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Mary Ann Stein, philanthropist who supported social justice in US and Israel, dies at 80
(JTA) — Mary Ann Stein of Bethesda, Maryland, who as the founding president of The Moriah Fund supported human and civil rights in the U.S. and Israel and causes that included women’s rights and reproductive health and economic justice, died Sept. 6. She was 80.
Stein served, starting in 1985, for more than 30 years at the helm of The Moriah Fund, a private foundation established by her father and uncle, Robert and Clarence Efroymson. During her tenure the fund established the Israel Center for Educational Innovation, which seeks to improve literacy among Israel’s Ethiopian immigrants. Family members said she was “profoundly committed to the successful integration of the Ethiopian immigrant community in Israel.”
Stein also served as president and long-time board member of the New Israel Fund, which promotes Israel’s civil society and democratic institutions. A supporter of Palestinian as well as Israeli Jewish rights, she served as co-president of Americans for Peace Now and in 1997 supported then-President Bill Clinton’s public criticism of Israeli settlement policies.
“For decades, Mary Ann was deeply engaged in the work of democracy and peace building in Israel and Palestine,” Americans for Peace Now said in a statement. “Her leadership and philanthropy blazed new paths for the institutions in the region and in the US that are dedicated to building a better future for Israelis and Palestinians.”
Stein was also the co-founder and founding chair of the Fund for Global Human Rights, which since 2002, has made more than $125 million in grants to more than 900 organizations in 60 countries around the world.
Her son, Gideon Stein, said she passed down an ethic of philanthropy that was “trust-based” and focused on finding solutions without preconceived notions about what the problem or challenges are.
One example, he said, was her leadership of the Global Campaign for Microbicides, which championed the development of HIV prevention options and access for women. When she approached the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to support her efforts to stop the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, an expert there told her that women in developing countries would be too embarrassed to use the applicators used to deliver the microbicides.
Undaunted, Stein tracked down Melinda Gates at a conference, and convinced the then wife of the Microsoft head to provide the initial $8 million for clinical trials in South Africa and sub-Saharan Africa. In 2003, the Gates Foundation made a $60 million grant to accelerate the use of topical microbicides to prevent HIV transmission.
“She had a core belief in talking to people on the ground,” said her son.
Gideon Stein said his mother “deeply identified as Jewish” and felt most comfortable in Israel, where she would travel three times a year for extended periods. She would also lend her apartment to others, including the novelist Colum McCann, who worked there on his 2020 novel “Apeirogon.”
The granddaughter of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, Mary Ann Efroymson was raised in Indiana, where her father ran the Real Silk Company hosiery business and later the investment company Real Silk, Inc.
After graduating from Wellesley College in Massachusetts at the height of the civil rights movement, the 22-year-old Stein moved to Calhoun County, South Carolina for Freedom Summer events organized by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. There she registered Black voters and met one of her mentors, Hope Williams, the grandson of slaves and founder of the NAACP’s Calhoun County Branch. Decades later, after the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and others, Stein provided early funding for the Black Voices for Black Justice Fund, a pooled philanthropic fund.
“My father taught me the basic principles of civic and human rights,” she told Inside Philanthropy in 2020. “He made it very clear to me, and I’ve tried to make it clear to others, that we have an obligation to serve others. We have a responsibility to give our gifts, including our wealth and our access to benefit others. And that has been the rule of my life.”
After getting her law degree from George Washington University, she worked with the Department of Human Services in the District of Columbia, and served on the D.C. Judicial Nominations Commission. In the mid-1980s, her father and uncle decided to create a family foundation, and she convinced them to let her run it.
In addition to its work in Israel, The Moriah Fund supported progressive community organizing groups like Community Change; the D.C. Alliance of Youth Advocates; Funders for Reproductive Equity; Human Rights First, and National Coalition on Black Civic Participation. The $90 million Efroymson Fund was established at the Central Indiana Community Foundation.
Her marriage in 1970 to the liberal philanthropic advisor Robert Stein, who founded Democracy Alliance, ended in divorce. They became good friends in later years, said her son; Robert Stein died in 2022.
Stein is survived by her children, Gideon Stein of New York City, Dorothy Stein and Noah Stein of Washington, DC, as well as five grandchildren.
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The post Mary Ann Stein, philanthropist who supported social justice in US and Israel, dies at 80 appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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‘Totally Obliterated’: US Bombs Iran’s Nuclear Sites, Trump Declares Operation a Success
US President Donald Trump delivers an address to the nation alongside US Vice President JD Vance, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth at the White House in Washington, DC, US, June 21, 2025, following US strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Photo: REUTERS/Carlos Barria/Pool
The United States launched a large-scale military strike against Iran early Saturday, destroying key nuclear enrichment facilities, including the heavily fortified Fordow site.
US President Donald Trump said in a public address that the operation had “completely and totally obliterated” Iran’s nuclear capabilities and urged Tehran to “make peace,” warning that any future aggression would be met with even greater force.
The multi-pronged strike combined stealth B‑2 Spirit bombers deploying bunker-buster bombs with Tomahawk cruise missiles launched from submarines. Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan — all central to the Iranian nuclear program — were targeted in a coordinated assault. US military officials said the campaign neutralized Iran’s main enrichment operations.
Trump praised Israel’s role in coordinating the response and hailed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a key partner, saying the two leaders worked “as a team like perhaps no team has ever worked before.” Netanyahu, for his part, called the American action “unmatched” and said it signaled a shift toward restoring regional stability.
Iran’s foreign ministry condemned the operation as a breach of sovereignty and international law, vowing to respond with force. Hours after the strike, Iran retaliated by unleashing a salvo of roughly 30 ballistic and hypersonic missiles toward central Israel. Several missiles hit urban centers including Tel Aviv, Ramat Gan, Haifa, and surrounding areas, causing injuries to at least 25 civilians and extensive property damage. Israel closed its airspace and instructed residents in key regions to only venture out for essential activities. In response, Israeli jets struck military targets in Iran, including missile launch sites and rocket depots.
Domestically, Trump’s decision exposed sharp political divisions in Washington. Republican hawks applauded the move as decisive, while isolationists and some constitutional conservatives questioned the legality of bypassing Congress, demanding oversight before further military escalation. Meanwhile, the United Nations and key US allies, including Britain and France, urged caution and a swift return to diplomatic solutions.
Iranian state media reported that most nuclear material was evacuated from Fordow ahead of the strike, the Reuters news agency reported. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN’s nuclear watchdog, said it detected no spike in off-site radiation.
According to Arab sources cited in The Wall Street Journal, the United States sent messages via regional intermediaries to reassure Tehran that the strike was a one-off and not part of a campaign to topple the regime. A senior US official confirmed that the administration clarified it had no intention of pursuing regime change and that the door remained open to renewed negotiations.
US Reps. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Ro Khanna (D-CA), co-sponsors of a bipartisan resolution to block unauthorized military action in Iran, criticized Trump’s strike as unconstitutional. Massie called the move illegal, while Khanna urged Congress to immediately vote on their Iran War Powers Resolution “to prevent America from being dragged into another endless Middle East war.”
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), meanwhile, called for Trump’s ouster, claiming it violated the US Constitution and as such was an impeachable offense.
“The president’s disastrous decision to bomb Iran without authorization is a grave violation of the Constitution and Congressional War Powers. He has impulsively risked launching a war that may ensnare us for generations. It is absolutely and clearly grounds for impeachment,” she said.
Arsen Ostrovsky, a leading human rights lawyer and CEO of the International Legal Forum, rejected the criticism. He said Trump was acting well within his powers under Article II of the Constitution, which grants the president authority as commander-in-chief to protect national security.
“This is not without precedent,” Ostrovsky told The Algemeiner, pointing to former President Barack Obama’s operation to kill Osama bin Laden and former President Joe Biden’s airstrikes on Iranian proxies in Syria.
“Trump did not need the authorization of Congress in order to initiate a military strike,” he said, adding that the action was also supported by the War Powers Resolution of 1973 and Article 51 of the UN Charter, which affirms a nation’s right to self-defense.
Ostrovsky also defended the legality of Israel’s involvement, saying its campaign was not a sudden act of aggression but a response to a protracted armed conflict initiated by Iran.
“Faced with an existential and imminent threat from a nuclear Iran, the Jewish state had no choice but to act before it was too late,” he said. He described the strikes as “lawful, necessary, and proportionate under the Laws of Armed Conflict against a genocidal regime that had vowed to destroy the world’s only Jewish state and stood on the cusp of acquiring the means to do so, had Israel not acted.”
“In striking Iran’s nuclear weapons program, Israel and the United States made the world a safer place. They did it not only in their own defense, but in defense of the free world,” he concluded.
The post ‘Totally Obliterated’: US Bombs Iran’s Nuclear Sites, Trump Declares Operation a Success first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Israeli Strike on Tehran Kills Bodyguard of Slain Hezbollah Chief
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi lays a wreath as he visits the burial site of former Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, on the outskirts of Beirut, Lebanon, June 3, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir
A member of Lebanese armed group Hezbollah was killed in an Israeli air strike on Tehran alongside a member of an Iran-aligned Iraqi armed group, a senior Lebanese security source told Reuters and the Iraqi group said on Saturday.
The source identified the Hezbollah member as Abu Ali Khalil, who had served as a bodyguard for Hezbollah’s slain chief Hassan Nasrallah. The source said Khalil had been on a religious pilgrimage to Iraq when he met up with a member of the Kataeb Sayyed Al-Shuhada group.
They traveled together to Tehran and were both killed in an Israeli strike there, along with Khalil’s son, the senior security source said. Hezbollah has not joined in Iran’s air strikes against Israel from Lebanon.
Kataeb Sayyed Al-Shuhada published a statement confirming that both the head of its security unit and Khalil had been killed in an Israeli strike.
Nasrallah was killed in an Israeli aerial attack on Beirut’s southern suburbs in September.
Israel and Iran have been trading strikes for nine consecutive days since Israel launched attacks on Iran, saying Tehran was on the verge of developing nuclear weapons. Iran has said it does not seek nuclear weapons.
The post Israeli Strike on Tehran Kills Bodyguard of Slain Hezbollah Chief first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Hamas Financial Officer and Commander Eliminated by IDF in the Gaza Strip
Israeli soldiers operate during a ground operation in the southern Gaza Strip, amid the Israel-Hamas conflict, July 3, 2024. Photo: Ohad Zwigenberg/Pool via REUTERS
i24 News – The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), in cooperation with the General Security Service (Shin Bet), announced on Friday the killing of Ibrahim Abu Shamala, a senior financial official in Hamas’ military wing.
The operation took place on June 17th in the central Gaza Strip.
Abu Shamala held several key positions, including financial officer for Hamas’ military wing and assistant to Marwan Issa, the deputy commander of Hamas’ military wing until his elimination in March 2024.
He was responsible for managing all the financial resources of Hamas’ military wing in Gaza, overseeing the planning and execution of the group’s war budget. This involved handling and smuggling millions of dollars into the Gaza Strip to fund Hamas’ military operations.
The post Hamas Financial Officer and Commander Eliminated by IDF in the Gaza Strip first appeared on Algemeiner.com.