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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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Hamas Says No Interim Hostage Deal Possible Without Work Toward Permanent Ceasefire
Explosions send smoke into the air in Gaza, as seen from the Israeli side of the border, July 17, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
The spokesperson for Hamas’s armed wing said on Friday that while the Palestinian terrorist group favors reaching an interim truce in the Gaza war, if such an agreement is not reached in current negotiations it could revert to insisting on a full package deal to end the conflict.
Hamas has previously offered to release all the hostages held in Gaza and conclude a permanent ceasefire agreement, and Israel has refused, Abu Ubaida added in a televised speech.
Arab mediators Qatar and Egypt, backed by the United States, have hosted more than 10 days of talks on a US-backed proposal for a 60-day truce in the war.
Israeli officials were not immediately available for comment on the eve of the Jewish Sabbath.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said in a statement on a call he had with Pope Leo on Friday that Israel‘s efforts to secure a hostage release deal and 60-day ceasefire “have so far not been reciprocated by Hamas.”
As part of the potential deal, 10 hostages held in Gaza would be returned along with the bodies of 18 others, spread out over 60 days. In exchange, Israel would release a number of detained Palestinians.
“If the enemy remains obstinate and evades this round as it has done every time before, we cannot guarantee a return to partial deals or the proposal of the 10 captives,” said Abu Ubaida.
Disputes remain over maps of Israeli army withdrawals, aid delivery mechanisms into Gaza, and guarantees that any eventual truce would lead to ending the war, said two Hamas officials who spoke to Reuters on Friday.
The officials said the talks have not reached a breakthrough on the issues under discussion.
Hamas says any agreement must lead to ending the war, while Netanyahu says the war will only end once Hamas is disarmed and its leaders expelled from Gaza.
Almost 1,650 Israelis and foreign nationals have been killed as a result of the conflict, including 1,200 killed in the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on southern Israel, according to Israeli tallies. Over 250 hostages were kidnapped during Hamas’s Oct. 7 onslaught.
Israel responded with an ongoing military campaign aimed at freeing the hostages and dismantling Hamas’s military and governing capabilities in neighboring Gaza.
The post Hamas Says No Interim Hostage Deal Possible Without Work Toward Permanent Ceasefire first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Iran Marks 31st Anniversary of AMIA Bombing by Slamming Argentina’s ‘Baseless’ Accusations, Blaming Israel
People hold images of the victims of the 1994 bombing attack on the Argentine Israeli Mutual Association (AMIA) community center, marking the 30th anniversary of the attack, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, July 18, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Irina Dambrauskas
Iran on Friday marked the 31st anniversary of the 1994 bombing of the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA) Jewish community center in Buenos Aires by slamming Argentina for what it called “baseless” accusations over Tehran’s alleged role in the terrorist attack and accusing Israel of politicizing the atrocity to influence the investigation and judicial process.
The Iranian Foreign Ministry issued a statement on the anniversary of Argentina’s deadliest terrorist attack, which killed 85 people and wounded more than 300.
“While completely rejecting the accusations against Iranian citizens, the Islamic Republic of Iran condemns attempts by certain Argentine factions to pressure the judiciary into issuing baseless charges and politically motivated rulings,” the statement read.
“Reaffirming that the charges against its citizens are unfounded, the Islamic Republic of Iran insists on restoring their reputation and calls for an end to this staged legal proceeding,” it continued.
Last month, a federal judge in Argentina ordered the trial in absentia of 10 Iranian and Lebanese nationals suspected of orchestrating the attack in Buenos Aires.
The ten suspects set to stand trial include former Iranian and Lebanese ministers and diplomats, all of whom are subject to international arrest warrants issued by Argentina for their alleged roles in the terrorist attack.
In its statement on Friday, Iran also accused Israel of influencing the investigation to advance a political campaign against the Islamist regime in Tehran, claiming the case has been used to serve Israeli interests and hinder efforts to uncover the truth.
“From the outset, elements and entities linked to the Zionist regime [Israel] exploited this suspicious explosion, pushing the investigation down a false and misleading path, among whose consequences was to disrupt the long‑standing relations between the people of Iran and Argentina,” the Iranian Foreign Ministry said.
“Clear, undeniable evidence now shows the Zionist regime and its affiliates exerting influence on the Argentine judiciary to frame Iranian nationals,” the statement continued.
In April, lead prosecutor Sebastián Basso — who took over the case after the 2015 murder of his predecessor, Alberto Nisman — requested that federal Judge Daniel Rafecas issue national and international arrest warrants for Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei over his alleged involvement in the attack.
Since 2006, Argentine authorities have sought the arrest of eight Iranians — including former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who died in 2017 — yet more than three decades after the deadly bombing, all suspects remain still at large.
In a post on X, the Delegation of Argentine Israelite Associations (DAIA), the country’s Jewish umbrella organization, released a statement commemorating the 31st anniversary of the bombing.
“It was a brutal attack on Argentina, its democracy, and its rule of law,” the group said. “At DAIA, we continue to demand truth and justice — because impunity is painful, and memory is a commitment to both the present and the future.”
31 años del atentado a la AMIA – DAIA. 31 años sin justicia.
El 18 de julio de 1994, un atentado terrorista dejó 85 personas muertas y más de 300 heridas. Fue un ataque brutal contra la Argentina, su democracia y su Estado de derecho.
Desde la DAIA, seguimos exigiendo verdad y… pic.twitter.com/kV2ReGNTIk
— DAIA (@DAIAArgentina) July 18, 2025
Despite Argentina’s longstanding belief that Lebanon’s Shiite Hezbollah terrorist group carried out the devastating attack at Iran’s request, the 1994 bombing has never been claimed or officially solved.
Meanwhile, Tehran has consistently denied any involvement and refused to arrest or extradite any suspects.
To this day, the decades-long investigation into the terrorist attack has been plagued by allegations of witness tampering, evidence manipulation, cover-ups, and annulled trials.
In 2006, former prosecutor Nisman formally charged Iran for orchestrating the attack and Hezbollah for carrying it out.
Nine years later, he accused former Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner — currently under house arrest on corruption charges — of attempting to cover up the crime and block efforts to extradite the suspects behind the AMIA atrocity in return for Iranian oil.
Nisman was killed later that year, and to this day, both his case and murder remain unresolved and under ongoing investigation.
The alleged cover-up was reportedly formalized through the memorandum of understanding signed in 2013 between Kirchner’s government and Iranian authorities, with the stated goal of cooperating to investigate the AMIA bombing.
The post Iran Marks 31st Anniversary of AMIA Bombing by Slamming Argentina’s ‘Baseless’ Accusations, Blaming Israel first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Jordan Reveals Muslim Brotherhood Operating Vast Illegal Funding Network Tied to Gaza Donations, Political Campaigns
Murad Adailah, the head of Jordan’s Muslim Brotherhood, attends an interview with Reuters in Amman, Jordan, Sept. 7, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Jehad Shelbak
The Muslim Brotherhood, one of the Arab world’s oldest and most influential Islamist movements, has been implicated in a wide-ranging network of illegal financial activities in Jordan and abroad, according to a new investigative report.
Investigations conducted by Jordanian authorities — along with evidence gathered from seized materials — revealed that the Muslim Brotherhood raised tens of millions of Jordanian dinars through various illegal activities, the Jordan news agency (Petra) reported this week.
With operations intensifying over the past eight years, the report showed that the group’s complex financial network was funded through various sources, including illegal donations, profits from investments in Jordan and abroad, and monthly fees paid by members inside and outside the country.
The report also indicated that the Muslim Brotherhood has taken advantage of the war in Gaza to raise donations illegally.
Out of all donations meant for Gaza, the group provided no information on where the funds came from, how much was collected, or how they were distributed, and failed to work with any international or relief organizations to manage the transfers properly.
Rather, the investigations revealed that the Islamist network used illicit financial mechanisms to transfer funds abroad.
According to Jordanian authorities, the group gathered more than JD 30 million (around $42 million) over recent years.
With funds transferred to several Arab, regional, and foreign countries, part of the money was allegedly used to finance domestic political campaigns in 2024, as well as illegal activities and cells.
In April, Jordan outlawed the Muslim Brotherhood, the country’s most vocal opposition group, and confiscated its assets after members of the Islamist movement were found to be linked to a sabotage plot.
The movement’s political arm in Jordan, the Islamic Action Front, became the largest political grouping in parliament after elections last September, although most seats are still held by supporters of the government.
Opponents of the group, which is banned in most Arab countries, label it a terrorist organization. However, the movement claims it renounced violence decades ago and now promotes its Islamist agenda through peaceful means.
The post Jordan Reveals Muslim Brotherhood Operating Vast Illegal Funding Network Tied to Gaza Donations, Political Campaigns first appeared on Algemeiner.com.