RSS
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.”
—
The post Bella Abzug documentary aims to restore the Jewish congresswoman’s trailblazing legacy appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
RSS
Iran Criticizes Arab-Islamic Summit Statement, Flags Objections After Doha Meeting
Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, Emir of Qatar, attends the emergency Arab-Islamic leaders’ summit in Doha, Qatar, Sept. 15, 2025. Photo: Hassan Bargash Al Menhali / UAE Presidential Court/Handout via REUTERS
Iran has criticized the final statement of the Arab-Islamic Summit held in Doha on Monday as insufficient, in the wake of last week’s Israeli attack targeting the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas in Qatar.
In a statement released shortly after the summit, Iran reaffirmed its “unwavering support for the Palestinian people and their right to self-determination,” while arguing that a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict cannot adequately address the Palestinian issue.
According to the Iranian delegation, “the only real and lasting solution is the establishment of a single democratic state across all of Palestine, through a referendum involving all Palestinians inside and outside the occupied territories.”
On Monday, Qatar held a summit of Arab and Islamic nations in the aftermath of last week’s Israeli strike on Hamas, with leaders gathering to express support and discuss regional responses.
The Sept. 9 strike targeting leaders of the Palestinian terrorist group in Doha marked a significant escalation of Israeli military operations, reflecting Jerusalem’s broader efforts to dismantle the terrorist group amid the ongoing war in Gaza.
Expressing solidarity with Qatar, summit leaders condemned Israel’s strike, labeling it “cowardly, illegal, and a threat to collective regional security.”
In the final statement, the heads of state declared that “an assault on a state acting as a neutral mediator in the Gaza crisis is not only a hostile act against Qatar but also a direct blow to international peace-building efforts.”
Alongside the United States and other regional powers, Qatar has served as a ceasefire mediator during the nearly two-year Gaza conflict, facilitating indirect negotiations between the Jewish state and Hamas.
However, Doha has also backed the Palestinian terrorist group for years, providing Hamas with money and diplomatic support while hosting and sheltering its top leadership.
During the summit, Arab and Muslim leaders called for a review of diplomatic and economic relations with Israel while firmly opposing any attempts to displace Palestinians.
In the final statement, the heads of state also emphasized resisting Israel’s efforts to “impose new realities on the ground,” urged enforcement of International Criminal Court (ICC) warrants for Israeli leaders over war crime allegations adamantly denied by Jerusalem, and coordinated actions to suspend Israel’s UN membership.
Although Iran participated in the summit and endorsed the declaration, its delegation issued a separate statement shortly afterward clarifying that doing so “must in no way be interpreted, explicitly or implicitly, as recognition of the Israeli regime,” reaffirming its rejection of the Jewish state’s right to exist.
Iranian leaders regularly declare their intention to destroy Israel, the world’s lone Jewish state.
The statement also stressed that the Palestinian people have the right to employ “all necessary means to achieve their inalienable right to self-determination,” emphasizing that backing this cause is “a shared duty of the international community.”
As the heads of Arab and Islamic states convened for a summit on Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned he did not rule out further strikes on Hamas leaders “wherever they are.”
During a diplomatic visit to Israel, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio expressed strong support for Israel’s position, even as Washington previously voiced concerns over the strike in Qatar, a US ally.
Speaking alongside Netanyahu, Rubio said the only way to end the war in Gaza would be for Hamas to free all hostages and surrender. While the US wants a diplomatic end to the war, “we have to be prepared for the possibility that’s not going to happen,” he said.
RSS
“Your Name Was Included”: UC Berkeley Cooperating With Trump Administration, Admits to Disclosing Names
Students attend a protest encampment in support of Palestinians at University of California, Berkeley during the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in Berkeley, US, April 23, 2024. Photo: Carlos Barria via Reuters Connect
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) is cooperating with the Trump administration’s inquiry into campus antisemitism, providing materials containing the names of some 160 people identified in disciplinary reports and other official documents.
As first reported by The Daily Californian, UC Berkeley’s official campus newspaper, the university’s Office of Legal Affairs notified every person affected by the mass disclosure, writing to them on Sept. 4.
“Last spring, the [US Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights, or OCR]] initiated investigations regarding allegations of antisemitic harassment and discrimination at UC Berkeley. As part of its investigation, OCR required production of comprehensive documents, including files and reports related to alleged antisemitic incidents,” chief campus counsel David Robinson wrote. “This notice is to inform you that, as required by law and as per directions provided by the UC systemic Office of General Counsel, your name was included in report as part of the documents provided by OGC [Office of General Counsel] to OCR for its investigations on Aug. 18, 2025.”
He added, “These documents contained information about reports or responses related to antisemitic incidents.”
Anti-Israel activists told the Californian that the university is helping the Trump administration hunt witches.
“I think the message was sent to anybody has who has ever been accused of antisemitism, which of course, includes a lot of Palestinians,” one said, claiming that he has been falsely accused. “Whenever we teach about Palestine, it usually leads to an investigation. I think they flagged and sent all of that information to the federal government.”
Students for Justice in Palestine, infamous for its ties to jihadist terror organizations, also criticized the move, charging that the administration had promised to conceal their identities and thereby obstruct the government’s inquiry.
“Chancellor Rich Lyons should not have given assurances that he wouldn’t be giving our information to the federal government,” the group said. “Beyond that, he should never have bowed down so easily. I would think that a university that prides itself on being this liberal haven would at least stand up to a fascist like Donald Trump.”
UC Berkeley came under scrutiny in 2024 after a mob of hundreds of pro-Palestinian students and non-students shut down an event at its Zellerbach Hall featuring Israeli reservist Ran Bar-Yoshafat, forcing Jewish students to flee to a secret safe room as the protesters overwhelmed campus police.
Footage of the incident showed a frenzied mass of anti-Zionist agitators banging on the doors of Zellerbach. The mob then, according to witnesses, eventually stormed the building — breaking windows in the process, according to reports in The Daily Wire — and precipitated the decision to evacuate the area. During the infiltration of Zellerbach, one of the mob — assembled by Bears for Palestine, which had earlier proclaimed its intention to cancel the event — spit on a Jewish student and called him a “Jew,” pejoratively.
Other incidents, including the university’s employment of a lecturer who tweeted antisemitic images — one of which accused Israel of organ harvesting, a blood libel — the rewarding of academic benefits for participating in anti-Zionist activity, and the banning of Zionist speakers from Berkeley Law, have raised concerns about anti-Jewish hated on campus. In 2017, The Algemeiner ranked UC Berkeley as number five on “The 40 Worst Colleges for Jewish Students.”
In August, an Israeli professor sued the university, alleging that school officials denied her a job because she is Israeli — a claim its own investigators corroborated in an internal investigation, according to her attorneys at the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law.
Filed in the Alameda County Superior Court, the complaint is seeking justice for Dr. Yael Nativ, who taught in UC Berkeley’s Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies as a visiting professor in 2022 and received an invitation to apply to do so again for the 2024-2025 academic year just weeks after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led massacre across southern Israel.
A hiring official allegedly believed, however, that an Israeli professor in the department would be unpalatable to students and faculty.
“My dept [sic] cannot host you for a class next fall,” the official allegedly told Nativ in a WhatsApp message. “Things are very hot here right now and many of our grad students are angry. I would be putting the dept and you in a terrible position if you taught here.”
Berkeley’s Office for the Prevention of Harassment and Discrimination (OPHD) later initiated an investigation of Nativ’s denial after the professor wrote an opinion essay which publicly accused the school of cowardice and violations of her civil rights. OPHD determined that a “preponderance of evidence” proved Nativ’s claim, but school officials went on to ignore the professor’s requests for an apology and other remedial measures, including sending her a renewed invitation to teach dance. After nearly two years, the situation remains unresolved.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
RSS
Israel Issues Travel Warning Ahead of Jewish Holidays Amid Rising Attacks, Discrimination Targeting Israelis Abroad
A flag is flown during a protest in support of Palestinians in Gaza, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, outside the European Parliament, in Strasbourg, France, Nov. 27, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Yves Herman
Israel has issued a travel warning ahead of the upcoming Jewish high holidays and the second anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023, atrocities, alerting citizens of heightened terrorist threats against Israelis and Jewish communities abroad.
On Sunday, the National Security Council (NSC) urged travelers to stay alert, cautioning that the two-year anniversary of the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel could trigger attacks by Iran-backed or Hamas-linked terrorist groups targeting Jews and Israelis abroad.
“The recent period has been characterized by continued efforts to carry out terrorist attacks against Israeli and Jewish targets by the various terrorist organizations (most of them led by Iran and Hamas),” the NSC said in a statement.
“Oct. 7 may again serve as a significant date for terrorist organizations,” the statement read.
Israeli officials warned that the threat mainly stems from Iran and its terrorist proxies, which have increasingly targeted Jews and Israelis beyond Israel’s borders.
In recent months, the NSC reported that dozens of plots have been thwarted, even as violent incidents — including physical attacks, antisemitic threats, and online incitement — have continued to rise.
“With the war ongoing and the terror threat growing, we are witnessing an escalation in antisemitic violence and provocations by anti-Israel elements,” the NSC said in its statement.
“This trend may inspire extremists to carry out attacks against Israelis or Jews abroad,” it continued.
According to the NSC, Iran remains the leading source of terrorism against Israelis and Jews worldwide, acting both directly and through proxies such as Hamas and Hezbollah.
“Iranian motivation is growing in light of the severe blows it suffered in the framework of ‘Operation Rising Lion’ and the growing desire for revenge,” the NSC said in a statement, referring to the 12-day war with Israel in June.
Amid rising tensions over the war in Gaza, Israeli officials have previously warned of Iranian sleeper cells — covert operatives or terrorists embedded in rival countries who remain dormant until they receive orders to act and carry out attacks.
In light of this reality, the NSC also warned that social media posts revealing ties to Israeli security services could put individuals at risk of being targeted.
“We advise against posting any content that suggests involvement in the security services or operational activities, including real-time location updates,” the statement read.
This latest updated warning comes amid a growing hostile environment and a shocking surge in anti-Jewish hate crimes targeting Jews and Israelis worldwide.
Across Europe, Israelis are facing a disturbing surge of targeted attacks and hostility, as a wave of antisemitic incidents — from violent assaults and vandalism to protests and legal actions — spreads amid rising tensions following recent conflicts in the Middle East.
On Saturday, a 29-year-old Israeli and his sister were attacked by three Palestinian men while on vacation in Athens, Greece.
According to local media reports, the two siblings were walking through the city’s center when three unknown individuals carrying Palestinian flags approached them, shouting antisemitic slurs.
The attackers assaulted the Israeli man, a disabled Israel Defense Forces (IDF) veteran, scratching him, throwing him to the ground, and striking him with their flagpoles, while his sister attempted to intervene and protect him.
October 7 is a global war against Jews & Israelis.
Pro-Palestinian radicals just attacked an Israeli man in Syntagma Square, Athens. via @N12News https://t.co/IZR2IdNrUI pic.twitter.com/9S2o4IjtO6
— Eylon Levy (@EylonALevy) September 14, 2025
Greek authorities arrested all five individuals involved in the incident. According to the Israeli man’s father, his son was placed in a cell with 10 Arabs, where he was reportedly beaten again and feared for his life.
In a separate antisemitic incident earlier this year, a group of Israeli teenagers was physically assaulted by dozens of pro-Palestinian assailants — some reportedly armed with knives — on the Greek island of Rhodes.
After leaving a nightclub, the teens were followed to their hotel, where they were violently assaulted, leaving several with minor injuries.
In another example of rising anti-Israel sentiment and hostility toward Jewish communities, one of Britain’s most prestigious military academies, the Royal College of Defense Studies, announced Sunday that it will bar Israeli students from enrolling next year, citing concerns over the war in Gaza.
In Belgium, two IDF soldiers attending the Tomorrowland music festival were arrested and interrogated by local authorities following a complaint from the Hind Rajab Foundation (HRF), an anti-Israel legal group that pursues legal action against IDF personnel, accusing them of involvement in war crimes.
According to HRF, the soldiers were seen waving the flags of the IDF’s Givati Brigade, which they claimed has been “involved in the systematic destruction of civilian infrastructure in Gaza and in carrying out mass atrocities against the Palestinian population.”
In France, a 34-year-old Algerian man was sentenced to 40 months in prison for threatening passengers with a knife and making antisemitic death threats after boarding a train at Cannes station.
In another incident earlier this year, a Jewish man wearing a kippah was brutally attacked and called a “dirty Jew” in Anduze, a small town in southern France.