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Henry Kissinger, influential first Jewish secretary of state, dies at 100
(JTA) — Henry Kissinger, the first Jewish secretary of state and the controversial mastermind of American foreign policy in the 1970s — orchestrating the U.S. opening to China, negotiating the end of the conflict in Vietnam and helping ease tensions with the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War — has died.
Kissinger died at his home in Connecticut on Wednesday at 100, according to a statement posted to his website. He had celebrated his 100th birthday in June with a party at the New York Public Library featuring luminaries from throughout his long career in politics and public affairs, including his current successor, Jewish Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
Regarded as a brilliant diplomatic strategist, Kissinger was one of the most influential Jewish figures of the 20th century, leaving an enduring imprint on global politics as secretary of state and national security advisor to two U.S. presidents and as an informal advisor to several others.
With his rumbling German accent, iconic black glasses and legendary charm, he was also a socialite and an unlikely 70s-era sex symbol, dating a string of movie stars and famously quipping that power is “the ultimate aphrodisiac.”
Despite fleeing his native Germany as the Nazis rose to power in the 1930s and losing several members of his family in the Holocaust, Kissinger evinced little sentimental attachment to Jewish interests, telling a friend in the 1970s that Judaism “has no significance for me,” according to Walter Isaacson’s 1992 biography.
The negation of Kissinger’s Jewish identification may have been necessary for a man who rose higher in the executive branch than any Jew before him, and did so under a president, Richard Nixon, known to harbor deep anti-Jewish animus. Others saw it as emblematic of Kissinger’s Machiavellian streak and embrace of realpolitik, the hard-nosed approach to diplomacy that eschews moral concerns in favor of raw assessments of national interests.
After Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir pressed Nixon in 1973 to address the plight of Soviet Jews, Kissinger issued a blunt dismissal.
“The emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union is not an objective of American foreign policy,” Kissinger said, according to Oval Office recordings. “And if they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern.”
After the recordings were released in 2010, Kissinger apologized for the gas chamber remark in a Washington Post op-ed but maintained his critics were taking it out of context. Kissinger went on to claim credit for the 100,000 Soviet Jews who emigrated thanks to Nixon’s “quiet diplomacy.”
Other elements of Kissinger’s record similarly suggest a more nuanced verdict on his approach to Jewish concerns. At the height of the Yom Kippur War in 1973, Nixon ordered an emergency airlift of resupplies to a struggling Israeli military, and memos from the period show Kissinger pushing back against the Pentagon’s reluctance to carry it out.
Later, Kissinger’s efforts to end the war gave birth to the term “shuttle diplomacy.”
Two years later, as Kissinger grew increasingly frustrated with Israeli intransigence in withdrawing from areas of the Sinai conquered in the 1967 war, he pushed Ford to conduct a “reassessment” of relations with Israel. That precipitated a deep crisis between the White House and the Israeli government, but it ultimately yielded an Israeli-Egyptian agreement to resolve outstanding disputes peacefully, which in turned paved the way for the peace treaty that followed four years later.
“There’s no way you could tell the story of Camp David and the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty without mentioning Kissinger and the 1973 shuttle diplomacy,” said historian Gil Troy. “If you want to buy into the tough love rather than the love-love approach to U.S.-Israeli relations, the best example would be the March 1975 reassessment.”
Troy also records a less glowing incident about Kissinger in his 2013 book “Moynihan’s Moment.” As the U.S. Ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan waged a very public battle against the Zionism is racism resolution at the United Nations, Kissinger pushed back hard, fearing it would undermine his efforts to ease tensions with the Soviet Union, at one point grumbling, “We are conducting foreign policy. … This is not a synagogue.”
Nixon loved to rib Kissinger about his Jewish origins and his accent. The president later recalled that he told Meir they both had Jewish foreign ministers, referring to Kissinger and Abba Eban. “Yes, but mine speaks English,” Meir rejoined, to Nixon’s great amusement.
After leaving office, Kissinger appeared to shed some of his reluctance to be perceived as Israel’s champion, stating in a 1977 speech that, “The security of Israel is a moral imperative for all free peoples.” In the decades that followed, he publicly defended Israeli interests, arguing that the absence of Mideast peace was the product of Arab intransigence and expressing skepticism of efforts to conclude a nuclear deal with Iran.
That in turn helped secure his embrace by the Jewish mainstream. In 2012, he received Israel’s highest civilian honor from President Shimon Peres for his “significant contribution to the State of Israel and to humanity.” In 2014, he received the Theodor Herzl Award from the World Jewish Congress. At the award presentation, WJC President Ronald Lauder recalled Kissinger telling Meir that he was an American first, secretary of state second and a Jew third. According to Lauder, Meir responded that was fine since Israelis read from right to left.
“He was very insecure,” said Troy. “The trauma of being a survivor, and the trauma of being an immigrant, of being an outsider. The 1970s was not a very Jewish decade. It was strange to have Jews in power, and strange to have Jews in Republican circles of power. Given his own ambivalence, and given the hostile environment that he was in, it’s not surprising that he would be pretty screwy on the Jewish question.”
Kissinger’s legacy remained deeply polarizing decades after he left public office. Despite winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973 for his work ending the Vietnam War — a deeply controversial choice at the time — many regard Kissinger as a war criminal, responsible for the deaths of thousands of civilians in the U.S. bombing of Cambodia and myriad other human rights violations in Argentina, East Timor and elsewhere. His role in directing the controversial war in Vietnam dogged him for decades.
After he left office in 1977, hundreds of students and faculty opposed Columbia University’s decision to offer Kissinger an endowed chair, with one student demonstrator likening it to asking Charles Manson to teach religion. The author Christopher Hitchens called for Kissinger’s indictment in a 2001 book, “The Trial of Henry Kissinger,” which was later made into a film. On a 2001 trip to Paris, a French judge sought unsuccessfully to get Kissinger to testify in connection with the 1973 disappearance of five French nationals during the reign of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.
Kissinger tried mightily to shape the public narrative of his years in office, penning multiple memoirs totaling thousands of pages. But even in his 90s, he could barely appear in public without inviting protests.
In 2015, protestors disrupted a Senate hearing where Kissinger was testifying with chants that he should be arrested. And in 2016, Kissinger’s address to the Nobel Institute’s Peace Forum in Oslo was met with protests and a petition with 7,000 signatures demanding his arrest for violations of the Geneva Conventions.
Heinz Alfred Kissinger was born in Bavaria, Germany in 1923. His father Louis was a schoolteacher and his mother Paula a homemaker. In 1938, the family fled the Nazis for London and later New York, where they settled in a German Jewish immigrant community in Washington Heights. Kissinger studied accounting at City College before being drafted into the army in 1943, serving as an intelligence officer and seeing combat in the Battle of the Bulge.
After the army, Kissinger enrolled at Harvard University, where he earned his bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees in political science. As a faculty member in the university’s government department, Kissinger served as an advisor to multiple government agencies.
In 1969, Kissinger was sworn in as Nixon’s national security advisor. He became secretary of state in 1973 and continued to hold both positions following Nixon’s resignation and Gerald Ford’s assumption of the presidency.
As the chief architect of U.S. foreign policy during the period, Kissinger pioneered the policy of detente, helping to defuse tensions with the Soviet Union and paving the way for Nixon’s groundbreaking 1972 summit with Chinese leader Mao Zedong and the resumption of relations between the two nations, eventually leading to the full normalization of ties in 1979.
In Vietnam, Kissinger and Nixon attempted to wind down the conflict by withdrawing American troops and supporting the South Vietnamese Army in its efforts to repel Communist forces. In support of that effort, Kissinger helped orchestrate a secret bombing campaign in Cambodia against Vietnamese Communist forces based there, killing tens of thousands.
Kissinger left office with Jimmy Carter’s election in 1976, but scarcely faded from view. He remained a fixture of the Washington scene, teaching at Georgetown, consulting for New York financial firms and delivering high-priced corporate lectures.
In 1982, he founded Kissinger Associates, a secretive New York consulting firm that has advised major multinational corporations. Kissinger backed out of his appointment by President George W. Bush as chairman of the commission investigating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks after Congress requested that he disclose his client list.
Kissinger was a recipient of the 1977 Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 1980, he won a National Book Award for the first volume of his memoirs, “The White House Years.” In 1995, he received an honorary knighthood from Queen Elizabeth. He was also the first person to be named an honorary member of the Harlem Globetrotters basketball team.
Kissinger is survived by his wife, Nancy Maginnes; two children from his first marriage to Ann Fleischer, whom he divorced in 1964; and five grandchildren.
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Documents Reveal Hamas Uses Gaza Hospitals for Military Purposes, International NGOs Complicit in Operations
Israeli soldiers inspect the Al Shifa hospital complex, amid their ground operation against Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, in Gaza City, Nov. 15, 2023 in this handout image. Photo: Israel Defense Forces/Handout via REUTERS
Internal documents from Hamas’s Ministry of Interior and National Security dating back to 2020 reveal the Palestinian terrorist group has long used Gaza’s medical facilities for military purposes, according to a new report.
On Wednesday, NGO Monitor — an independent, Jerusalem-based research institute that tracks anti-Israel bias among nongovernmental organizations — released two documents declassified by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), revealing how Hamas has weaponized Gaza’s hospitals for years to shelter its operatives and leaders.
Translated from Arabic, the documents also reveal that international organizations — including the Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders — are aware of Hamas’s presence in Gaza’s medical facilities, even as they publicly deny or downplay it.
“While repeatedly echoing Hamas allegations and condemning Israel’s operations to end the exploitation of hospitals for terror, these groups clearly knew that Hamas exploited these facilities and chose to remain silent,” Gerald Steinberg, president of NGO Monitor, said in a statement.
BREAKING: Leaked docs show Hamas admits to using Gaza hospitals as terror infrastructure, in files authored by its Interior Security Mechanism and obtained by NGO Monitor. Hospitals served as command hubs while NGOs went along under Hamas rules.
Here’s what they reveal
pic.twitter.com/HXI6hULYTG
— NGO Monitor (@NGOmonitor) September 10, 2025
Since the start of the war in Gaza, Hamas’s exploitation of hospitals has drawn heightened attention, with Israel facing international criticism for its operations near medical facilities as it seeks to crack down on the terrorist group.
According to NGO Monitor, the internal Hamas documents show a deliberate strategy of “embedding its military infrastructure, fighters, and leadership within hospitals and medical facilities in Gaza … thereby violating international law and endangering civilian lives.”
The documents also show that foreign NGOs have not only been aware of Hamas’s presence in Gaza’s medical facilities but also have sometimes worked alongside them.
For example, one internal memo notes that the Red Cross occupied a wing in the Al-Shifa medical complex directly adjacent to offices used by Hamas.
Despite international claims to the contrary, the documents show that the Palestinian terrorist group views medical facilities not as neutral spaces but as integral parts of its infrastructure.
“These facilities are considered to be of interest to hostile security parties and an important source for intelligence gathering, especially in times of war, since these health facilities are a place of gathering for the wounded during times of escalation, and these wounded cases hold sensitive positions in the resistance,” one of the internal memos reads.
“Furthermore, these health facilities are a place of gathering for numerous leaders of the movement and the government during times of escalation,” it continues.
The documents also reveal how Hamas closely monitors and controls foreign NGOs working in hospitals due to fears that they might serve as channels for Israeli intelligence.
“Do not let these associations have their own locations to work inside health facilities. When a location is allocated for these associations, it shall be outside the main building of the clinic or hospital, and far away from movement locations, and following security authorization,” one of the internal memos reads.
“Medical members from the Gaza Strip must join incoming delegations, whether the delegations work in hospitals or their own locations,” it adds.
Under this structured oversight, NGO Monitor explains that foreign organizations had to operate according to Hamas’s rules, “making them complicit in a system” that exploits medical centers for terrorist purposes.
“The internal Hamas documents reviewed in this report expose a systematic Hamas strategy to militarize Gaza’s health-care system, using hospitals and medical facilities as extensions of its military and security apparatus,” NGO Monitor says.
“This arrangement is fundamentally inconsistent with the principle of medical neutrality in Gaza, transforming humanitarian spaces into dual-use facilities that serve both medical and military purposes,” it continues.
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Mamdani Maintains Comfortable Lead in New York City Mayoral Race, Despite Jewish Opposition
Candidate Zohran Mamdani speaks during a Democratic New York City mayoral primary debate, June 4, 2025, in New York, US. Photo: Yuki Iwamura/Pool via REUTERS
Zohran Mamdani maintains a substantial lead in New York City’s mayoral contest, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released on Tuesday, as discontent with City Hall continues to rattle the electorate.
The survey of likely voters found Mamdani, a democratic socialist from Queens, taking 45 percent in a four-way matchup, well ahead of former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo at 23 percent, Republican activist Curtis Sliwa at 15 percent, and embattled incumbent Eric Adams at just 12 percent.
If Adams were to exit the race, Mamdani’s margin would narrow, with 46 percent support compared to Cuomo’s 30 percent. Sliwa would hold 17 percent of the electorate.
The poll underscores Adams’s strong standing among certain demographics, particularly Jewish voters, who make up a crucial bloc in several boroughs. Among Jewish voters, Adams receives 42 percent support, while Mamdani and Cuomo are tied at 21 percent each. Moreover, 75 percent of Jewish voters view Mamdani unfavorably, according to the poll, highlighting a key vulnerability for the progressive candidate.
The results came days after another poll showed similar results.
Mamdani holds a commanding 22-point advantage over his chief rival in the mayoral race, Cuomo, 46 percent to 24 percent, according to the poll by the New York Times and Siena College. Sliwa polled at 15 percent, and incumbent Adams polled at 9 percent among likely New York City voters.
Perhaps most striking, the survey found that Mamdani would still beat Cuomo in November’s election, 48 percent to 44 percent, if the other candidates dropped out and it was a one-on-one matchup.
Adams and Cuomo are both running as independents.
A little-known politician before this year’s Democratic primary campaign, Mamdani is an outspoken supporter of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement, which seeks to isolate Israel from the international community as a step toward its eventual elimination.
Mamdani has also repeatedly refused to recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, falsely suggesting the country does not offer “equal rights” for all its citizens, and promised to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he visits New York.
Mamdani also initially defended the phrase “globalize the intifada”— which references previous periods of sustained Palestinian terrorism against Jews and Israels and has been widely interpreted as a call to expand political violence — by invoking the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising during World War II. However, Mamdani has since backpedaled on his support for the phrase, saying that he would discourage his supporters from using the slogan.
Mamdani’s overall strength appears to rest not only on name recognition among progressives but also on enthusiasm. Approximately 91 percent of his supporters say they’re enthusiastic about their choice, far outpacing backers of other candidates, the Quinnipiac data found. Cuomo, despite his experience and political legacy, is hurt by a 56 percent unfavorable rating.
Voters rank crime — 30 percent — and affordable housing — 21 percent — as the most pressing concerns, with inflation a distant third.
Moreover, Mamdani’s adversarial and combative rhetoric aimed at President Donald Trump seems to help him in the race.
“The name not on the ballot but seen having influence on this race is President Trump. And likely voters in New York City make it clear they want the next occupant of Gracie Mansion to stand up to Trump when it comes to issues inside New York City,” said Quinnipiac University Poll Assistant Director Mary Snow.
The findings paint a picture of a fractured electorate, with Mamdani consolidating left-leaning voters while Adams maintains strongholds among more moderate constituencies, including Jewish neighborhoods, and Cuomo tries to galvanize support among voters as various scandals loom over his campaign. Sliwa remains in the mid-teens but could play spoiler if the race tightens.
Mamdani has also sought to distance himself from some of the most radical policies he previously advocated for, such as defunding the police. Mamdani’s attempt to strike a more moderate tone seems to be paying dividends thus far. Rep. Pat Ryan (D-NY), a Democrat from a swing district, endorsed Mamdani on Wednesday.
“@ZohranKMamdani fights for the PEOPLE. Andrew Cuomo is a selfish POS who only fights for himself and other corrupt elites. I know whose side I’m on. I’m with the people. I’m with Zohran,” Ryan posted on social media.
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‘Pro-Hamas Terror Ties’: US Sen. Tom Cotton Warns of CAIR’s Push Into Philadelphia Schools
CAIR officials give press conference on the Israel-Hamas war. Photo: Kyle Mazza / SOPA Images/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
US Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) has warned in a letter to the Department of Education that the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a nonprofit advocacy group long accused of having ties to terrorist organizations including Hamas, is seeking to infiltrate the city of Philadelphia’s public education system.
The letter was dated Tuesday, about two weeks after the Philadelphia chapter of CAIR announced that it was partnering with local schools.
“CAIR-Philadelphia is partnering with schools this year to make sure every student feels seen, safe, and supported,” the group said in an Instagram post. “Invite the CAIR Philly staff for a training to educators and staff on cultural competency, anti-bullying, and inclusive practices.”
“The CAIR Philadelphia staff works not only with staff and administration, but also directly with students!” the post continued. “We can visit classrooms as guest facilitators to lead student-centered discussions.”
Given CAIR’s controversial history, the federal government should act to prevent such a program from becoming reality, according to Cotton.
“It is well documented that CAIR has deep ties to pro-Hamas terrorist organizations and publicly supports Hamas’s terrorist activities,” Cotton wrote in the letter to US Education Secretary Linda McMahon. “As I noted in a previous letter, the Department of Justice listed CAIR as a member of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee in the largest terrorism-financing case in US history. Further, CAIR-Philadelphia’s executive director, Ahmet Selim Tekelioglu, stated that Israeli ‘occupation’ was the reason for the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack by Hamas in Israel.”
Cotton’s letter cited materials which CAIR distributes across the city and promotes in its programming — notably its “American Jews and Political Power” course — and other attempts to revise the history of Sharia law, which severely restricts the rights of women and is opposed to other core features of liberal societies.
One of CAIR’s most controversial documents demands that teachers omit key facts about the 9/11 terrorist attacks which, in addition to destroying the World Trade Centers and severely damaging the Pentagon, claimed the lives of nearly 3,000 Americans.
“Avoid using language that validates the claims of the 9/11 attackers by associating their acts of mass murder with Islam and Muslims,” CAIR insists in the material. “For example, avoid using inaccurate and inflammatory terms such as ‘Islamic terrorists,’ ‘jihadists,’ or ‘radical Islamic terrorists.’”
Additionally, since the Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel, CAIR-Philadelphia has lobbied the state government to enact anti-Israel policies and accused Gov. Josh Shapiro of ignoring the plight of Palestinians.
In a 2023 speech following Hamas’s Oct. 7 atrocities, CAIR’s national executive director, Nihad Awad, said he was “happy to see” Palestinians “breaking the siege and throwing down the shackles of their own land.”
According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), “some of CAIR’s current leadership had early connections with organizations that are or were affiliated with Hamas.” CAIR has disputed the accuracy of the ADL’s claim, despite government trial exhibits indicating its founders participated in meetings with Hamas supporters in Philadelphia. The organization has asserted that it “unequivocally condemn[s] all acts of terrorism, whether carried out by al-Qa’ida, the Real IRA, FARC, Hamas, ETA, or any other group designated by the US Department of State as a ‘Foreign Terrorist Organization.’”
“Such an organization should never have access to our nation’s children,” Cotton wrote in his letter, urging the Education Department to “ensure” that CAIR is not able to push its ideology on American schoolchildren.
“Sen. Cotton’s comments bring much needed scrutiny to the alarming trend of unchecked outside groups influencing public school curricula. CAIR, with their ties to Hamas, should have no involvement with the Philadelphia School District,” said Steve Rosenberg, Philadelphia Regional Director for the North American Values Institute (NAVI). “This raises serious concerns about balance, transparency, and educational integrity, not to mention basic decision making. Parents and taxpayers deserve assurance that their children aren’t being exposed to ideologically driven lessons — especially from groups with dangerous political affiliations.”
CAIR’s pushing into K-12 education comes at a time of rising antisemitism in public schools.
In August, for example, the Education Department promptly opened an investigation into allegations of antisemitism in Baltimore City Public Schools (BCPS) following the Anti-Defamation League’s (ADL) filing a complaint regarding the matter.
Jewish students allegedly experienced relentless bullying in BCPS, where students pantomimed Nazi salutes, treated campuses as a canvas for Nazi-inspired and antisemitic graffiti, and sent text messages threatening that the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas will be summoned to kill Jewish students the bullies do not like, the ADL complaint said, noting that teachers behaved even worse than students. At Bard High School, an English teacher allegedly performed the Nazi salute three times and later admitted to administrative officials that he did so intentionally to harm “the sole Jewish student” enrolled in his class. Following the incident, he suggested that the student unregister for his class because the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would be discussed in it.
“The allegations that Baltimore City Public Schools tolerate virulent Nazi-inspired antisemitic harassment of its Jewish students is at once appalling and infuriating. When a teacher allegedly directs a Nazi salute toward a Jewish student, or non-Jewish students harass their Jewish contemporaries by saying ‘all Jews should die,’ we are not simply talking about contemptible bullying; we are talking about a shocking abdication of educator responsibility that constitutes unlawful antisemitic harassment under Title VI,” Craig Trainor, acting assistant secretary for civil rights, said in a statement announcing the lawsuit.
Last month, The Algemeiner reported that the Santa Clara Unified School District (SCUSD) in California, which stands accused of refusing to address antisemitism, ruled that a teacher who allegedly showed her students antisemitic, discriminatory, and biased content violated policy when she screened an offensive video about the Holocaust in her classroom.
The move came without the prompting of the US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, with which two Jewish civil rights groups, StandWithUs (SWU) and the Bay Area Jewish Coalition (BAJC), filed a complaint against the district in April.
Among other things, SWU and BAJC alleged that an SCUSD employee, Wilcox High School teacher Kauser Adenwala, screened a documentary produced in Turkey which compared the war in Gaza to the Holocaust. The graphic film at one point “displays a picture of a young Jewish child who was branded with a number by the Nazis during World War II and then suddenly shows an untraceable image of children with Arabic writing on their arms,” according to the complaint, which alleged the teacher’s conduct violated numerous district policies and potentially state law.
She remains employed by the district to this day.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.