RSS
Henry Kissinger, influential first Jewish secretary of state, dies at 100
(JTA) — Henry Kissinger, the first Jewish secretary of state and the controversial mastermind of American foreign policy in the 1970s — orchestrating the U.S. opening to China, negotiating the end of the conflict in Vietnam and helping ease tensions with the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War — has died.
Kissinger died at his home in Connecticut on Wednesday at 100, according to a statement posted to his website. He had celebrated his 100th birthday in June with a party at the New York Public Library featuring luminaries from throughout his long career in politics and public affairs, including his current successor, Jewish Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
Regarded as a brilliant diplomatic strategist, Kissinger was one of the most influential Jewish figures of the 20th century, leaving an enduring imprint on global politics as secretary of state and national security advisor to two U.S. presidents and as an informal advisor to several others.
With his rumbling German accent, iconic black glasses and legendary charm, he was also a socialite and an unlikely 70s-era sex symbol, dating a string of movie stars and famously quipping that power is “the ultimate aphrodisiac.”
Despite fleeing his native Germany as the Nazis rose to power in the 1930s and losing several members of his family in the Holocaust, Kissinger evinced little sentimental attachment to Jewish interests, telling a friend in the 1970s that Judaism “has no significance for me,” according to Walter Isaacson’s 1992 biography.
The negation of Kissinger’s Jewish identification may have been necessary for a man who rose higher in the executive branch than any Jew before him, and did so under a president, Richard Nixon, known to harbor deep anti-Jewish animus. Others saw it as emblematic of Kissinger’s Machiavellian streak and embrace of realpolitik, the hard-nosed approach to diplomacy that eschews moral concerns in favor of raw assessments of national interests.
After Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir pressed Nixon in 1973 to address the plight of Soviet Jews, Kissinger issued a blunt dismissal.
“The emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union is not an objective of American foreign policy,” Kissinger said, according to Oval Office recordings. “And if they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern.”
After the recordings were released in 2010, Kissinger apologized for the gas chamber remark in a Washington Post op-ed but maintained his critics were taking it out of context. Kissinger went on to claim credit for the 100,000 Soviet Jews who emigrated thanks to Nixon’s “quiet diplomacy.”
Other elements of Kissinger’s record similarly suggest a more nuanced verdict on his approach to Jewish concerns. At the height of the Yom Kippur War in 1973, Nixon ordered an emergency airlift of resupplies to a struggling Israeli military, and memos from the period show Kissinger pushing back against the Pentagon’s reluctance to carry it out.
Later, Kissinger’s efforts to end the war gave birth to the term “shuttle diplomacy.”
Two years later, as Kissinger grew increasingly frustrated with Israeli intransigence in withdrawing from areas of the Sinai conquered in the 1967 war, he pushed Ford to conduct a “reassessment” of relations with Israel. That precipitated a deep crisis between the White House and the Israeli government, but it ultimately yielded an Israeli-Egyptian agreement to resolve outstanding disputes peacefully, which in turned paved the way for the peace treaty that followed four years later.
“There’s no way you could tell the story of Camp David and the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty without mentioning Kissinger and the 1973 shuttle diplomacy,” said historian Gil Troy. “If you want to buy into the tough love rather than the love-love approach to U.S.-Israeli relations, the best example would be the March 1975 reassessment.”
Troy also records a less glowing incident about Kissinger in his 2013 book “Moynihan’s Moment.” As the U.S. Ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan waged a very public battle against the Zionism is racism resolution at the United Nations, Kissinger pushed back hard, fearing it would undermine his efforts to ease tensions with the Soviet Union, at one point grumbling, “We are conducting foreign policy. … This is not a synagogue.”
Nixon loved to rib Kissinger about his Jewish origins and his accent. The president later recalled that he told Meir they both had Jewish foreign ministers, referring to Kissinger and Abba Eban. “Yes, but mine speaks English,” Meir rejoined, to Nixon’s great amusement.
After leaving office, Kissinger appeared to shed some of his reluctance to be perceived as Israel’s champion, stating in a 1977 speech that, “The security of Israel is a moral imperative for all free peoples.” In the decades that followed, he publicly defended Israeli interests, arguing that the absence of Mideast peace was the product of Arab intransigence and expressing skepticism of efforts to conclude a nuclear deal with Iran.
That in turn helped secure his embrace by the Jewish mainstream. In 2012, he received Israel’s highest civilian honor from President Shimon Peres for his “significant contribution to the State of Israel and to humanity.” In 2014, he received the Theodor Herzl Award from the World Jewish Congress. At the award presentation, WJC President Ronald Lauder recalled Kissinger telling Meir that he was an American first, secretary of state second and a Jew third. According to Lauder, Meir responded that was fine since Israelis read from right to left.
“He was very insecure,” said Troy. “The trauma of being a survivor, and the trauma of being an immigrant, of being an outsider. The 1970s was not a very Jewish decade. It was strange to have Jews in power, and strange to have Jews in Republican circles of power. Given his own ambivalence, and given the hostile environment that he was in, it’s not surprising that he would be pretty screwy on the Jewish question.”
Kissinger’s legacy remained deeply polarizing decades after he left public office. Despite winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973 for his work ending the Vietnam War — a deeply controversial choice at the time — many regard Kissinger as a war criminal, responsible for the deaths of thousands of civilians in the U.S. bombing of Cambodia and myriad other human rights violations in Argentina, East Timor and elsewhere. His role in directing the controversial war in Vietnam dogged him for decades.
After he left office in 1977, hundreds of students and faculty opposed Columbia University’s decision to offer Kissinger an endowed chair, with one student demonstrator likening it to asking Charles Manson to teach religion. The author Christopher Hitchens called for Kissinger’s indictment in a 2001 book, “The Trial of Henry Kissinger,” which was later made into a film. On a 2001 trip to Paris, a French judge sought unsuccessfully to get Kissinger to testify in connection with the 1973 disappearance of five French nationals during the reign of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.
Kissinger tried mightily to shape the public narrative of his years in office, penning multiple memoirs totaling thousands of pages. But even in his 90s, he could barely appear in public without inviting protests.
In 2015, protestors disrupted a Senate hearing where Kissinger was testifying with chants that he should be arrested. And in 2016, Kissinger’s address to the Nobel Institute’s Peace Forum in Oslo was met with protests and a petition with 7,000 signatures demanding his arrest for violations of the Geneva Conventions.
Heinz Alfred Kissinger was born in Bavaria, Germany in 1923. His father Louis was a schoolteacher and his mother Paula a homemaker. In 1938, the family fled the Nazis for London and later New York, where they settled in a German Jewish immigrant community in Washington Heights. Kissinger studied accounting at City College before being drafted into the army in 1943, serving as an intelligence officer and seeing combat in the Battle of the Bulge.
After the army, Kissinger enrolled at Harvard University, where he earned his bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees in political science. As a faculty member in the university’s government department, Kissinger served as an advisor to multiple government agencies.
In 1969, Kissinger was sworn in as Nixon’s national security advisor. He became secretary of state in 1973 and continued to hold both positions following Nixon’s resignation and Gerald Ford’s assumption of the presidency.
As the chief architect of U.S. foreign policy during the period, Kissinger pioneered the policy of detente, helping to defuse tensions with the Soviet Union and paving the way for Nixon’s groundbreaking 1972 summit with Chinese leader Mao Zedong and the resumption of relations between the two nations, eventually leading to the full normalization of ties in 1979.
In Vietnam, Kissinger and Nixon attempted to wind down the conflict by withdrawing American troops and supporting the South Vietnamese Army in its efforts to repel Communist forces. In support of that effort, Kissinger helped orchestrate a secret bombing campaign in Cambodia against Vietnamese Communist forces based there, killing tens of thousands.
Kissinger left office with Jimmy Carter’s election in 1976, but scarcely faded from view. He remained a fixture of the Washington scene, teaching at Georgetown, consulting for New York financial firms and delivering high-priced corporate lectures.
In 1982, he founded Kissinger Associates, a secretive New York consulting firm that has advised major multinational corporations. Kissinger backed out of his appointment by President George W. Bush as chairman of the commission investigating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks after Congress requested that he disclose his client list.
Kissinger was a recipient of the 1977 Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 1980, he won a National Book Award for the first volume of his memoirs, “The White House Years.” In 1995, he received an honorary knighthood from Queen Elizabeth. He was also the first person to be named an honorary member of the Harlem Globetrotters basketball team.
Kissinger is survived by his wife, Nancy Maginnes; two children from his first marriage to Ann Fleischer, whom he divorced in 1964; and five grandchildren.
—
The post Henry Kissinger, influential first Jewish secretary of state, dies at 100 appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
RSS
AOC Compares Israel-Hamas War to Vietnam, Says Conflict Has Been ‘Generationally Radicalizing’
US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). Photo: Mike Jourdan/Flickr.
During an interview on left-wing internet talk show The Majority Report, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) agreed that the ongoing conflict in Gaza is comparable to the Vietnam War, arguing that America’s strident support of Israel has radicalized younger Americans.
While interviewing AOC, The Majority Report host Sam Seder argued that the Israel-Hamas war is “akin” to the Vietnam War. Seder suggested that “alternative media” such as TikTok, Youtube, or podcasts, have presented a harshly critical view of Israel’s conduct in Gaza, resulting in a wide-scale radicalization of young people against the Jewish state.
“If you’re under the age of 40 what’s gone on in Israel is in Palestine and Gaza in particular obviously and the West Bank for that matter is very different from your perception if you’re over the age of 40 because of where you get your media,” Seder said.
AOC agreed, saying that she has “said this directly to Democratic leadership” and “ communicated this to the White House.”
“This is our Vietnam. This is our, not just like in terms of the party, but this is just our country’s Vietnam. And what I think a lot of people do not yet understand, is they think that some of these hemorrhages are maybe ideological. They think maybe it is like an ethnic thing. I don’t think there is appreciation yet about how generationally radicalizing yeah this moment is, and how shocked people are at how far just like the general inertia is willing to go, as if we’re not seeing what’s happening right before our very eyes.”
AOC continued, labelling the Israel-Hamas war a “genocide” and arguing that the Democratic party needs to undermine Israel’s defense efforts if it aims to energize young voters and “reinstate an order around human rights.”
Israel says it has gone to unprecedented lengths to try and avoid civilian casualties in Gaza, noting its efforts to evacuate areas before it targets them and to warn residents of impending military operations with leaflets, text messages, and other forms of communication. However, Hamas, which rules Gaza, has in many cases prevented people from leaving, according to the Israeli military.
Another challenge for Israel has been Hamas’s widely recognized military strategy of embedding its terrorists within Gaza’s civilian population and commandeering civilian facilities like hospitals, schools, and mosques to run operations and direct attacks.
Over the past year, AOC has repeatedly condemned the Jewish state’s response to the Hamas terrorist group’s brutal Oct. 7 slaughter of roughly 1200 people throughout southern Israel. AOC, a strident critic of Israel, has accused the Jewish state of committing a “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” in Gaza. She has spearheaded calls for a “ceasefire” between Israel and Hamas. The progressive firebrand has also urged the Biden administration to implement an “arms embargo” against Israel.
The post AOC Compares Israel-Hamas War to Vietnam, Says Conflict Has Been ‘Generationally Radicalizing’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Obituary: Stanley Diamond, 91, was a Montreal businessman-turned-genealogist whose research changed lives
Stanley Mark Diamond founded Jewish Records Indexing – Poland, the world’s largest special interest genealogy group. JRI – Poland was a “second act” in his life, combining his passion for Jewish continuity with his expertise as a Montreal business leader with a Harvard MBA.
Diamond died in Montreal on Dec.18. He was 91.
JRI – Poland grew over 30 years to approximately 170 volunteers on six continents around the world and amassed a database that now has 6.4 million records reflecting the lives of Polish Jews since the 1500s.
“Stanley had a two-fold superpower,” acting JRI – Poland executive director Robinn Magid says. “He was able to care about people and draw things out of them, but also to contribute and help. They go hand in handz but are not often found in the same person.”
In 1991, Diamond’s nephew was diagnosed as a carrier of beta thalassemia, and he created a family tree to alert relatives about their probability of having the gene. At the time, he was doing consulting work after selling his decorative ceiling business, Intalite, in 1986.
He began attending genealogy conferences and realized that the largest group of Jewish genealogists were Jews who traced their roots to the current or former country of Poland. In 1995, he partnered with two technology experts who had the skills to develop a website that could also incorporate archival information. Several months later, Diamond travelled to Poland with a colleague and persuaded the Polish State Archives to allow JRI – Poland to index his family’s ancestral town’s records. Just four months later, he returned to Poland with a printout of 40,000 entries, to the astonishment of the archives’ director, who then understood the value of the project.
Diamond hoped JRI – Poland would help people capture the essence of their ancestors. In addition to preserving their names, he wanted families to learn about their lives and about their values.
“JRI – Poland specializes in solving puzzles,” says Magid.
While some of these puzzles solve simple questions about basic family history, others are much more complex. The group has helped save lives by sharing information on hereditary health conditions. They have been able to repair damage caused by the Holocaust, connecting and reconnecting fragmented families who lost each other or did not know they even existed. They have assisted people who wanted to prove that they were Jewish and were entitled to an Orthodox Jewish wedding.
The group also assists Jews at risk. “Three years ago, when Putin invaded Ukraine, we saw an upswing in people writing us from Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, Poland and other places saying they needed to prove their Polish-Jewish heritage,” says Magid. “In the past we’ve had people from Venezuela and from various South American countries like Argentina. They are in countries that have gone through turmoil and feel at risk. They are either trying to prove their halachic Jewish heritage and move to Israel, or they are trying to prove their Polish-Jewish heritage to get a Polish passport and move to the European Union. These are the people who Stanley personally helped.”
Diamond also provided his research expertise for the television series Finding your Roots and Who Do You Think You Are?, and in 2016 located documentation for the Guinness organization that verified that Israeli Holocaust survivor Yisrael Kristal was the world’s oldest living man at age 112.
Diamond was born in Montreal to Harry and Annie Diamond. He attended West Hill High School and McGill, and graduated from Harvard Business School in 1958. He was an exceptional baseball player, playing in a semi-pro league. He met his wife, Ruth Peerlkamp, at a party, and they were married for 59 years.
“Stanley Diamond’s first passion was for his family, but that soon spread to your families,” daughter Jessika said in her eulogy. “He loved doing for others, advising other genealogists, teaching, speaking out on the importance of genetic testing, reuniting families separated in the Holocaust, finding lost heirs and potential bone marrow matches.”
In 2021, Yad Vashem granted JRI – Poland third-party access to their Pages of Testimony. Diamond advocated for the organization to support amateur genealogists who could provide hard data, and they agreed for the first time.
“He was passionate about his work and personally devoted to helping anyone who asked for assistance,” his daughter Rachel said. “He was president of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Montreal, and he was honored by the governor general of Canada with the Meritorious Service Medal. He considered it to be the crowning achievement of his second career. He had a huge footprint that will be felt for a very long time.”
“It’s hard to imagine doing our jobs without Stanley Diamond advocating and referring and providing knowledge in the background of what we do for people,” said Janice Rosen, director of the Alex Dworkin Canadian Jewish Archives. “He was the go-to person in so many ways. The European side, the Canadian side. He was so determined to ferret out information to help people. He was involved in so many aspects of genealogy which grew out of his need to know about his own genetic background, and he made the whole world benefit from it.”
“We say people were lifetime learners. But more importantly, he was a lifetime contributor. And I don’t think we say that about many people,” said Magid. “He wanted to make a difference because he could envision something and get the right people to do it. And that is unique. He understood that we are part of a chain of continuity of the Jewish people.”
Diamond is survived by his wife, Ruth, daughters Paula, Rachel and Jessika, and his grandchildren.
The post Obituary: Stanley Diamond, 91, was a Montreal businessman-turned-genealogist whose research changed lives appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
RSS
Dutch Court Blasted for ‘Woefully Insufficient’ Sentencing of Men Who Attacked Israeli Soccer Fans in Amsterdam
Israeli soccer fans under assault, near Amsterdam Central station, in Amsterdam, Netherlands, Nov. 8, 2024, in this still image obtained from a social media video. X/iAnnet/via REUTERS
A district court in Amsterdam sentenced five men on Tuesday for participating in violent attacks against Israeli soccer fans in the Dutch city last month, imposing punishments that were roundly criticized as inadequate by many pro-Israel supporters.
The five suspects were sentenced to community service and up to six months in jail for violent public assault, which included kicking fans of the Israeli soccer team Maccabi Tel Aviv before and after the team’s match against their Dutch rivals Ajax and inciting the premeditated and coordinated violence that took place on Nov. 7.
A man identified as Sefa O was given the longest sentence — six months in prison for public violence against several people, minus the time he has already been held in custody. Prosecutors argued that he had a “leading role” in the violence that ensued. In court earlier this month, images were shown of a man identified as Sefa O kicking a person on the ground, chasing fans of Maccabi Tel Aviv in the streets of Amsterdam, and punching people in the head and the body.
A man identified as Umutcan A was sentenced to one month in jail, and Rachid O, who shared messages in the Whatsapp group chat that incited the violence, was sentenced to 10 weeks in jail. Karavan S was given one month for the same offense. Nineteen-year-old Lucas D — the only one of the five men to appear in court for the sentencing on Tuesday — was tried under juvenile law and ordered to complete 100 hours of community service, minus his pre-trial detention. The young man helped incite violence by participating in chat conversations that called for people to gather and attack Maccabi Tel Aviv fans, according to the court, which added that he also sent discriminatory messages in the chat group.
The five men were given sentences that were much less than what prosecutors demanded. The court defended its ruling by saying that community service is typically ordered for such crimes and for first time criminal offenders, which some of the suspects are, but “given the seriousness of the facts and the context in which they took place, the court is of the opinion that a prison sentence is the only appropriate punishment.” However, many have argued that the sentencing is not severe enough.
“Seriously Amsterdam? 6 months maximum prison, while excusing their pogromist actions? Shame on you,” Arsen Ostrovsky, a leading human rights attorney and CEO of The International Legal Forum, said in a post on X. “No wonder Jew-hatred and Islamic extremism is out of control in the Netherlands!”
Tal-Or Cohen, the founder and CEO of CyberWell, a technology company that monitors antisemitism and Holocaust denial on social media, called the sentencing on Tuesday “a shameful slap on the wrist and CYA [cover your ass] by Dutch authorities.”
“One of the leaders of the Amsterdam pogrom ‘possessed illegal fireworks with the power of a hand grenade,’ – But according to Dutch prosecutors no need to pursue charges for terrorism,” she noted, citing a Dutch report about the violence. “What if the leaders of the ‘Jew-Hunt’ brought their grenade to a Christmas market in Amsterdam?”
The Center for Information and Documentation on Israel (CIDI) described the severity of the sentencing as “disappointing” on its website. In a post on X, it further called the punishment “regrettable” since it was much less than what prosecutors had hoped for. “Nevertheless,” the group said, “it is good that prison sentences were imposed and that community service alone was not enough.”
“This shows that the legal order is also shocked. There was no justification for the actions of that night,” the CIDI added. “With this verdict, we as a society draw a clear line that this is not acceptable and that we do not accept this violence. We hope that other suspects will soon be arrested and that prosecutions can be initiated with the same speed.”
Others on X called the sentencing “woefully insufficient,” a “joke,” and a “disgrace.”
“This was an opportunity to show that antisemitism comes with a price. A 6 month jail sentence does not serve as a deterrent,” said one social media user.
After a soccer match between Maccabi Tel Aviv and Ajax on the night of Nov. 7, Israeli soccer fans were attacked in the streets by assailants who physically assaulted them, ran them over by cars, chased them with knives and sticks, and forced them to say “Free Palestine” to avoid further harm. Chief prosecutor René de Beukelaer said “several dozen” people were attacked. The violence continued into the early hours of Nov. 8 and five Maccabi Tel Aviv fans were hospitalized for injuries sustained during the attack that has been described as a “pogrom.” Amsterdam Mayor Femke Halsema called the attackers “antisemitic hit-and-run squads” who went “Jew hunting.”
Seven people appeared in court earlier this month in connection to the violence, but two of the cases have been delayed. The defense in one case requested a later date, to have more time to prepare evidence, and the second case, involving a Palestinian refugee accused of “attempted manslaughter,” is pushed back as the court awaits the results of a psychiatric evaluation, according to AFP. A total of 62 people were arrested on the day of the soccer match in relation to the violence, but most were released shortly afterward, the news outlet noted. Dutch police have already identified at least 45 suspects and are trying to identify more.
The prosecutor previously said that the violence last month “had little to do” with soccer. “In this case, there was no evidence of … a terrorist intent and the violence was not motivated by antisemitic sentiment,” he claimed. “The violence was influenced by the situation in Gaza, not by antisemitism.”
More than 47 people who were attacked during the violence in Amsterdam have obtained legal counsel from The Lawfare Project, which is helping the victims review legal options after also assisting them in securing local counsel in Amsterdam.
The post Dutch Court Blasted for ‘Woefully Insufficient’ Sentencing of Men Who Attacked Israeli Soccer Fans in Amsterdam first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
You must be logged in to post a comment Login