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A Jewish Democrat gave up his political career to pass New York’s abortion rights law. A new film tells his story.
(New York Jewish Week) — In 1970, New York State passed one of the most expansive abortion rights laws in the country, its legislation putting into motion the eventual adoption of Roe v. Wade in 1973.
But the legislation almost didn’t pass. It was only thanks to George Michaels, a Jewish Democrat in the New York State Assembly, who changed his vote in the 11th hour to allow for the legislation to move forward with an absolute majority and to be signed into law the next day by Governor Nelson Rockefeller.
“Deciding Vote,” a new documentary released by The New Yorker, brings renewed attention to that decisive yet little-remembered moment in American history, one that ultimately cost Michaels his career.
Co-directors Jeremy Workman and Rob Lyons began working on the 20-minute documentary in 2019, nearly three years before the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade. While the film does not explicitly address the current moment, Workman said that “the viewer understands that it’s about now even though this happened 50 years ago.”
“They see how one person really can make a difference,” he told the New York Jewish Week about the film, which was released on Nov. 29. “It shows us how, in all our decisions, we can look inward and also to the big picture of the world and see what makes the most sense and not just retreat into our own political corner.”
Michaels, a lawyer, was a State Assembly member from 1961 to 1966 and again from 1969 and 1970. He represented Auburn in New York’s Finger Lakes region — a Jewish Democrat in a heavily Catholic and conservative area.
For much of his tenure, the film relates, Michaels was steadfast in serving his constituency, which overwhelmingly opposed abortion. Even the Jews who lived in his district, Workman said, generally opposed abortion. Although Michaels personally supported a woman’s right to choose, he had twice voted against efforts to expand abortion rights because he knew that his constituents did not.
So, on April 9, 1970, when a bill that had already passed in the Senate arrived in the House that allowed for access to abortions up until 24 weeks of pregnancy, or at any time to protect the life of the mother, Michaels initially voted against it as well.
However, at the end of the session, after he saw that it was deadlocked at 74 in favor and 74 opposed, he stood up to change his vote, knowing that the bill needed an absolute majority of 76 in favor to pass. With the count 75-73, the Speaker of the Assembly, Perry Duryea, who only voted in cases when his vote would make a difference, would be able to cast the deciding vote.
“Many people in my district may not only condemn me for what I’m about to do, but Mr. Speaker, I say to you in all candor, and I say this very feelingly to all of you, what’s the use of getting elected or re-elected if you don’t stand for something?” he said in a speech before he changes his vote.
Michaels knew that this decision would end his time in the State Assembly. “I fully appreciate that this is the termination of my political career,” he said in the same speech. “But I cannot in good conscience stay here and thwart the obvious majority of this house, the members of whom I dearly love, and for whom I have a great deal of affection. I’ll probably never come back here again to share these things with you. I therefore request you, Mr. Speaker, to change my negative vote to an affirmative vote.”
Duryea then voted for the affirmative, and the bill was sent to the governor to sign. As women poured into New York for the procedure, it set the stage for the Roe v. Wade decision in the Supreme Court three years later.
And even though Roe v. Wade was overturned last year, its legacy carries on. Furthermore, New York’s law remains intact, making it one of the safest and easiest states to get an abortion, even allowing for minors from any state to travel to New York to receive abortions without parental consent.
As Michaels’ son James describes it in the film, “Suddenly, all hell broke loose.” Michaels did not receive the Democratic endorsement in the next election, and never won another election after. The Queens, New York native practiced law until his retirement in 1985, and died in 1992 at age 82.
As the story goes, it was his children, who, as young adults in the 1960s were involved in anti-war, civil rights and reproductive rights movements, who convinced him to vote for the bill.
That Michaels listened to his sons and his daughter-in-law is, for Workman, what really stands out about this story — and what makes it Jewish. “For me, his Judaism really comes through with his children,” Workman said. “Jews at that time were very active in all kinds of social justice, reproductive rights, civil rights and voting rights movements.”
In the movie, Michaels’ son James, who is now a rabbi in Maryland, remembers telling his father, “You’re the only hope we have.” He says that the first time he discussed the issue with his father, the elder Michaels told him that he couldn’t vote for the bill.
“I said, ‘I understand, just as long as your vote isn’t the one to defeat it,’” the younger Michaels recalls. “I never dreamed that it would come to the point where that would be where his vote would be the one that was so critical.”
George Michaels’ sons, Lee and Rabbi James Michaels, visit their father’s grave at the Fort Hill Cemetery in Auburn, New York. (Jeremy Workman)
Michaels references his conversation with his son in the speech he gave on Capitol floor to change his vote, which is shown in full in the film.
“Just before I left for Albany this week, my son Jim, who, as you recall Mr. Speaker, gave the invocation to this assembly on February 4th, and he said ‘Dad, for God’s sake. Don’t let your vote be the vote that defeats this bill,’” he says in his speech.
Workman said that while Michaels story isn’t completely unknown, “It just kind of got lost a little to the history books. No one had really pointed George Michaels out and what impact he had.”
The documentary interviews Jewish activist and former Manhattan borough president Ruth Messinger, who has been one of the sole upholders of Michaels’ legacy. She teaches a course on the late lawmaker called “George Michaels and Moral Courage” as part of a leadership course she teaches with the American Jewish World Service and as an adjunct professor at Hunter College.
“Very often, the most organized groups that do the most lobbying, that make the most noise, are groups that actually don’t represent a majority,” she says in the film. “So very often you have to take a quiet conversation with yourself: I know where people stand, but I have to do what I think is right.”
Messinger will speak on a panel about the film at the Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan on Dec. 12 with co-director Rob Lyons. The film can be seen at the New Yorker website.
“My concern is that too many of the people who exercise moral courage don’t have a legacy because we don’t talk about them,” Messenger adds. “If you’re looking for a model for doing that — for sticking your neck out, for taking a position of moral courage — Assemblyman George Michaels is right at the top of my list.”
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The post A Jewish Democrat gave up his political career to pass New York’s abortion rights law. A new film tells his story. appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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‘Never Forget’: ADL Files Oct. 7 Lawsuit Against Hamas, Iran, North Korea
The bodies of people, some of them elderly, lie on a street after they were killed by Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Photo: Ammar Awad via Reuters Connect
A legal effort to hold the perpetrators of the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel is being mounted by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and its partners, which on Thursday filed a major lawsuit in US federal court against Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and a slew of state sponsors of terrorism, including Iran and North Korea.
“The victims of the Oct. 7 massacre deserve justice, accountability, and redress,” ADL chief executive officer Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement. “This lawsuit seeks to do that by holding those responsible for the carnage accountable, from the the state sponsors who provided the funding, weapons, and training to the terrorist organizations who carried out these unspeakable atrocities.”
The suit is made possible by federal laws, the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act and Anti-Terrorism Act, allowing for the kin of the victims of terrorism to sue those who contributed to their murders. It seeks damages, compensatory and punitive, for the dozens of plaintiffs who brought the action while aiming to expose the funding networks which facilitate mass atrocities and destabilization of the societies subjected to them.
“The world must never forget what happened on Oct. 7. Our son’s life was senselessly cut short,” said David and Hazel Brief, the parents of Yona Brief, whom Hamas fatally injured during its onslaught. “We believe it is critical that those responsible for the horrific terror inflicted that day are held accountable in a court of law, to ensure the record is clear as to who helped support, plan, and carry out the violence that day. We are hopeful that this type of litigation will help prevent attacks like these in the future, so that no other families have to go through losing a loved on as a result of such violence.”
On Oct. 7, 2023, the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, which has controlled Gaza for nearly two decades, invaded neighboring Israel and massacred 1,200 people, mostly civilians, injured thousands more, and kidnapped over 200 hostages. In the days following the tragedy, the brutality of Hamas’s violence shocked the world as numerous eyewitnesses and victims shared accounts of rape, torture, beheading, and the mutilation of the bodies of the deceased.
In March 2024, the United Nation said in a report commissioned by the Representative of the Secretary General that Hamas likely committed mass acts of gang-rape and torture against women during the massacre and continued to abuse women whom it imprisoned. The report came amid a volley of attacks by anti-Israel agitators, who discredited the testimonies of rape victims, attempting to bury them under counter accusations of anti-Palestinian racism and Islamophobia.
“Credible circumstantial information, which may be indicative of some forms of sexual violence, including genital mutilation, sexualized torture, or cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment was also gathered,” the report said, as previously reported by The Algemeiner and other outlets. “It also said that the research team “found clear and convincing information that some hostages taken to Gaza have been subjected to various forms of conflict-related sexual violence has reasonable grounds to believe that such violence may be ongoing.”
The previous month, the Association of Rape Crisis Centers in Israel issued a report detailing harrowing accounts of Hamas’s sexual violence. In 35 pages, it recounted numerous sexual assaults reported by Israel women, several of which were perpetrated in the presence of their loved ones. Some women were killed after the act, some during it. Hamas terrorists also desecrated the bodies of victims they murdered, mutilating their genitalia, and they raped men.
Hamas’s violence and mission to destroy Israel has inspired hatred across the world, triggering a wave of antisemitic hate crimes, perpetrated by anti-Zionists, in the US unlike any seen in the country’s history.
In June, a gunman murdered two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, DC, while they exited an event at the Capital Jewish Museum hosted by a major Jewish organization. The suspect charged for the double murder, 31-year-old Elias Rodriguez from Chicago, yelled “Free Palestine” while being arrested by police after the shooting, according to video of the incident. The FBI affidavit supporting the criminal charges against Rodriguez stated that he told law enforcement he “did it for Gaza.”
Less than two weeks later, a man firebombed a crowd of people who were participating in a demonstration to raise awareness of the Israeli hostages who remain imprisoned by Hamas in Gaza. A victim of the attack, Karen Diamond, 82, later died, having sustained severe, fatal injuries.
Another antisemitic incident motivated by anti-Zionism occurred in San Francisco, where an assailant identified by law enforcement as Juan Diaz-Rivas and others allegedly beat up a Jewish victim in the middle of the night. Diaz-Rivas and his friends approached the victim while shouting “F—k the Jews, Free Palestine,” according to local prosecutors.
“[O]ne of them punched the victim, who fell to the ground, hit his head and lost consciousness,” the San Francisco district attorney’s office said in a statement. “Allegedly, Mr. Diaz-Rivas and others in the group continued to punch and kick the victim while he was down. A worker at a nearby business heard the altercation and antisemitic language and attempted to intervene. While trying to help the victim, he was kicked and punched.”
According to an FBI report issued last month, antisemitic hate crimes are occurring at record-setting rates. Even as hate crimes decreased overall, the report said, those perpetrated against Jews increased by 5.8 percent in 2024 to 1,938, the largest total recorded in over 30 years of the FBI’s counting them. Jewish American groups noted that this surge, which included 178 assaults, is being experienced by a demographic group which constitutes just 2 percent of the US population.
Also, a striking 69 percent of all religion-based hate crimes that were reported to the FBI in 2024 targeted Jews, with 2,041 out of 2,942 total such incidents being antisemitic in nature. Muslims were targeted the next highest amount as the victims of 256 offenses, or about 9 percent of the total.
“Leaders of every kind — teachers, law enforcement officers, government officials, business owners, university presidents — must confront antisemitism head-on,” Ted Deutch, chief executive officer of the American Jewish Committee (AJC) said in a statement when the FBI report was released.. “Jews are being targeted not just out of hate, but because some wrongly believe that violence or intimidation is justified by global events.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Dozens of Celebrities Call for Ceasefire, Help Raise $2 Million for Gaza Palestinians at Benefit Concert
Billie Eilish and Finneas receive Album of the Year Award for “Hit Me Hard and Soft” during the iHeartRadio Music Awards at Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles, California, US, March 17, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni
A star-studded list of celebrities helped raise money for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip amid the Israel-Hamas war as part of a fundraising campaign and benefit concert that took place at London’s Wembley Arena on Wednesday.
Ahead of the ‘Together for Palestine” concert, the campaign released a video featuring dozens of celebrities who called for a ceasefire in Gaza and to “stop the killing” of Palestinians during the ongoing war. They included Grammy-winning artists Billie Eilish and her brother Finneas, Oscar winners Cillian Murphy, Joaquin Phoenix, Javier Bardem, and Penelope Cruz; “Outlander” star Caitriona Balfe; Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai; and Scottish actor Brian Cox.
“We have to tell the truth on behalf of the people of Palestine,” Cox said in the video.
“It’s important to speak out now, not when this is over, right now, while it’s happening, pressurize your government. Lend your support to those who are peacefully campaigning for Palestine. Call for a ceasefire, stop the killing,” added British comedian and actor Steve Coogan in the clip.
The video also included appearances by “The White Lotus” star Natasha Rothwell, “Bad Sisters” star Sharon Horgan, and “Weapons” actor Benedict Wong. It was released mere hours before the “Together for Palestine” benefit concert at Wembley Arena, which raised more than £1.5 million ($2 million). The event included performances from Bastille, James Blake, Jamie xx, and PinkPantheress, and Palestinian artists such as Sama’ Abdulhadi, Saint Levant, and Nia Barghouti, who is the daughter of Omar Barghouti, a leader of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.
Paloma Faith performed live wearing a dress made from a Palestinian keffiyeh. The event also featured a pre-recorded performance by Annie Lennox of her new song “Why? – For Gaza,” which she sang while wearing a T-shirt that said, “Let Gaza Live.”
The event, which was livestreamed on YouTube, was organized by British artist Brian Eno, who read the poem “Oh Rascal Shildren of Gaza” by Palestinian writer Khaled Juma. Speakers at the event included actors Richard Gere, Florence Pugh, and “Bridgerton” stars Nicola Coughlan and Charithra Chandran. Benedict Cumberbatch recited a Palestinian poem while broadcaster Mehdi Hasan led the audience in chanting “You can’t bomb the truth away.”
British-American documentarian Louis Theroux claimed on stage that Palestinians are “living under military occupation [and are] subject to slow, grinding relentless violence.” French former soccer player Eric Cantona called for Israeli athletes to be banned from all soccer competitions around the world, including FIFA and UEFA matches.
“I know that international football is more than just sport,” said the former Manchester United player. “It’s cultural; political. It’s soft power in the way that a country represents itself on a global stage. The time has come to suspend Israel from that privilege.” His comments elicited loud applause from the audience.
“FIFA and UEFA must suspend Israel,” he added. “[Soccer] clubs everywhere must refuse to play Israeli teams. Current players everywhere must refuse to play against Israeli teams … it’s time for everyone to get off the sidelines.” When Cantona asked the audience if they agreed that Israelis should be boycotted from all soccer matches, they replied in unison, “Yes!”
Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur for the Palestinian territories said, “Palestinians continue to suffer while our governments turn a blind eye, or worse – they are complicit. They trade weapons. They host Israeli officials.” Both Pugh and Coughlan criticized their colleagues in Hollywood for staying silent about “grave violations of human rights in Gaza.”
“Silence in the face of such suffering is not neutrality. It is complicity. And empathy should not be this hard and it should have never been this hard,” said Pugh. She also applauded Nia’s Bargouti’s performance at the concert in an Instagram story. In the caption of the post, she told Bargouti that “[you] sang so beautifully and so powerfully considering the weight and meaning of this evening. I was blown away by your strength.”
Others who made an appearance at the event included actress Jameela Jamil, “Love Island” host Laura Whitmore, and the “Chicken Shop Date” YouTuber Amelia Dimoldenberg.
“Together For Palestine” said all ticket proceeds from the benefit concert will be given to Palestinian-led organizations on the ground in Gaza, through Choose Love, a British charity that supports humanitarian workers in conflict zones. The groups that will benefit from Wednesday’s concert include Taawon, which runs orphan care programs in Gaza, the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund, and the Palestinian Medical Relief Society.
Israel has long expressed concern that Hamas steals much of the humanitarian aid that is sent into Gaza for its own terrorist operations and to sell to Palestinian civilians at inflated prices.
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Italian Port Blocks Arms for Israel as Worker Protests Mount
Illustrative: Demonstrators participate in a pro-Palestinian protest in Piazza Duomo in Milan, Italy, on Nov. 23, 2024. Photo: Alessandro Bremec/NurPhoto via Reuters Connect
The Italian Adriatic port of Ravenna on Thursday refused entry to two trucks said to be carrying arms to Israel, as protests mount among Italian dockworkers and other labor groups against the offensive in Gaza.
The center-left mayor of Ravenna, Alessandro Barattoni, told reporters the port authority had accepted the request from him and the regional government to deny access to the lorries carrying explosives en route to the Israeli port of Haifa.
“The Italian state says it has blocked the sale of arms to Israel but it is unacceptable that, thank to bureaucratic loopholes, they can pass through Italy from other countries,” Barattoni said in a statement.
He did not provide details on where the containers had come from or provide evidence of their contents.
Similar action to block arms shipments to Israel has been taken by dockworkers in other European countries such as France, Sweden, and Greece.
Ravenna’s decision reflects growing mobilization in Italy against Israel‘s military campaign and in support of an international flotilla trying to deliver aid to the Palestinians.
A spokesperson from the Israeli embassy in Rome said they did not have sufficiently detailed information about the case and so declined to comment. Israel‘s government sometimes accuses Europea nations of bias against it and swallowing propaganda by the Hamas terrorist group whom it is fighting in Gaza.
On Friday Italy’s largest trade union body, the CGIL, will hold a national half-day strike and marches in Rome and other cities, while on Sept. 22 two other unions will halt work and try to block activity in the large ports of Genoa and Livorno.
“We won’t let a single pin through the port,” said Riccardo Rudino from the Calp dockers’ union in Genoa.
Israel launched its offensive after Hamas-led terrorists attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing more than 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages.
The CGIL said its protests were aimed at generating pressure on Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government “to suspend all commercial and military cooperation agreements with Israel, lift the humanitarian embargo, and recognize the State of Palestine.”
Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said on Thursday Italy would support EU sanctions against violent Israeli settlers and Israeli ministers who have made “unacceptable” comments on Gaza and the West Bank, and was open to considering trade sanctions.