hate Crime Response and Prevention, which is tasked with submitting annual reports to evaluate the state’s hate crime laws and policies. 

As readers of The Scroll are aware, CAIR’s connections to Hamas go beyond mere rhetorical support—it was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the case against the Holy Land Foundation, a Texas-based Islamic charity that funneled millions to Hamas. Prosecutors and FBI agents who worked on that case claim that CAIR should have been prosecuted but was protected by the U.S. government, which considered the group a vital “link” to the American Muslim community. These alleged terror connections have not stopped the Democratic Party from incorporating CAIR into its stable of identity-segregated “civil rights” NGOs—in May, the Biden administration named CAIR as a partner in its National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism. 

Read more here: https://jewishinsider.com/2023/11/zainab-chaudry-council-american-islamic-relations-maryland-antisemitism/

→The People’s Forum, a far-left New York City group that hosts seminars on Vladimir Lenin and has organized several anti-Israel protests since Oct. 7, received $12 million from the Goldman Sachs Philanthropy Fund in 2019, The Washington Free Beacon reports. The source of the money was likely the People’s Forum’s main patron, Neville Roy Singham, a multimillionaire tech entrepreneur who helps fund a global media network pushing Chinese Communist Party propaganda, and his wife, former Democratic operative Jodie Evans, the leader of the left-wing activist group Code Pink. The People’s Forum helped organize the infamous Oct. 8 DSA rally in Times Square, at which a speaker joked about the “resistance” kidnapping “several dozen hipsters” at a “music festival”—a reference to the Nova festival, at which Hamas terrorists murdered more than 360 civilians, several of whom they raped and tortured before killing.

Read more here: https://freebeacon.com/democrats/new-york-city-communists-pushing-for-a-gaza-ceasefire-took-millions-from-goldman-sachs/ 

And read The Free Press’s report on Singham and Evans here:

The American Multimillionaire Marxists Funding Pro-Palestinian Rage

→Hamas continues to incite terrorism and promise repeats of the Oct. 7 attack, according to a new report from the Middle East Media Research Institute. Among the examples cited by MEMRI are a series of Facebook posts from a West Bank branch of the Islamic Bloc, Hamas’ student organization, calling on West Bank residents to emulate Oct. 7 by storming the “settlements, singly or in groups.” (Hamas refers to all Israeli localities as “settlements,” not merely those in the West Bank.) The same group also posted a video on Telegram containing detailed operational advice for how to carry out an attack. On Saturday, a Hamas official in the West Bank declared that Palestinians in the West Bank and Arab Israelis “must mobilize, confront the crimes of the occupation and resist by every means.”

Read more here: https://www.memri.org/reports/hamas-threatens-repeat-october-7-attack-or-west-bank 

→Stat of the Day: 97%

That’s the percentage of current employees of OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, who have threatened to quit and join Microsoft if the company’s board does not resign and reinstate co-founder and CEO Sam Altman, according to the Financial Times. Altman was ousted in a board coup on Friday, for murky reasons that have only become murkier in the intervening days. The board initially claimed that Altman “was not consistently candid” with them, but later blamed a “breakdown in communication between Sam and the board.” On Saturday, board member and chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, who was allegedly instrumental in pushing Altman out, stated that the move was necessary to “make sure that OpenAI builds AGI [artificial general intelligence] that benefits all of humanity,” suggesting a conflict between the company’s “AI-safety”–focused nonprofit wing and its for-profit wing. But on Sunday, the company’s new CEO ruled out that explanation—and then, to make matters more complicated, Sutskever signed the letter demanding Altman’s return. On Monday, Altman and former OpenAI President Sam Brockman joined Microsoft, where they will lead a new “advanced AI research team.” Whether Altman returns to OpenAI or stays at Microsoft, most of his former employees are expected to follow him.

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TODAY IN TABLET: 

To Be an Israeli, by Sarai Shavit

Reflections on October 7th

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SCROLL TIP LINE: Have a lead on a story or something going on in your workplace, school, congregation, or social scene that  you want to tell us about? Send your tips, comments, questions, and suggestions to scroll@tabletmag.com.

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In today’s Back Pages we have a Scroll original from Tzvi Kilov, a writer from Atlanta, Georgia who explores the wild frontiers of authentic Jewish thought at

The Haredi World Is Changing

In the wake of the Simchat Torah Massacre, the ultra-orthodox world has displayed a new openness to the state of Israel

A common joke in Orthodox Jewish circles around Purim time is that the Satmar reading of the megillah takes longer because in addition to the standard custom of booing the name of the Jews’ archenemy, Haman, they also jeer every time they hear the word medina, or “state.” The Hasidic group, following the opinion of its first Rebbe, Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum, is famous for its staunch anti-Zionism. Satmar doesn’t wave Palestinian flags or meet with genocidal enemies of the Jews, unlike the far smaller but more widely publicized token Haredi-appearing Neturei Karta. Rather, like many Haredi groups, the Satmar maintain that the reestablishment of a Jewish state before the arrival of the Messiah is against the will of God and delays the redemption. 

Which is why it is so remarkable that today, in wedding halls in Hasidic Williamsburg, the Satmar stronghold in Brooklyn, men wearing black kaftans and shtreimels are waving Israeli flags. Something has changed.

Just over a month ago, Israeli society was deeply divided, with judicial reforms by the Netanyahu coalition serving as the latest casus belli in an older and deeper culture war. The real rift between Orthodox Jews and the secular hilonim over the soul of the state—and which of the two groups would be the stewards of its future—cut so deeply that many observers worried it might presage the end of the Israeli polity. Any hiloni could tell you that Ben Gurion’s willingness to compromise with Orthodox Jews was critical to the early unity of the country. Any Haredi could tell you that the destruction of the Second Temple and the long exile that followed were caused by baseless hatred and Jewish disunity. On Oct. 6, both sides appeared convinced that despite the risks, unity was less important than triumphing over their Jewish political opponents.

Then came the atrocities of Oct. 7 and the slogan “Together we will be victorious.” The Haredi community has participated admirably and en masse in the total mobilization of Israeli society. In addition to its customary charitable participation and voluntary organizations in Israel, like the medical equipment loans of Yad Sarah and the now-famous ZAKA volunteers identifying remains in the south, the past weeks have seen thousands of new Haredi volunteers seeking to be drivers, cooks, medics, and even combat troops in the IDF. In videos of the first wave of recruits completing basic training, the religious Jews are singing the Israeli national anthem, “Hatikvah,” as pure an ode as the country has to its roots in secular Zionism. The sense of unity extends beyond those bold enough to join the IDF; when the first hostage was rescued, the Vizhnitz Hassidim danced in the streets. Contrast these images with the sometimes-violent Haredi opposition to the IDF in the past, and the sense of a profound shift becomes more potent.

Some religious Jews have taken a skeptical stance on the new openness to symbols of the Israeli state. They argue that Rabbi Yoel of Satmar and other Haredi leaders’ adamant refusal to participate in the state has worn down over the generations not because of any ideological or religious change but as something akin to political corruption. After all, much of Israel’s recent political struggle has been over the state treasury and its increased spending on religious communities. Haredi Jews now rally around the flag, they argue, because it is difficult to maintain an ambivalent or even nose-pinching view toward the state whose Knesset has come under ever more Orthodox influence and whose funds go toward ever more Orthodox causes. Skeptics wonder whether any of this will make a difference the day after. They worry that despite the current surge of religious patriotism, the majority of Haredi society will withdraw again from what secular Israelis consider their fair and equal obligations to the state.

Perhaps there is another explanation. Netanyahu has declared the current conflict a Second War of Independence for Israel, and indeed, the last time the Haredim mobilized in such numbers was in the first War of Independence, 75 years ago. It may be that on Oct. 7, Hamas did what no enemy has done to Israel since the 40s: pose a credible existential threat. In light of unthinkable Hamas atrocities and the most Jews murdered in a single event since the Holocaust, secular Jews the world over have found new ways to express their Jewishness. A Chabad Rabbi in California reports that a young man came to him after the attack, saying he could not stop crying, and wrapped tefillin for the first time. Left-wing Israeli journalist and author Omer Barak posted to Facebook that for the first time in his life, he is proud of and embracing not just his Israeli identity but his Jewish identity. Perhaps the same desire to be Jewish in any and every way possible has similarly moved many Haredim. Like their secular brethren, who felt that they were missing out on something essential, they took a chance to join one of the central facets of contemporary Jewish life, the sense of national belonging and Jewish peoplehood that the State of Israel symbolizes, if imperfectly.

One day we may look back and see that what on Oct. 6 appeared to be one party to an unending and insoluble political conflict was already poised on the brink of profound realignment. For example, Haredi society has been growing more connected to the world through internet access for years, a development with which its rabbis are generally unhappy but may ultimately be powerless to stop. A Haredi today witnesses the graphic atrocities of Hamas with an immediacy that would not have been possible during the Second Intifada 20 years ago. There are other indications of a new Haredi openness. Arutz Sheva reported on Oct. 5 that the Belzer Rebbe has started an unprecedented communal organization for maintaining relationships with Hasidim who have left the world of Belz and the religious way of life, a far cry from the hardline insularity and xenophobia that have characterized the Haredi relationship with secular Jews, even their kin. Perhaps all that was required to bring this openness to the surface in a new, relatively radical expression of Jewish unity was a tragedy and a threat.

Golda Meir, a noted atheist, once said, “I believe in the Jewish people, and the Jewish people believe in God.” Perhaps since Oct. 7, Golda and the flag-waving Haredim are on the same page. If asked whether they believe in the State of Israel, they might reply, “I believe in the Jewish people, and the Jewish people wave this flag.”