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Henry Kissinger, First Jewish US Secretary of State Who Shaped Cold War Diplomacy, Dies Aged 100
Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger arrives for a memorial service for late Social Democratic senior politician Egon Bahr at St. Mary’s Church in Berlin, Germany, Sept. 17, 2015. Photo: REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch
Henry Kissinger, the dominant US diplomat of the Cold War era who helped Washington open up to China, forge arms control deals with the Soviet Union, and end the Vietnam War but who was reviled by critics over human rights, has died at the age of 100.
Kissinger, a German-born Jewish refugee whose career took him from academia to diplomacy and who remained an active voice in foreign policy into his later years, died at his home in Connecticut on Wednesday, his geopolitical consulting firm, Kissinger Associates Inc., said.
Kissinger was at the height of his powers during the 1970s in the midst of the Cold War when he served as national security adviser and secretary of state under Republican President Richard Nixon.
After Nixon’s resignation in 1974 amid the Watergate scandal, he remained a diplomatic force as secretary of state under Nixon’s successor, President Gerald Ford.
He was the architect of the US diplomatic opening with China, landmark US-Soviet arms control talks, expanded ties between Israel and its Arab neighbors, and the Paris Peace Accords with North Vietnam.
While many hailed Kissinger for his brilliance and statesmanship, others branded him a war criminal for his support for anti-communist dictatorships, especially in Latin America. In his latter years, his travels were circumscribed by efforts by some nations to arrest or question him about past US foreign policy.
He won the 1973 Peace Prize for ending US involvement in the Vietnam War but it was one of the most controversial ever. Two members of the Nobel committee resigned over the selection as questions arose about the secret US bombing of Cambodia. North Vietnamese diplomat Le Duc Tho, selected to share the award, declined it.
As tributes poured in from around the world, Beijing called him a “good old friend of the Chinese people” who made historic contributions to normalizing relations between the two countries.
Russian President Vladimir Putin praised Kissinger as a “wise and farsighted statesman” while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his meetings with Kissinger provided “a masterclass in statesmanship.”
With his distinctive German-accented voice, Kissinger was never shy to offer his opinion. Ford called him a “super secretary of state” but also noted his prickliness and self-assurance, saying “Henry in his mind never made a mistake.”
“He had the thinnest skin of any public figure I ever knew,” Ford told an interviewer shortly before his death in 2006.
HARVARD FACULTY
Heinz Alfred Kissinger was born in Fuerth, Germany, on May 27, 1923, and moved to the United States with his family in 1938 before the Nazi campaign to exterminate European Jewry.
Anglicizing his name to Henry, Kissinger became a naturalized US citizen in 1943, served in the Army in Europe in World War Two, and attended Harvard University on a scholarship, where he earned a doctorate in 1954 and stayed on faculty for the next 17 years.
During much of that time, Kissinger served as a consultant to government agencies, including in 1967 when he acted as an intermediary for the State Department in Vietnam. He used his connections with President Lyndon Johnson’s Democratic administration to pass on information about peace negotiations to the Nixon camp.
When Nixon’s pledge to end the Vietnam War helped him win the 1968 presidential election, he brought in Kissinger as national security adviser.
But the process of “Vietnamization” — shifting the burden of the war from US forces to the South Vietnamese — was long and bloody, punctuated by massive US bombing of North Vietnam, the mining of the North’s harbors, and the bombing of Cambodia.
Kissinger declared in 1972 that “peace is at hand” in Vietnam, but the Paris Peace Accords signed in January 1973 were little more than a prelude to the final Communist takeover of the South two years later.
In 1973, in addition to his role as national security adviser, Kissinger was named secretary of state — giving him unchallenged authority in foreign affairs.
An intensifying Arab-Israeli conflict launched Kissinger on his first “shuttle” mission, a brand of highly personal, high-pressure diplomacy for which he became famous.
Thirty-two days of shuttling between Jerusalem and Damascus helped Kissinger forge a long-lasting disengagement agreement between Israel and Syria in the Golan Heights.
In an effort to diminish Soviet influence, Kissinger reached out to its chief communist rival, China, and made two trips there, including a secret one to meet with Premier Zhou Enlai. The result was Nixon’s historic summit in Beijing with Chairman Mao Zedong and the eventual formalization of relations between the two countries.
Former US Ambassador to China Winston Lord, who served as Kissinger‘s special assistant, called his former boss a “tireless advocate for peace,” telling Reuters, “America has lost a towering champion for the national interest.”
STRATEGIC ARMS ACCORD
As secretary of state, Kissinger went with Ford in 1974 to Vladivostok in the Soviet Union, where the president met Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev and agreed to a basic framework for a strategic arms pact. The agreement capped Kissinger‘s pioneering efforts at detente that led to an easing of US-Soviet tensions.
But Kissinger‘s diplomatic skills had their limits. In 1975, he was blamed for failing to persuade Israel and Egypt to agree to a second-stage disengagement in the Sinai.
And in the India-Pakistan War of 1971, Nixon and Kissinger drew heavy criticism for tilting toward Pakistan. Kissinger was heard calling the Indians “bastards” — a remark he later said he regretted.
Like Nixon, he feared the spread of left-wing ideas in the Western hemisphere, and his actions in response led to deep distrust of Washington by many Latin Americans for years to come.
In 1970, he plotted with the CIA on how best to topple the Marxist, democratically elected Chilean President Salvador Allende, and in a memo after Argentina’s bloody coup in 1976 he said that the military dictators should be encouraged.
When Ford lost to Jimmy Carter, a Democrat, in 1976, Kissinger‘s days in government power were largely over. The next Republican in the White House, Ronald Reagan, distanced himself from Kissinger, viewing him as out of step with his conservative constituency.
After leaving government, Kissinger set up a high-priced, high-powered consulting firm in New York, which offered advice to the world’s corporate elite. He served on company boards and various foreign policy and security forums, wrote books, and became a regular media commentator on international affairs.
After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, President George W. Bush picked Kissinger to head an investigative committee. But outcry from Democrats who saw a conflict of interest with many of his consulting firm’s clients forced Kissinger to step down.
He remained active late in life, attending meetings in the White House, publishing a book on leadership, and testifying before a Senate committee about North Korea’s nuclear threat. In July 2023, he made a surprise visit to Beijing to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Divorced from his first wife, Ann Fleischer, in 1964, he married Nancy Maginnes, an aide to New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, in 1974. He had two children by his first wife.
Kissinger Associates Inc. said in the statement announcing his death that Kissinger would be interred at a private family service, to be followed at a later date by a public memorial service in New York City.
The post Henry Kissinger, First Jewish US Secretary of State Who Shaped Cold War Diplomacy, Dies Aged 100 first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Trump Says He Expects Gaza War to Reach ‘Conclusive Ending’ in 2-3 Weeks
US President Donald Trump speaks during a swearing-in ceremony of Special Envoy Steve Witkoff in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, DC, US, May 6, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Kent Nishimura
US President Donald Trump said on Monday he expects the ongoing war in Gaza to reach a “conclusive” end within the next two to three weeks, even as ceasefire negotiations between Israel and Hamas remain unresolved.
Speaking alongside South Korean President Lee Jae Myung at the White House, Trump told reporters he believed a resolution was close. “I think within the next two to three weeks, you’re going to have a pretty good, conclusive ending,” he said.
Trump also urged Americans not to forget the Hamas-led invasion of southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, the largest single-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust that started the war in Gaza.
“It has to end, but people can’t forget Oct. 7,” Trump said.
Palestinian terrorists led by Hamas murdered 1,200 people and kidnapped 251 hostages while perpetrating rampant sexual violence during their onslaught, which led Israel to wage a military campaign aimed at freeing those who were abducted and dismantling Hamas’s rule in neighboring Gaza.
The comments came as Israel continued to deliberate over a ceasefire proposal agreed to by Hamas last week. Though Israel has not given an official answer, Israeli Prime Minister Benjmain Netanyahu said he commenced negotiations to secure an end to the war and a return of the remaining hostages.
The proposal, brokered by the US, Egypt, and Qatar, calls for a 60-day truce during which Hamas would free 10 living hostages along with the deceased bodies of 18 others. In return, Israel would release significantly more Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails, allow more humanitarian aid into Gaza, and partially pull back its forces in Gaza.
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Cornell University Takes Cleaver to Budget Amid Trump Crackdown
Illustrative: Cornell’s anti-Israel divestment protests on May 25, 2024. Photo: USA Today Network via Reuters Connect.
Cornell University is taking a cleaver to its budget amid what it described as a “contraction” in government funding caused by the Trump administration’s impounding $1 billion previously awarded to it via research grants and federal contracts as punishment for its alleged nonresponse to campus antisemitism.
“Urgent action is necessary, both to reduce costs immediately and to correct our course over time — achieving an institutional structure that enables us to balance our budgets over the long term,” Cornell president Michael Kotlikoff wrote in a letter to the campus community. “Our work toward this goal will progress in several phases, beginning with immediate budget reductions already underway for the current fiscal year across our Ithaca, Cornell AgriTech, Weill Cornell Medicine, and Cornell Tech campuses.”
He continued, “Hiring on all campuses remains restricted indefinitely, with rare exceptions from campus-based position control committees.”
Cornell announced the cuts even as it inches closer toward a reported $100 million settlement with the federal government to restore the confiscated funds. It has already resorted to borrowing, having placed over $1 billion in bonds on the market since April — according to Bloomberg — and refused to publicly discuss the decision.
Cornell University has seen a series of disturbing antisemitic incidents since the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre perpetrated by Hamas across southern Israel.
Three weeks after the atrocities which ravaged Israeli communities, now-former student Patrick Dai threatened to commit heinous crimes against members of the school’s Jewish community, including mass murder and rape. He was later sentenced to 21 months in federal prison.
Cornell students also occupied an administrative building and held a “mock trial” in which they convicted then-school president Martha Pollack of complicity in “apartheid” and “genocide against Palestinian civilians.” Meanwhile, history professor Russell Rickford called Hamas’s barbarity on Oct. 7 “exhilarating” and “energizing” at a pro-Palestinian rally held on campus.
Cornell University and Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) sparred all of last academic year, with SJP pushing the limits of what constitutes appropriate conduct on campus. In September, school officials suspended over a dozen SJP affiliated students who disrupted a career fair, an action which saw them “physically” breach the area by “[pushing] police out of the way.” In February, the university amnestied some of the protesters, granting them “alternate resolutions” which terminated their suspensions, according to The Cornell Daily Sun.
In January, anti-Zionist agitators at Cornell kicked off the spring semester with an act of vandalism which attacked Israel as an “occupier” and practitioner of “apartheid.” The students drew a blistering response from Kotlikoff, who said that “acts of violence, extended occupations of buildings, or destruction of property (including graffiti), will not be tolerated and will be subject to immediate public safety response,” but the university has declined to say how it will deal with the matter since identifying at least one of the culprits in February.
Other elite colleges may soon face the same hard choices as Cornell.
Just last week, the US Department of Education began investigating Haverford College over alleged violations of civil rights laws stemming from inadequate responses to antisemitism.
“Like many other institutions of higher education, Haverford College is alleged to have ignored antisemitic harassment on its campus, contravening federal civil rights laws and its own anti-discrimination policies,” acting civil rights secretary Craig Trainor said in a statement. “The Trump administration will not allow Jewish life to be pushed into the shadows because college leaders are too craven to respond appropriately to unlawful antisemitic incidents on campus.”
Earlier this month, a coalition of leading Jewish civil rights groups called on the higher education establishment to prioritize fighting campus antisemitism during the upcoming academic year, citing an unrelenting wave of anti-Jewish hate that has swept the US in recent years.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), Jewish Federations of North America, Hillel International, and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations issued a joint statement, putting forth a policy framework that they say will quell antisemitism if applied sincerely and consistently. It included “enhanced communication and policy enforcement,” “dedicated administration oversight,” and “faculty accountability” — an issue of rising importance given the number of faculty accused of inciting discrimination.
“These recommendations aren’t just suggestions; they’re essential steps universities need to take to ensure Jewish students can learn without fear,” ADL chief executive officer Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement. “Jewish students are being forced to hide who they are, and that’s unacceptable — we need more administrators to step up.”
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, colleges campus across the US erupted with effusions of antisemitic activity following the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, an uprising which included calling for the destruction of Israel, cheering Hamas’s sexual assaulting of women as an instrument of war, and dozens of incidents of assault and harassment targeting Jewish students, faculty, and activists.
At the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), anti-Zionist protesters chanted “Itbah El Yahud” at Bruin Plaza, which means “slaughter the Jews” in Arabic. At Columbia University, Jews were gang-assaulted, a student proclaimed that Zionist Jews deserve to be murdered and are lucky he is not doing so himself, and administrative officials, outraged at the notion that Jews organized to resist anti-Zionism, participated in a group chat in which each member took turns sharing antisemitic tropes that described Jews as privileged and grafting. At Harvard University, an October 2023 anti-Israel demonstration degenerated into chaos when Ibrahim Bharmal, former editor of the prestigious Harvard Law Review, and Elom Tettey-Tamaklo encircled a Jewish student with a mob that screamed “Shame! Shame! Shame!” at him while he desperately attempted to free himself from the mass of bodies.
More recently, Eden Deckerhoff — a female student at Florida State University — allegedly assaulted a Jewish male classmate at the Leach Student Recreation Center after noticing his wearing apparel issued by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
“F—k Israel, Free Palestine. Put it [the video] on Barstool FSU. I really don’t give a f—k,” the woman said before shoving the man, according to video taken by the victim. “You’re an ignorant son of a b—h.” Deckerhoff has since been charged with misdemeanor battery.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Trump Admin Reviewing Visa Applications of ‘Terrorist Sympathizers’ Set to Appear at Pro-Palestinian Conference
Marco Rubio speaks after he is sworn in as Secretary of State by US Vice President JD Vance at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington, DC, Jan. 21, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
The US State Department is actively reviewing the records of foreign speakers at the upcoming People’s Conference for Palestine in Detroit for potential ties to terrorism, The Algemeiner has learned.
A spokesperson for the State Department told The Algemeiner that officials have “noted” the conference, which is set to take place from Aug 29-31, and will also watch out for visa applications for invited international speakers, citing a preponderance of “terrorist sympathizers” on the program’s lineup.
“Given the public invite lists seems to include a number of terrorist sympathizers, we are going through and ensuring all international speakers slated to attend the conference are being placed on a ‘look out’ status for visa applications, so we are alerted if a request is submitted and can ensure they are appropriately processed,” the spokesperson said.
“In every case, we will take the time necessary to ensure an applicant does not pose a risk to the safety and security of the United States and that he or she has credibly established his or her eligibility for the visa sought, including that the applicant intends to engage in activities consistent with the terms of admission,” the spokesperson added.
The People’s Conference for Palestine will feature dozens of anti-Zionist activists, academics, artists, and political organizers, including US Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI).
Tlaib’s appearance at last year’s iteration of the conference sparked intense backlash, with critics pointing out the event’s connections to Wisam Rafeedie and Salah Salah, members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), an internationally designated terrorist organization.
The conference is convened by a coalition that includes the Palestinian Youth Movement, Al-Awda: The Palestine Right to Return Coalition, and the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, among others. Several of these groups have maintained ties with PFLP, openly supported boycott efforts against Israel, and called for an arms embargo in the wake of Israel’s military campaign against Hamas in Gaza. The programming highlights sessions on “Documenting Genocide” and “Breaking the Siege,” rhetoric that critics argue mischaracterizes Israel’s actions as it seeks to defend itself against terrorist attacks following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel.
The Detroit gathering is expected to attract thousands of attendees, with dozens of speakers and activists scheduled to participate. Among the roster are well-known anti-Israel figures such as Linda Sarsour, Miko Peled, and Chris Smalls.
The planned presence of several alleged “foreign terror sympathizers” has sparked outrage among observers.
Abed Abubaker, a self-described “reporter” from Gaza, is expected to make a physical appearance at the Detroit conference later this month. Abubaker has repeatedly praised the Hamas terrorist group as “resistance fighters” on social media and won a “journalist of the year” award from Iran’s state-controlled media outlet PressTV. In a January 2025 social media post, he showered praise on long-time Hamas leader and Oct. 7 mastermind Yahya Sinwar, saying that the terrorist’s “love of resistance and land is seen very clearly.” In a March 2025 post, Abubaker argued that international supporters of the Palestinian cause should “attack your governments.” He also defended Hamas’s murdering of dissidents, saying that the victims were “collaborating” with Israel.
Since returning to the White House earlier this year, the Trump administration has launched a major overhaul of the US visa system, part of what officials have described as an effort to root out individuals sympathetic to terrorism or those espousing antisemitic views. The sweeping measures include expanded social media vetting for new applicants, continuous monitoring of the 55 million current visa holders, and the revocation of thousands of student visas.
The Trump administration’s sweeping visa crackdown has ensnared high-profile foreign academics and students, fueling outrage among pro-Palestinian activists. Rasha Alawieh, a Lebanese professor at Brown University, was deported after officials flagged content on her phone as sympathetic to Hezbollah, a US-designated terrorist group. Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate and green-card holder, was arrested and assigned criminal charges for alleged ties to Hamas before he was released. At Tufts University, Turkish student Rümeysa Öztürk was detained after co-authoring an opinion piece on Gaza.