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Bella Abzug documentary aims to restore the Jewish congresswoman’s trailblazing legacy

(JTA) — Bella Abzug, the feminist who burst into Congress battling for equal rights in 1970, was often caricatured in the media of her time. She was labeled “belligerent” and “bellicose Bella” in newspapers, parodied on television and shamed for everything from her body to her Jewishness to her signature wide-brimmed hats.
In just six years as a New York Representative, Abzug demanded the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Vietnam, wrote legislation to protect the environment and fought discrimination against women, LGBTQ people and Black Americans. But five decades later, her name is far less known than those of some of her peers in the second wave feminist movement — such as journalist Gloria Steinem and “The Feminine Mystique” author Betty Friedan.
Jeff L. Lieberman hopes to finally pay her due with his documentary “Bella!,” opening in New York City and Los Angeles theaters on Friday. Lieberman interviewed several women in politics and the arts who credit Abzug with blazing a path for them to follow, even though their names are more famous than hers: Steinem, Hillary Clinton, Barbra Streisand, Shirley MacLaine, Nancy Pelosi and Maxine Waters are a few of the heavy hitters.
Lieberman started learning about Jewish feminists as a child in Vancouver, Canada — and not only from his mother, who became the family’s earner while his father assumed household duties in the 1980s. Their shelves were lined with books by Jewish feminists such as Letty Cottin Pogrebin and Anita Diamant. They sang songs by Debbie Friedman and proudly watched Steinem on the news. Yet Abzug’s name was hardly mentioned, he told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
“Looking back on it, she should have been this huge Jewish hero for all of us — a Jewish woman in Congress who was really sticking it to the institution,” said Lieberman, whose previous documentaries include “The Amazing Nina Simone” and “Re-Emerging: The Jews of Nigeria.” “Had the press been more fair and less misogynistic, we probably would have known Bella throughout a lot of Jewish households in the ‘80s. But because she was cast as a slightly odd figure, yelling with a hat, we didn’t really know her. ”
Abzug’s Jewish upbringing was central to the development of her progressive politics, according to Leandra Zarnow, who is interviewed in the documentary and wrote “Battling Bella: The Protest Politics of Bella Abzug.”
Abzug was born to Russian-Jewish immigrants in the Bronx in July 1920, one month before women won the right to vote. As a child, she was looked after by her grandfather Wolf Taklefsky, an Orthodox Jew who took her to synagogue and loved showing off her aptitude for learning Hebrew.
Hillary Clinton is a featured speaker in “Bella! This Woman’s Place is in The House.” (Courtesy of Re-Emerging Films)
“At the core, Bella Abzug was fueled by a sense of commitment to ‘tikkun olam,’ the idea of repairing the world,” Zarnow told JTA. “All of her elders really instilled in her that she needed to do unto others better than done unto her, so her social justice and her ethical core really were fired by that idea.”
When Abzug was in junior high in the early 1930s, she became involved in Hashomer Hatzair, a Labor Zionist youth movement with the Marxist ideal of a binational Jewish-Arab worker state. At 12 years old, she was already so enraptured by political organizing that she disobeyed her father’s curfew to make her first speeches at New York City subway stops.
“In the 1960s and ‘70s, Bella Abzug is very much an ally to the Black Power movement and other types of ethnic nationalist movements, because of the fact that she came into her politics and her own sense of self-determination through Hashomer Hatzair,” said Zarnow.
Abzug’s father died unexpectedly when she was 13. She decided to say Kaddish for him, a mourning prayer traditionally recited by male children for 11 months after a loved one’s death. Abzug had no male siblings and did not hesitate to take over the prayer every day at the front of her Orthodox synagogue.
“They looked askance at me for doing that,” Abzug said in a recording played in the documentary. “Nobody embraced me, no one said ‘how wonderful’ or helped me. I sort of stood there by myself, isolated… And it was in those early days behind the curtain [separating men and women in Orthodox synagogues] that I probably got my first ideas of feminism.”
Before running for office, Abzug was for 25 years a lawyer focused on defending the rights of labor union workers, Black Americans and individuals targeted by the House Un-American Activities Committee during the McCarthy era. Facing sexism as a young attorney, Abzug started wearing her trademark floppy hats to distinguish that she was not anyone’s secretary.
In one of her best-known cases, she defended Willie McGee, a Black man who was accused of raping a white woman in Mississippi and sentenced to death in 1945. The all-white, all-male jury presented a guilty verdict in two-and-a-half minutes.
The case took an enormous personal toll. In Jackson, where McGee was tried, a local newspaper wrote that “they should burn Willie McGee’s white woman lawyer along with him in the electric chair.” Abzug traveled to Jackson at eight months pregnant and found that no hotel would let her stay. Fear struck her when a taxi driver said he knew a place “far from town” where he was prepared to take her. She spent that night in a bus station bathroom, where she miscarried, before appearing in court the next morning.
She won a stay of execution, but the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear McGee’s final appeal. He was killed in an electric chair in 1951.
In 1961, Abzug co-founded Women Strike for Peace, which drew about 50,000 women to the streets to protest the testing of nuclear weapons. The group helped push a nuclear test ban treaty signed by the United States and the Soviet Union, and it later shifted its focus to ending the Vietnam War.
Abzug then won a seat in Congress at age 50 in 1970, becoming one of only 12 women in the 435-member House of Representatives. In Washington, she co-authored the Water Pollution Act of 1972 (now known as the Clean Water Act), then the country’s most comprehensive environmental legislation. She introduced the Equal Credit Act of 1974 — which gave women the economic independence to apply for credit cards and loans in their own names — and the first bill to protect gay people from discrimination in U.S. history, which won only a handful of votes.
Bella Abzug was sworn into Congress on Jan. 21, 1971. (Courtesy of Marion S. Trikosko, Library of Congress)
As chair of a subcommittee on government information and individual rights, she co-authored the Freedom of Information Act, the Right to Privacy Act and the Government in the Sunshine Act that required government hearings to be held in public. While calling CIA Director William Colby to testify, she discovered that the CIA had been spying on her for about 30 years. She was also the first member of Congress to call for President Richard Nixon’s impeachment and helped pass a bill to defund the Vietnam War.
In 1976, Abzug took the risk of giving up her House seat to run for Senate, where a woman had never sat before. She lost in the primary to Daniel Patrick Moynihan by less than 1%. More losses followed in her races for mayor of New York City and Congress again, as cultural tides shifted to the right and Reaganism halted progressive strides in the 1980s.
Still, she never stopped fighting for her agenda on different stages. In the last two decades of her life, she presided over the first National Women’s Conference in Houston, founded the grassroots political action group Women USA and turned to international politics, transforming the United Nations’ efforts to empower women across the globe as president of the Women’s Environmental and Development Organization (WEDO).
The politically and culturally powerful women interviewed in “Bella!” saw themselves as Abzug’s children, according to Lieberman. Her biological children Eve and Liz Abzug, who are also interviewed, said she tirelessly pushed for her causes at the cost of her personal life.
All of the women interviewees described paying a long overdue tribute to a woman whose shoulders they stood on, who sometimes shattered herself along with the glass ceiling.
“They just knew that she really opened the door and blazed in and had to make a lot of sacrifices for being one of the first,” said Lieberman. “She sacrificed her own career, her own likability, her own personal joy because she had to be a tough person and go headfirst into institutions.”
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The post Bella Abzug documentary aims to restore the Jewish congresswoman’s trailblazing legacy appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Brooklyn Nets Select Israeli Basketball Players Ben Saraf, Danny Wolf in NBA Draft

The opening tip between the Brooklyn Nets and Washington Wizards, at Barclays Center, in Brooklyn, New York, Dec. 13, 2020. Photo: Wendell Cruz-USA TODAY Sports via Reuters Connect
In a landmark night for Israeli basketball, Ben Saraf and Danny Wolf were selected in the first round of the 2025 NBA Draft by the Brooklyn Nets, marking the first time two Israeli players have been drafted in the same year.
Saraf, a 19-year-old guard known for his explosive athleticism and creative playmaking, was taken with the 26th pick. A standout with Maccabi Rishon LeZion and a rising star on Israel’s youth national teams, Saraf gained international attention with his electrifying scoring and commanding court presence.
With the 27th pick, the Nets selected 7-foot center Danny Wolf out of the University of Michigan. Wolf, who holds dual US-Israeli citizenship and represented Israel at the U-20 level, brings a versatile skill set, including sharp passing, perimeter shooting, and a strong feel for the game. After his name was called, Wolf grew emotional in an on-air interview, crediting his family for helping him reach the moment.
“I have the two greatest brothers in the world; I have an unbelievable sister who I love,” Wolf said. “They all helped me get to where I am today, and they’re going to help me get to where I am going to go in this league.”
The historic double-pick adds to the growing wave of Israeli presence on the NBA stage, led by Portland Trail Blazers forward Deni Avdija, who just completed a breakout 2024–25 season. After being traded to Portland last summer, Avdija thrived as a starter, averaging 16.9 points, 7.2 rebounds, and 3.8 assists. In March alone, he posted 23.4 points, 9.8 rebounds, and 5.2 assists per game, including two triple-doubles.
“I don’t think I’ve played like this before … I knew I had it in me. But I’m not really thinking about it. I’m just playing. I’m just free,” Avdija told reporters in March
With Saraf and Wolf joining Avdija, Israel’s basketball pipeline has reached unprecedented visibility. Israeli President Isaac Herzog called the moment “a national celebration for sports and youth,” and Israeli sports commentators widely hailed the night as “historic.”
Both Saraf and Wolf are expected to suit up for the Nets’ Summer League team in July. As the two rookies begin their NBA journey, they join a growing generation of Israeli athletes proving that their game belongs on basketball’s biggest stage.
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Iran Denies Any Meeting With US Next Week, Foreign Minister Says

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi attends a press conference following a meeting with Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Moscow, Russia, April 18, 2025. Photo: Tatyana Makeyeva/Pool via REUTERS
Iran currently has no plan to meet with the United States, Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said on Thursday in an interview on state TV, contradicting US President Donald Trump’s statement that Washington planned to have talks with Iran next week.
The Iranian foreign minister said Tehran was assessing whether talks with the US were in its interest, following five previous rounds of negotiations that were cut short by Israel and the US attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities.
The US and Israel said the strikes were meant to curb Iran’s ability to create nuclear weapons, while Iran says its nuclear program is solely geared toward civilian use.
Araqchi said the damages to nuclear sites “were not little” and that relevant authorities were figuring out the new realities of Iran’s nuclear program, which he said would inform Iran’s future diplomatic stance.
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Ireland Becomes First European Nation to Advance Ban on Trade With Israeli Settlements

A pro-Hamas demonstration in Ireland led by nationalist party Sinn Fein. Photo: Reuters/Clodagh Kilcoyne
Ireland has become the first European nation to push forward legislation banning trade with Israeli communities in the West Bank and East Jerusalem — an effort officials say is meant “to address the horrifying situation” in the Gaza Strip.
On Wednesday, Irish Foreign Affairs and Trade Minister Simon Harris announced that the legislation has already been approved by the government and will now move to the parliamentary Committee on Foreign Affairs and Trade for pre-legislative scrutiny.
“Ireland is speaking up and speaking out against the genocidal activity in Gaza,” Harris said during a press conference.
The Irish diplomat also told reporters he hopes the “real benefit” of the legislation will be to encourage other countries to follow suit, “because it is important that every country uses every lever at its disposal.”
Today Ireland becomes the first country in Europe to bring forward legislation to ban trade with the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
Ireland is speaking up and speaking out against the genocidal activity in Gaza.
Every country must pull every lever at its disposal. pic.twitter.com/Z4RTjqntEY— Simon Harris TD (@SimonHarrisTD) June 24, 2025
Joining a growing number of EU member states aiming to curb Israel’s defensive campaign against the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, Ireland’s decision comes after a 2024 advisory opinion by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) declared Israel’s presence in the West Bank and East Jerusalem illegal.
The ICJ ruled that third countries must avoid trade or investment that supports “the illegal situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.”
Once implemented, the law will criminalize the importation of goods from Israeli settlements into Ireland, empowering customs officials to inspect, seize, and confiscate any such shipments.
“The situation in Palestine remains a matter of deep public concern,” Harris said. “I have made it consistently clear that this government will use all levers at its disposal to address the horrifying situation on the ground and to contribute to long-term efforts to achieve a sustainable peace on the basis of the two-state solution.”
“Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory are illegal and threaten the viability of the two-state solution,” the Irish diplomat continued. “This is the longstanding position of the European Union and our international partners. Furthermore, this is the clear position under international law.”
Harris also urged the EU to comply with the ICJ’s ruling by taking a more decisive and “adequate response” regarding imports from Israeli settlements.
“This is an issue that I will continue to press at EU level, and I reiterated my call for concrete proposals from the European Commission at the Foreign Affairs Council this week,” he said.
Last week, Ireland and eight other EU member states — Finland, Belgium, Luxembourg, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, and Sweden — called on the European Commission to draft proposals for how EU countries can halt trade and imports with Israeli settlements, in line with obligations set out by the ICJ.
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar condemned the latest move by European countries, calling it “shameful” and a misguided attempt to undermine Israel while it faces “existential” threats from Iran and its proxies, including Hamas.
“It is regrettable that even when Israel is fighting an existential threat which is in Europe’s vital interest — there are those who can’t resist their anti-Israeli obsession,” the top Israeli diplomat said in a post on X.
It is regrettable that even when Israel fighting an existential threat which is in Europe vital interest – there are those who can’t resist their anti-Israeli obsession.
Shameful! https://t.co/lxm9qm8sM1— Gideon Sa’ar | גדעון סער (@gidonsaar) June 19, 2025
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