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Jewish Life Stories: The Nobelist who confirmed the Big Bang, the ‘Bagel Queen’ of Atlanta

This article is also available as a weekly newsletter, “Life Stories,” where we remember those who made an outsize impact in the Jewish world — or just left their community a better or more interesting place. Subscribe here to get “Life Stories” in your inbox every Tuesday.

Arno Allan Penzias, 90, the Nobelist who confirmed the Big Bang

Arno Allan Penzias, a child survivor of the Holocaust who shared the 1978 Nobel Prize in physics for discoveries that would confirm the Big Bang theory, died Jan. 21 in San Francisco. He was 90.

In 1964, he and a colleague at Bell Labs, Robert Wilson, were trouble-shooting a radio telescope in Holmdel, New Jersey when they noticed an unexplained hiss. They would later determine it was a “cosmic echo” of the incendiary event that gave birth to the universe 13.7 billion years ago.

“The interference you see on an analogue television screen as you try to tune in to channels might seem an unlikely form of time travel, but within this static hiss lies a glimpse of the first moments of the universe,” the Nobel Foundation explains on its website. “Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson’s fortuitous discovery of a form of radio noise that bathes the cosmos provided a crucial piece of evidence for how the universe was created.”

Penzias was born in Munich to parents who had immigrated to Germany from Poland. In 1938 his family was placed on a train with other Jews of Polish origin for deportation to Poland. The Polish authorities refused to admit them and the train was turned back at the border. In 1939, Penzias, 6, and his brother Gunther, 5, were sent to London for safety as part of the Kindertransport rescue effort. They were reunited with their parents in 1940 and managed to secure passage to the United States.

The Holmdel horn antenna at Bell Telephone Laboratories in Holmdel, New Jersey. In 1964, radio astronomers Robert Wilson and Arno Penzias discovered the cosmic microwave background radiation with it, for which they were awarded the 1978 Nobel prize in physics. (NASA/Wikipedia)

Penzias grew up in the Bronx where he attended public schools and later City College of New York. After serving in the U.S. Army Signal Corps he received a doctorate in physics from Columbia University and joined Bell in 1963. In 1954 he married Anna Barras, a student at Hunter College who, according to his daughter, Rabbi L. Shifra Weiss-Penzias of Temple Beth El in Aptos, California, came from eight generations of rabbis.

Penzias and Wilson’s initial attempts to locate the source of the mysterious “hiss” included a theory that it was ambient radiation from pigeon droppings inside the telescope. Their search even inspired a bit of pop culture: In a 2015 episode of the Comedy Central series “Drunk History,” Jewish comedian Jenny Slate narrates a ribald version of their discovery. Actor Justin Long portrayed Penzias.

In 1992, Penzias arranged for the donation of parts of the telescope, known as the “Holmdel Horn,” to a museum in Munich. (The device itself  is a National Historic Landmark.) “It was very important to my father to remind [the Germans] what they lost,” Weiss-Penzias told the Boston Globe. “He wanted his work to be a living reminder of the refugees who left and the people who died.”

Carol Lee Meyer Carola, 68, the “Bagel Queen” of Atlanta

Bagel shop owner Carol Lee Meyer Carola appeared on the cover of the Atlanta Jewish Times wellness supplement in 2021. (Atlanta Jewish Times)

For over 30 years, the Bagelicious bagel shop in East Cobb, Georgia, has been a mainstay of the Atlanta Jewish community, known for catering simchas at area synagogues. In recent years the community rallied around co-owner Carol Lee Meyer Carola in her fight to save the shop during the pandemic and in her own battle with breast cancer, which was first diagnosed in 2013. Friends and customers walked in Team Boobuleh’s A Breast Cancer Schmear campaign in support of Georgia’s annual 2-day Walk for Breast Cancer. “It’s not going to get to me. It will not get me,” the “Bagel Queen” told the Atlanta Jewish Times in 2021. “I have a business to run and people who depend on me. I can’t give up.” The Queens, New York native died from cancer on Jan. 28. She was 68. “She knew every customer by name, including their children and grandchildren,” according to a family obituary. “Despite the demands of the business, her husband Tommy, their children, and their grandchildren were the center of her world.”

Berish Strauch, 90, a pioneering plastic surgeon

Berish Strauch was the chief of reconstructive surgery at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx. (American Society of Plastic Surgeons)

Berish Strauch grew up watching his father, a tailor, and his mother, a hatmaker, wielding knives and scissors in their jobs. Their dexterity inspired him to become a surgeon, and after earning his degree at Columbia University’s medical school he became one of the most influential plastic surgeons of the past 50 years. He pioneered the toe-to-thumb transplantation technique, patented the “Strauch clamp” to restore male fertility post-vasectomy and developed the first inflatable prosthetic penis. The chair of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx from 1987 until 2007, he died Dec. 24, 2023, at the age of 90. His wife of 68 years, Rena Strauch, a former teacher and a stalwart at Beth El Synagogue Center in New Rochelle, New York, predeceased him by six weeks.

Michael S. Berman, 84, a consummate Washington insider 

Michael Berman, a longtime Democratic politico and lobbyist, seen at the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles, August 2000. (Gary Friedman/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

Michael S. Berman, 84, an old-school Washington political operative and lobbyist who served as deputy chief of staff and counsel to Vice President Walter Mondale, died Jan. 12. A consummate insider who programmed Democratic National Conventions for decades, he helped prep future Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg for her Senate confirmation hearings. He and Kenneth M. Duberstein, President Ronald Reagan’s last chief of staff, formed a lobbying firm that worked both sides of the aisle. When he was a kid growing up in Duluth, Minnesota, Berman’s parents became godparents of another Minnesota Jewish boy, Bob Zimmerman, who later changed his last name to Dylan.

Howard Golden, 98, Brooklyn borough president who helped Crown Heights heal

Howard Golden, Brooklyn’s borough president from 1977 to 2001, seen in 1996. (Kenneth C. Zirkel, Wikipedia)

Howard Golden, whose 24-year tenure as Brooklyn borough president overlapped with what became known as the Crown Heights Riots, died Jan. 24. He was 98. For three days in August 1991, Black residents of the neighborhood attacked members of its largely Hasidic Jewish community after a car in the motorcade of the Lubavitcher Rebbe struck and killed a Black child. Within days of the unrest, Golden created what became known as the Crown Heights Coalition, an intergroup forum that met in his office for the following 10 years to keep the peace. “There are some 90 languages spoken in this borough,” the former City Council member and son of a deli owner told the Jewish Press. “Brooklyn is an amazing mosaic.”

Joel Lind, 68, a “mainstay of Cincinnati community theater”

Joel Lind of Cincinnati acted in local theater and did audience research for new and traditional media properties. (Courtesy)

Joel Lind, who ran a media research firm in the Cincinnati area, died Jan. 24 at age 68. His personality comes through in a family obituary:

A lifelong New Yorker in spirit and Yankees fan — memorably described in youth as “fuzzy in an intelligent sort of way, and intelligent in a fuzzy sort of way” — Joel was raised in New Rochelle, NY. He attended the University of Rochester as an undergraduate and Columbia Law School, but left a Manhattan entertainment-law career behind to return to his true calling in radio. Joel spent 20 years as the perceptual-research guru behind the “Mental Weaponry” division at Critical Mass Media, where his presentations blended quantitative analysis, the art of the monologue, and obscure lyrical references. 

Joel taught a generation of Congregation Beth Adam Sunday-school students a Humanistic reading of Torah stories, under his “nom de chalk” Mr. Bozo. In his later life, Joel was a mainstay of Cincinnati community theater, and especially of his home group, Mason Community Players — a community whose care and generosity he described as boundless.

Joel’s last days were spent peacefully at Hospice of Cincinnati in Blue Ash, a decision he undertook, along with his children, after months of debilitating illness. He was gratified to learn that he outlived Ron DeSantis’ presidential campaign.


The post Jewish Life Stories: The Nobelist who confirmed the Big Bang, the ‘Bagel Queen’ of Atlanta appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

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Brooklyn Woman Denied Bail, Claims She Didn’t Kill Anyone in Car Crash That Killed Jewish Mother, Two Daughters

An overturned auto in a car crash flipped on its roof landing on a mother and her three children, killing two children on March 29, 2025, in Brooklyn, New York. Photo: ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect

A Brooklyn woman denied killing anyone when she appeared in court on Thursday, less than a week after a Jewish woman and her two daughters died when she crashed her car into them at a crosswalk.

Miriam Yarimi, 32, appeared in Brooklyn Criminal Court via a video stream from her room in NYU Langone Hospital-Brooklyn, according to the New York Daily News. She is undergoing a psychological evaluation at the hospital following Saturday’s deadly car crash.

After the crash, Yarimi told first responders she was “possessed” and believed the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was following her. She has made similar claims about being pursued by the CIA on social media several times in the past, The Algemeiner previously reported.

Yamini, who is also Jewish, faces a slew of charges that include three counts of second-degree manslaughter, three counts of criminal negligent homicide, and four counts of second-degree assault.

“The devil is in my eyes. I am haunted inside. I didn’t kill anyone. I didn’t hurt anyone. Prove it. Show me the proof. You have no proof,” Yarimi said in a statement after Saturday’s crash, according to Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Nocella. “I need CT scans in my eyes. I need to get the scanning done now … Where’s my daughter? My daughter’s always in my heart.”

“People are out to get me,” added the single mother. “I need CT scans on my entire body. F— you. I need a whole work up to get whatever is in my body out of it. I did not hurt anyone. All the evidence is on my phone.”

Nocella called Yamini a flight risk and asked the judge that she be held without bail due to the “nature and severity” of the allegations, as reported by the Daily News. Judge Jevet Johnson agreed with Nocella and ordered Yamini to be held without bail. Nocella said prosecutors are prepared to present grand jury indictment on the manslaughter charges.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams said his administration is “committed” to taking more action to prevent traffic violence and deaths following the fatal car crash that killed Natasha Saada, 35, along with her daughters Diana, 8, and Deborah, 5. Saada’s 4-year-old son Philip was injured in the crash and is still being hospitalized in critical condition.

Adams’ office announced on Wednesday that there were 41 traffic deaths during the first three months of 2025 — 24 fewer than last year and the second fewest since they started being recorded by the city. Despite the decline in traffic deaths, Adams admitted that more work needs to be done to keep New Yorkers safe on the streets, as evident by Saturday’s deadly car crash.

“In order to make New York City the best place to raise a family, we need to be safer at every level — including on our streets,” he said in a released statement on Wednesday. “Our administration’s investments in intersection safety improvements, treating traffic violence as the serious crime that it is, and our expanding automated camera enforcement are all helping ensure we’re leading the way toward a safer future for all New Yorkers — whether they are pedestrians, cyclists, or motorists.”

“We understand there is more work to do, as evidenced this past weekend’s tragic crash in Brooklyn because one lift [sic] lost to traffic violence is one life too many, but our administration remains committed to reducing traffic violence as much as any other form of violence,” Adams added.

On Saturday afternoon, Yarimi crashed her car into an Uber and then slammed into four members of the Saada family as they were trying to walk across the street at an intersection on Ocean Parkway in Midwood.

Yarimi was speeding at the time of the incident, “probably doing close to twice the speed limit,” and “ran a red light” just before the crash, Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez revealed on Wednesday while speaking to Eyewitness News. Yamini was also driving on a suspended license and has accumulated almost 100 parking and camera violations, including 21 speed camera tickets and five red light tickets.

“It actually exceeds just being reckless, it’s almost being wanton, we’re not going to tolerate that,” Gonzalez told Eyewitness News. “Her vehicle had been ticketed many times by red light cameras and speed cameras, that car was a frequent violator of both speed laws and red-light laws, and there is no excuse for running a red light.”

Saada and her daughters were buried in Israel this week. Four-year-old Philip remains at the hospital for his injuries and is facing “tough straights,” Gonzalez said. “We expect him to make some kind of recovery, but it’s going to be a long road for him.”

The boy lost one of his kidneys during treatment at Maimonides Medical Center, according to New York City Comptroller Brad Lander. “It’s heartbreaking,” Lander said after he visited the home of the Saada family, according to the New York Post. “He’s still in critical condition. He lost one kidney but they are hopeful about his prognosis.”

Five people in the Uber hit by Yarimi’s car suffered minor injuries.

Supporters of a proposed state law that would stop repeat super speeders in New York have rallied together since the car accident on Saturday, calling for the passage of the bill that they said could have prevented the crash. The legislation would require speed limiters to be installed on vehicles owned by repeat reckless drivers, like Yarimi. The device automatically limits the vehicles to within 5 mph of the legal speed of the road. The “Stop Super Speeders” bill was sponsored by New York State Assembly Member Emily Gallagher and Senator Andrew Gounardes.

The New York City Comptroller, Brad Lander, supports the bill and criticized Adams for not already implementing such measures.

The post Brooklyn Woman Denied Bail, Claims She Didn’t Kill Anyone in Car Crash That Killed Jewish Mother, Two Daughters first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Hungary Announces Withdrawal From ‘Political’ ICC as Netanyahu Visits Country, Defying Arrest Warrant

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban speaks to the media next to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in Budapest, Hungary, April 3, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Bernadett Szabo

Hungary on Thursday announced that it will withdraw from the International Criminal Court (ICC) as the country welcomed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the capital city of Budapest, defying an ICC arrest warrant against him over allegations of war crimes in Gaza.

Despite Hungary’s status as a signatory of the Rome Statute, which established the ICC, Netanyahu was not taken into custody upon his arrival in Budapest. Instead, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban welcomed his Israeli counterpart with full military honors.

Netanyahu’s visit to Hungary, which is scheduled to last until Sunday, is his first trip to Europe since the ICC issued an arrest warrant against him last year. In February, he made his first foreign trip altogether since the ICC’s decision to the United States, where he met with US President Donald Trump.

As Orban and Netanyahu met to discuss regional developments and bilateral cooperation, Hungarian Minister Gergely Gulyas released a statement announcing that “the government will initiate the withdrawal procedure” from the ICC, which could take a year or more to complete.

After their meeting, Orban said he believes the ICC is “no longer an impartial court, not a court of law, but a political court.”

“I am convinced that this otherwise important international judicial forum has been degraded into a political tool, with which we cannot and do not want to engage,” Orban said during a press conference.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar praised Budapest’s decision to withdraw from the international court, highlighting the country’s “strong moral stance alongside Israel and the principles of justice and sovereignty.”

“I commend Hungary’s important decision to withdraw from the ICC,” Saar wrote in a post on X. “The so-called ‘International Criminal Court’ lost its moral authority after trampling the fundamental principles of international law in its zest for harming Israel’s right to self-defense.”

In November, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu, his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, and now-deceased Hamas terror leader Ibrahim al-Masri (better known as Mohammed Deif) for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza conflict. The ICC said there were reasonable grounds to believe Netanyahu and Gallant were criminally responsible for starvation in Gaza and the persecution of Palestinians — charges vehemently denied by Israel, which until a recently imposed blockade had provided significant humanitarian aid into the enclave throughout the war. Israel also says it has gone to unprecedented lengths to try and avoid civilian casualties, despite Hamas’s widely acknowledged military strategy of embedding its terrorists within Gaza’s civilian population and commandeering civilian facilities like hospitals, schools, and mosques to run operations and direct attacks.

After the court issued the warrant against Netanyahu, Orban rejected the decision by inviting the Israeli leader to Budapest and accusing the court of “interfering in an ongoing conflict for political purposes.”

During Thursday’s news conference, Netanyahu commended Hungary’s withdrawal from the ICC, calling it a “bold and principled action” as “the first state that walks out of this corruption and this rottenness.”

“The ICC directs its actions against us fighting a just war with just means,” Netanyahu said. “I think [this decision will] be deeply appreciated, not only in Israel but in many, many countries around the world.”

After the Israeli leader was welcomed in Budapest, Hamas issued a statement calling on the Hungarian government to reverse its decision and extradite Netanyahu to the ICC to stand trial, calling the decision an “immoral stance that shows collusion with a war criminal who is running away from justice.”

In a post on X, Israel’s top diplomat reiterated his support for Hungary’s decision, arguing that Hamas’s statement only proves the country is taking the correct stance in this matter.

“Whoever needed further proof as to how justified, moral and necessary Hungary’s decision to withdraw from the ICC is: Hamas just condemned it,” Saar wrote.

“Hamas is defending the politicized and twisted so-called ‘International Criminal Court.’ And that’s the whole story.”

After the ICC’s decision to issue the warrants, several countries, including Hungary, Argentina, the Czech Republic, Romania, Poland, France, and Italy, have said they would not arrest Netanyahu if he visited.

US and Israeli officials issued blistering condemnations of the ICC move, decrying the court for drawing a moral equivalence between Israel’s democratically elected leaders and the heads of Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group that launched the ongoing war in Gaza with its massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2o23.

The ICC has no jurisdiction over Israel as it is not a signatory to the Rome Statute. Other countries including the US have similarly not signed the ICC charter. However, the ICC has asserted jurisdiction by accepting “Palestine” as a signatory in 2015, despite no such state being recognized under international law.

The post Hungary Announces Withdrawal From ‘Political’ ICC as Netanyahu Visits Country, Defying Arrest Warrant first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Jewish Individualism Will Not Work, But Solidarity Must

The Western Wall and Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

During the events of Purim, Haman approached King Xerxes I and said, “There is a certain race of people scattered through all the provinces of your empire who keep themselves separate from everyone else. Their laws are different from those of any other people, and they refuse to obey the laws of the king. So, it is not in the king’s interest to let them live.”

Queen Esther’s solidarity with her dispersed people in Persia, and her profound loyalty to her Jewish identity, saved them from Haman’s genocide and secured their self-defense when she courageously revealed her heritage to Xerxes I.

Today, Israeli Jews are once again fighting for their Jewish and Zionist survival. Since Oct. 7, 2023, this Jewish Armageddon has extended anew to Diaspora Jews, who have felt the past’s chilling draft. Antisemitism has reawakened, infecting non-Jews and Jews alike. Few people contribute to antisemitic attitudes more than “self-loathing” Jews. These “self-loathing” Jews, who cynically reveal only the negative aspects of their Jewishness, believe they can avoid antisemitic attacks if they condemn Israel. But they achieve only self-betrayal, gaining neither acceptance nor respect from those who hate all Jews. Jews are a nation of people who question, not people who answer.

Questions pervade the Jewish mind to such a degree that the adage, “two Jews, three opinions,” has become a common characteristic of Jewish identity. Moreover, the pursuit of an answer often serves as a springboard for further inquiry. For us, as Jews, the ultimate answer, akin to the messianic ideal, remains a distant, undefined future. This traditional perspective has granted Jews a sort of perpetual license to disagree. Jews enjoy engaging in debate with others, but they sometimes find particular delight in debating amongst themselves, which allows their intellects to roam and their sardonic wit to playfully engage with each other’s vulnerabilities, finding humor without causing offense.

This love for discourse, for questioning everything in sight, including Hashem himself, is by no means the only puzzle that makes up our Jewish identity. Another crucial element of our makeup is solidarity. In times of major upheavals, we have always stood together against the masses who rose against us. To our enemies, we Jews — atheists, nihilists, Reform, Conservative, Orthodox, Haredi, religious Zionists, non-religious Zionists, or undecided — look, taste, and feel the same. They care nothing for our ingrained liberalism. Our enemies seek cracks within our communities in order to break us apart and cause irreparable damage.

Years of relative peace and prosperity since the Holocaust have allowed us to gather again and engage in countless polemics over the fate of Israel, Jews, Judaism, and Zionism. However, we have failed to notice that we are at war again, and that our enemies eagerly exploit the divisions within a nation that comprises only 0.2% of the world’s population. These enemies — radical Islamists and progressive Western leftists who view Jews and Israel as white oppressors and colonizers — avidly listen to Jewish internal squabbles and criticisms of the Israeli government.

Despite the significant progress the Shin Bet and IDF have made in dismantling much of Hamas’s leadership and terrorist infrastructure, destroying its complex network of tunnels and command centers, and weakening Hezbollah, in addition to eliminating tens of thousands of Hamas terrorists, many Jews remain critical of, and disagree with, what Israel represents today. Aware of government problems, Israelis desire improvement. However, their rage and almost addictive pattern of anti-government protests have provided their adversaries with more opportunities to exploit perceived weaknesses.

This has resonated with some Jews worldwide. In New York, some Jewish intellectuals have defended “free-Palestine” and pro-Hamas protesters harassing Jewish students, invoking freedom of speech. They appear to have fallen prey to what they perceive as the lies of progressive anti-Zionist media, which systemically omits crucial facts about Israel. This includes the IDF’s efforts to minimize civilian casualties, and its role in eliminating thousands of Hamas terrorists and dismantling their terror network, which posed a significant threat to Israel (and innocent Palestinians themselves).

These “romantic” progressive Jews also forget that no matter how critical they are of that “brutal” IDF, it is still fighting on their behalf, because it is fighting on behalf of every Jew. Civilian deaths do occur, but they are either unfortunate incidents of war or, more often, a direct result of Hamas’s cruelty, as Hamas terrorists purposefully embed themselves within the civilian population. I once sat at dinner in Israel with a wealthy American Jewish couple who came on a sympathy tour a few months after Oct. 7. Nevertheless, the husband was convinced that the IDF was deliberately killing Palestinian children.

Those were wealthy, educated American Jews who thought they were charitable because they donated to Jewish causes, and therefore, believed they had the right to express their views on everything. This is where I, a Soviet Jew who grew up deprived of Judaism yet targeted by antisemitism, felt differently. To begin with, the husband was completely wrong. Second, in times of existential crisis, we, as Jewish people, must set aside our irresistible urge to disagree and criticize Israel on basic premises such as Israel’s fight to ensure Jews don’t live through a second genocide. The freedom to speak our minds has been ours for thousands of years. We conversed with Hashem, we obeyed Him, we sacrificed for Him, and then we quickly learned to disobey and question Him, even before we began arguing amongst ourselves.

Still, throughout our dotted and punctured history, it wasn’t our tongues or our disagreeable minds that kept our small nation together; it was our solidarity. In solidarity, we walked out of Egypt. In solidarity, tens of thousands of Eastern European Jews came to their promised land as early as the 1920s and began to build from nothing. In solidarity with his orphans, Dr. Janusz Korczak, despite being given the chance to save himself, chose to march with them, hand in hand, through the ghetto to the deportation point, on their way to Treblinka, where they met their final hour. In solidarity with other Jews across the Soviet Empire, Soviet Jews secretly tried to remember who they were, despite years of persecutions and purges.

In solidarity with their Soviet brethren, powerful American Jewry fought for Russian Jews to be able to emigrate to Israel and the United States. One of the main reasons our small nation has not disappeared into the abyss is because, in Diaspora, across oceans, and through impenetrable iron curtains, we never ceased to support one another. We knew we could not afford the luxury of neglecting our faith, traditions, and, most importantly, we could never abandon defending ourselves against our enemies.

Caesar’s “Divide et impera” (“Divide and Conquer”), though a cliché, is particularly relevant here. Seeing fractures within our communities, our enemies have intensified these divisions through incessant anti-Zionist and antisemitic propaganda and violence. Therefore, only as an undivided people, united by a single purpose — eradicating our enemies and protecting our promised land — do we stand a chance of survival. Perhaps only then will the day come when Jewish people gather on virtual street corners to argue and ask questions to which they seek no answers.

Anya Gillinson is an immigration lawyer and author of the new memoir Dreaming in Russian. She lives in New York City. More at www.anyagillinson.com.

The post Jewish Individualism Will Not Work, But Solidarity Must first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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