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Lives Lived: Notable New Yorkers who died in 2023

(New York Jewish Week) — Before we look ahead to the New Year, the New York Jewish Week is looking back on the lives of 20 Jewish New Yorkers who, in their own way, each made their mark on public life through their contributions to the arts, writing, advocacy, music and religious life. May their memories be a blessing. 

Bob Born

Jewish maker of Peeps marshmallow candies

A “Peeps Mobile” at the Just Born candy factory in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. (Andrew Silow-Carroll)

Ira “Bob” Born was the head of the 100-year-old family candy company Just Born Quality Confections, where the Jewish Willy Wonka innovated one very un-Jewish treat: Peeps marshmallows, a staple of Easter baskets. Just Born also makes Mike and Ikes and Goldenberg’s Peanut Chews. Born’s father, Sam Born, was a rabbinical student from Ukraine who learned the art of chocolate-making when his family fled to Paris. The elder Born opened a factory and chocolate store in Brooklyn in 1923,the year before his son, Bob, was born. The family relocated to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania in 1932, where the company is still headquartered. Born died on Jan. 29 at age 98. His son, Ross, told the local newspaper that his father will be remembered as a “real mensch.”

Burt Bacharach 

Sophisticated hitmaker of the 60s and 70s

Composer Burt Bacharach (left) and lyricist Hal David hold Oscars they won for “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head” from “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” at the Academy Awards, April 7, 1970. (Bettmann/Getty Images)

The songwriter behind the slew of songs that made Dionne Warwick a megastar, including “Walk on By,” “Do You Know the Way to San Jose” and “I Say a Little Prayer,” Burt Bacharach grew up in a Jewish family in the Forest Hills neighborhood of Queens. He wrote in his memoir that “no one in my family ever went to synagogue or paid much attention to being Jewish,” although Jonathan Freedman, author of “Klezmer America: Jewishness, Ethnicity, Modernity,” told the New York Jewish Week in 2013 that what made Bacharach’s music Jewish was his “wild play with time signatures.” Bacharach died on Feb. 8 at age 94.

Richard Belzer

Comedian and character actor who caused controversy

Richard Belzer attends the 90th birthday of Jerry Lewis, April 8, 2016. (John Lamparski/WireImage vis Getty)

Fans knew Richard Belzer for his character John Munch, the mopey, cerebral detective he played on shows like “Law and Order: SVU” and “Homicide: Life on the Streets.” But as a hard-working stand-up comedian, he infused his act with Jewish references and the occasional Yiddish-inflected parody of popular songs. “I’m a Jewish comedian, and there’s this new thing out, it’s called satire, irony and historical reference,” he said in response to criticism of a joke that leaned a little too hard into the Holocaust. Belzer died on Feb. 19 at age 78

Elan Ganeles 

Columbia graduate and IDF lone soldier killed in West Bank attack

Elan Ganeles. (Consulate General of Israel in New York/Twitter)

Friends remember Elan Ganeles as quiet, loyal, funny and down-to-earth. The West Hartford, Connecticut native grew up as a regular at the Young Israel synagogue near his home, where he often read Torah. He attended Hebrew High School of New England, Camp Gan Israel, was a member of NCSY and volunteered with Jewish Family Services. Ganeles enlisted in the Israel Defense Forces in 2014 as a “lone soldier” before returning to the New York area in 2018, when he enrolled at Columbia University. He graduated in 2022. Ganeles was back in Israel for a wedding on Feb. 27 when he was killed by a gunman who shot at him on a road near the Palestinian West Bank city of Jericho. “He was the kind of guy you could call, and you’d be sure he’d pick up and have a few minutes to talk if you needed something,” said Rabbi Yehuda Drizin of Chabad at Columbia University, who knew Ganeles as an undergraduate there. “For everyone that knew him, this is a kick in the gut. This really hurts.” The 27-year-old was buried in Israel.

Judy Heumann

Jewish disability advocate who spurred a movement

Disability rights advocate Judith Heumann sits for a portrait in Washington, D.C., May 11, 2021. (Shuran Huang for The Washington Post via Getty Images)

After contracting polio as a toddler, Judy Heumann spent the rest of her life charting new paths for wheelchair users. She broke down barriers for disabled children and educators in New York City public schools and helped pass federal legislation protecting people with disabilities. Heumann died March 4 at age 75. Born to Orthodox Jewish Holocaust survivors in Brooklyn, Heumann credits her parents’ background for their fierceness in advocating for her and insistence on keeping the family together. “The Jewish community has an obligation, I believe, to be leaders,” said Heumann, then a special advisor for international disability rights in the State Department, at a White House event in 2016. Jay Ruderman, whose family foundation supports Jewish disability inclusion, called her “one of the preeminent disability rights leaders in our country’s history and her accomplishments made our world a better place.”

Hedda Kleinfeld Schachter

Holocaust Survivor who revolutionized the bridal industry

Pictured left to right: Nancy Aucone, Hedda Kleinfeld Schachter, and granddaughter Chloe Schachter at the Wedding Salon of Manhasset. (Courtesy Ilana Schachter)

Before her Kleinfeld Bridal shop became known nationwide on the TV show “Say Yes to the Dress,” Hedda Kleinfeld Schachter had already made a name for herself in the bridal industry by bringing European designer wedding dresses to the U.S., and shifting her family business in Bay Bridge away from special occasion wear to exclusively bridal. Kleinfeld Schachter died in Manhattan on March 29. She was 99. She was born in Vienna in 1924 and left in 1938 to escape Nazi persecution. Her family arrived in Brooklyn, New York in 1940 via Cuba. “She did not share a lot of experiences from that time period, but she did have happy memories of being a teenager in Havana, which I can only imagine was quite a trip,” said her granddaughter, Ilana Schachter. “I think she appreciated being a part of an industry that was about celebration.”

Seymour Stein 

Music mogul who discovered Madonna and The Ramones

Seymour Stein with David Byrne and Madonna in 1996. (KMazur/WireImage/Getty Images)

One of the most influential music executives of the 20th century, Seymour Stein helped put the industry’s biggest stars, including Madonna, The Ramones, The Smiths, The Cure and Talking Heads, on the map. Born Seymour Steinbigle in 1942 and raised near Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, Stein co-founded Sire Records in 1966 and helped found the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in the early 1980s. Along the way, he found camaraderie with other Jewish executives and stars. “It’s amazing now that so many doctors and lawyers are Jewish,” he said in a 2013 interview with Tablet magazine. “Jews in America weren’t allowed in those professions 120 years ago. Music is something Jews were good at and they could do. All immigrants into America tried their hand at show business.” Stein died on April 2 at age 80.

Mimi Sheraton

Pioneering food critic and scholar of the bialy

Mimi Sheraton’s books include “1,000 Foods To Eat Before You Die.” (Eric Etheridge/Workman Publishing)

The daughter of a Lower East Side grocer and the granddaughter of talented cook, Mimi Sheraton, born Miriam Solomon in Brooklyn in 1926, seemed destined for a life in food. After graduating from Midwood High School and New York University, Sheraton worked a slew of magazine jobs and became one of the best known food critics of her generation, penning 16 books in her six-decade career, including “The Bialy Eaters: The Story of a Bread and a Lost World.” Sheraton died on April 6 at age 97. She was a contributing editor and critic for New York Magazine and became the first woman to serve as the New York Times’ chief restaurant critic in 1976. “The most prominent characteristic of her reviews was the vast amount of knowledge she brought to the job and the enlivened, precise language she used to convey that information,” wrote Charlotte Druckman, in her 2019 book “Women On Food.” “It was service journalism with expertise and voice.”

Al Jaffee

Iconic Mad Magazine cartoonist

Al Jaffee at an event at New York Comic Con, Oct. 6, 2017 in New York City. (Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for Mad Magazine)

Best known for his back-of-the-book “Fold-In” features for Mad Magazine, cartoonist Al Jaffee and the self-described “usual gang of idiots” at the humor magazine shaped the sensibilities of many future comics. He was born into an Orthodox Jewish immigrant family in Savannah, Georgia in 1921, but moved back to his mother’s native Lithuania, staying just long enough to develop his love of comics (mailed to him by his father), Yiddish and “anti-adultism.” Jaffee died on April 10 in New York City at age 102. For nearly a decade, he also had a side gig as a cartoonist for The Moshiach Times, a Chabad-affiliated magazine, where he inked a cartoon called “The Shpy,” depicting a rabbinic secret agent who battles forces of evil.

Sheldon Harnick

The last surviving creator of “Fiddler on the Roof” 

Lyricist Sheldon Harnick, circa 1995. (Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)

The American lyricist and composer Sheldon Harnick first encountered the stories of Sholem Aleichem as a teenager growing up in Chicago. At first, he wrote them off. But 20 or so years later, he found the writing “wonderfully human and moving and funny.” In the late 1950s Harnick began to work with Jerry Bock and Joe Stein to adapt the material for the stage; “Fiddler on the Roof” opened on Broadway in 1964 and ran for more than 3,200 performances, which stood as a Broadway record for a decade, and won multiple awards. “We hoped with any luck that it might run a year,” Harnick said in 1981 on “The Songwriters,” a PBS showcase series. “We were totally unprepared for the impact the show would have literally around the world.” Harnick died in Manhattan on June 23 at 99.

Alan Arkin

Jewish actor with uncommon versatility

Alan Arkin in 2007. (Michael Buckner/Getty Images)

The son of Ukrainian and German Jewish immigrants, Alan Arkin wrote in his 2011 memoir “An Improvised Life” that he knew he was going to be an actor from the age of five. Born in Brooklyn in 1934, Arkin made a name for himself playing a wide variety of characters, from a conflicted Russian submarine officer (“The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming,” 1966), a struggling Puerto Rican widower (“Popi,” 1969) and a mild-mannered Manhattan dentist recruited into an unlikely espionage scheme by his daughter’s future father-in-law (“The In-Laws,” 1979). Arkin died on June 29 at 89. Over his seven decade career, he was nominated four times for an Academy Award, and won in 2007 for his role in “Little Miss Sunshine,” as the vulgar grandfather of a little girl who dreams of winning a beauty pageant.

Louise Levy

‘Supercentenarian’ subject of longevity study among Ashkenazi Jews

Louise Levy was born in 1910 and grew up in Cleveland and New York City; Levy often ascribed her longevity to a daily glass of red wine and a low-cholesterol diet. (Photos courtesy Levy family, via Fox Funeral Home)

Born on Nov. 1, 1910 in Cleveland, Louise Levy joined a small group of supercentenarians — people older than 110, of which there are fewer than two dozen in the world — when she turned 110 in 2020. She was a participant in The Longevity Genes Project, a study of long-living Ashkenazi Jews that aims to explore what genetic factors might allow people to live well into the triple digits. Levy, meanwhile, credited her long life to a daily glass of red wine and a low-cholesterol diet, and she said she never ate sweets. Levy died on July 17 at age 112. Before her death, she was the oldest living resident of New York State.

Nechama Tec

Survivor whose book about the Bielski partisans inspired the Daniel Craig film ‘Defiance’

University of Connecticut sociologist and historian Nechama Tec’s 1993 book “Defiance: The Bielski Partisans” was adapted for a 2008 film directed by Edward Zwick. (Jewish Women’s Archive)

Born in Lublin, Poland in 1931, Nechama Tec survived the Shoah by posing as the niece of a Catholic family. She eventually immigrated to New York via Israel, where she earned her bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees from Columbia University. For decades, she was on the sociology faculty at the University of Connecticut, writing mainly about overlooked aspects of the Holocaust, including the role of Christian rescuers and the gender dynamics among and between Jewish survivors. Her 1993 book, “Defiance: The Bielski Partisans,” about a group of Jews in Belarus who successfully defied the Nazis, was made into the 2008 film “Defiance.” Tec died in New York City on Aug. 3 at age 92.

Cantor Philip Sherman

The ‘busiest mohel in New York’

Cantor Philip Sherman was a prominent mohel in the New York City area. (Courtesy Philip Sherman)

Wearing a signature bowtie to each of his appointments, Cantor Philip Sherman performed more than 26,000 circumcisions during his 45-year career, including for the offspring of many Jewish celebrities. His record, he told JTA in 2014, was 11 in one day. Sherman died of pancreatic cancer at 67 on Aug. 9 in New York City. His family remembers him as optimistic, determined and passionate about the Jewish community. “He would run in, run out because it was important to him to cover as many brisses as he could,” said his son Elan Sherman, who was with him on the record-setting day. “He wanted to leave that mark on the Jewish community, that he was really there as much as he could be for all Jewish babies.” Born in Syracuse, Sherman graduated with a joint degree from Columbia University and the Jewish Theological Seminary in 1979, and served as a cantor at several Manhattan synagogues including Park East Synagogue, Lincoln Square Synagogue and Congregation Shearith Israel-The Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue.

Rabbi Israel Francus, Rabbi Avraham Holtz, Samuel Klagsbrun

Revered scholars of Conservative Judaism professors at the Jewish Theological Seminary

Samuel Klagsbrun, Israel Francus and Avraham Holtz were on the faculty of the Jewish Theological Seminary. (Via JTS)

The Jewish Theological Seminary, the flagship rabbinical institution of the Conservative movement, was in deep mourning in November after three scholars died within days of each other. Rabbi Israel Francus and Rabbi Avraham Holtz both died on Nov. 15 at ages 96 and 89, respectively. Both were professors at the seminary; Francus taught Talmudic exegesis and Holtz was an authority on the Nobel Prize-winning Israeli author S.Y. Agnon, as well as the chair of the department of Hebrew Literature and dean of Academic Development. Samuel Klagsbrun was a psychiatrist who for many years taught pastoral psychiatry to JTS students and founded the school’s Center for Pastoral Education in 2009. He died on Nov. 11 at 91. “Together, these three individuals reflect the breadth and depth of a JTS education,” Shuly Rubin Schwartz, the chancellor of JTS, said in a statement to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. She noted that the three represented “the importance JTS attaches to educating not only the texts, history, and ideas of our people but also ensuring that future clergy were attuned to the heart, soul, and emotional lives of the Jews they would serve.” 

Neil Drossman

Ad writer admired for his wit and wordplay

Neil Drossman created a series of ads for Teacher’s scotch featuring ghost-written testimonials by celebrities, including Groucho Marx, left. (Photo courtesy of Robert Danor)

Those familiar with the memorable ad campaigns of Meow Mix — “The Cat Food Cats Ask For By Name” — and Emery Air Freight, which featured a photo of globe-trotting Secretary of State Henry Kissinger with the headline, “Emery flies to more places than he does,” are familiar with the work of Brooklyn-born Neil Drossman. He wrote some of most admired tag lines and campaigns in the history of the advertising business at the tail end of the “Mad Men” era. “Seeing his work transformed my views of what advertising could be,” the advertising executive Lee Garfinkel wrote in a tribute in the trade journal Ad Age. “Each headline was smart, funny, insightful, unexpected and thought-provoking.” Drossman died on Nov. 25 at age 83.

Rabbi Laurie Phillips

Founder of a Manhattan ‘synagogue without walls’

Rabbi Laurie Phillips founded the New York-based “synagogue without walls” Beinenu. (Courtesy Debbie Mukamal and Rabbi John Franken)

Rabbi Laurie Phillips founded “Beinenu” (“between us” in Hebrew) in 2014 as a means of offering Jewish worship and celebrations in intimate spaces. She co-directed the organization with musician Daphna Mor, and also led High Holiday services at JCC Harlem. Before launching Beinenu, Phillips served as the associate director for the Mandel Center for Jewish Education at the JCC Association of North America, where she co-created Lechu Lachem, an immersive program for Jewish camp directors. She also helped create, with the JCC Manhattan and three nearby synagogues, the Jewish Journeys project, which provides personalized alternatives to synagogue-based supplementary Jewish schooling. Phillips died on Nov. 26 at age 55. “I am so lucky to have found a partner with whom I could create my dream version of a Jewish community in NYC, led through the heart, held by music, genuine love, and joy,” Mor said in a statement to JTA. “Laurie’s legacy of light, love and kindness keeps shining through all the people whose lives she touched.”

Rabbi David Ellenson 

A prominent scholar, a leader of the Reform movement and ‘everyone’s favorite rabbi’

Rabbi David Ellenson served for 12 years as president of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. (Courtesy of HUC)

As the president of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, Rabbi David Ellenson mentored a generation of rabbis and scholars as a historian, adviser and confidant. He prioritized a year of study in Israel for rabbinical students, shepherded the institution through the 2008 financial crisis, expanded the number of women in leadership roles and led efforts to ease the Israeli Orthodox rabbinate’s grip on religious ritual in Israel. A prolific scholar of modern Jewish thought and history, Ellenson died on Dec. 7 at his home in Manhattan at age 76. Before his 12-year-long tenure as president, which ended in 2013, Ellenson spent some 30 years as a student and faculty member at HUC-JIR. “My soul is bound to this institution and to the holy mission that animates it,” he wrote in 2013. “It has been the greatest privilege to devote my life to this school.”


The post Lives Lived: Notable New Yorkers who died in 2023 appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

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Iran and Terrorism: Empty Gestures or Genuine Change?

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi speaks during a meeting with foreign ambassadors in Tehran, Iran, July 12, 2025. Photo: Hamid Forootan/Iranian Foreign Ministry/WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Handout via REUTERS

In a world grappling with persistent threats of terrorism and financial crimes, the international community must not be swayed by superficial gestures.

While Tehran’s recent ratification of the Palermo Convention against transnational organized crime may seem like a step in the right direction on the surface, it is likely a calculated move designed to distract from the regime’s continued and unwavering support for global terrorism.

The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) reportedly plans to meet with Tehran’s bureaucrats to review whether the Islamic Republic of Iran has complied with its action plan to be removed from its blacklist.

However, the global financial watchdog must resist the temptation to remove Tehran from the list, because the Islamic Republic fundamentally remains committed to funding terrorism and engaging in illicit financing. To remove Tehran would be to ignore a mountain of evidence that supports this unequivocal fact.

In fact, removing Iran would endanger the integrity of the international financial system.

For years, the Islamic Republic has been a leading state sponsor of terrorism. No single treaty that Iran may ratify can disguise this fact.

The regime’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has a long and bloody history of plotting assassinations on American soil and overseas, targeting high-profile figures like President Donald Trump, journalists, dissidents, and ordinary citizens. This is not the conduct of a state genuinely committed to combating organized crime. It is the action of a rogue regime that uses terror as a primary tool of its foreign policy.

The recent move by Iran’s Expediency Discernment Council to ratify the United Nations’ Palermo Convention — after years of refusing to do so — is a classic example of Tehran’s diplomatic gamesmanship.

Tehran understands its presence on the FATF blacklist has crippled its economy, It is desperate for a reprieve. However, the regime has refused to ratify the most crucial of the FATF-required treaties: the International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism (CFT).

By refusing to do so, Tehran is signaling its intention to continue funding terrorist proxies including Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis. Nor has Iran abandoned the facilitation network it has provided to Al-Qaeda. While Tehran may one day feel compelled to ratify the CFT for economic reasons, removing it from the blacklist should take place only if commensurate conduct changes on the terrorism front — and that change is sustained.

The international community has already witnessed the devastating consequences of Iran’s terror financing. The Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, was inspired, funded, and enabled by Tehran. The regime’s support for the Houthis in Yemen has destabilized the region and disrupted global trade, costing the United States and its allies billions of dollars. Tehran’s backing of Hezbollah in Lebanon threatens the security of Israel and the stability of the entire Middle East. Iran should not be welcomed back into the global financial fold until it changes its conduct, not merely purports to agree to an item on a technical checklist.

The FATF has a clear mandate: to protect the global financial system from money laundering and terrorist financing. To fulfill this mandate, it must hold Iran to the same standard as every other nation. This means insisting on full and unconditional compliance with all FATF requirements, including the ratification of the CFT and demonstrable adherence to its principles. There can be no exceptions, carve-outs, or special treatment for a regime that has blatantly and repeatedly violated international law and circumvented sanctions.

Tehran’s diplomatic overtures are nothing but a smokescreen. As long as the regime continues to fund terrorism, plot assassinations, and destabilize the Middle East, it must remain on the FATF blacklist. The security of the United States and its allies, and the integrity of the global financial system, depend on it. The message to Tehran must be clear: words are not enough. Its actions and malign conduct must change.

Saeed Ghasseminejad is a senior advisor at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD). Toby Dershowitz is managing director at FDD Action, FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focused on national security and foreign policy. FDD Action is a non-partisan 501(c)(4) organization established to advocate for effective policies to promote US national security and defend free nations. Follow the authors on X @SGhasseminejad and @tobydersh.

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From Sacred to Strategic: Hamas Turns Civilian Infrastructure Into Targets

Palestinian Hamas terrorists stand guard on the day of the handover of hostages held in Gaza since the deadly Oct. 7, 2023, attack, as part of a ceasefire and a hostages-prisoners swap deal between Hamas and Israel, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, Feb. 22, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Hatem Khaled

Two weeks ago, the IDF revealed a chilling incident: Hamas operatives posed as World Central Kitchen aid workers, wearing yellow vests and using WCK-branded vehicles. WCK swiftly confirmed that the imposters had no affiliation — that this was terrorism hiding in humanitarian garb.

Then, earlier this week, Israel struck Nasser Hospital in Southern Gaza — not randomly, cruelly or without reason, but because Hamas was using the hospital to operate surveillance cameras to track IDF movements.

A tragic battlefield misstep occurred when tank fire was used to disable those cameras instead of drones, killing 6 Hamas terrorists who were either operating or near the targeted cameras, but also resulting in unintended civilian casualties. This outcome was tragic — but sadly predictable. 

This is the logic of Hamas’ strategy: weaponize Gaza’s hospitals, schools, mosques, and aid centers, force civilian casualties and damage to civilian infrastructure, and then broadcast them as evidence of Israeli atrocity.

Hospitals: Protected — Until Abused

International Humanitarian Law (IHL) stands firm: during a war, hospitals may not be targetedunless they are being used for military purposes. Hamas’ use of these sites as command or surveillance posts nullifies their protection.

Mosques and Schools: Sacred — Until Militarized

Houses of worship and schools are also granted special status under IHL. But that protection dissolves once they are used for military advantage — a tactic Hamas consistently employs, turning places of worship into weapons depots and schools into hideouts.

Humanitarian Aid: Safe — Until Exploited

Under IHL, even aid workers can become legitimate targets when Hamas impersonates them. The WCK incident not only endangered genuine aid efforts, but it also weaponized the trust people place in humanitarian organizations, and eroding that trust endangers aid workers everywhere in Gaza.

This Is Calculated — Not Casual

These are not random errors — they are deliberate Hamas strategies: embed fighters and military and tactical equipment in civilian infrastructure, provoke strikes, and unleash graphic narratives. The recent hospital strike and the WCK impersonation reflect this grim choreography.

A Double Standard with Deadly Consequences

When US or UK forces faced civilian casualties in Mosul or Aleppo, the world understood the moral complexity caused by ISIS embedding itself among civilians and fighting in civilian clothes.

But when Israel confronts Hamas — whose tunnel networks under hospitals and all other civilian infrastructure in Gaza rival entire urban subway systems — the narrative is nearly monolithic: Israel is the villain.

This is the double standard defined in the IHRA working definition of antisemitism.

No Safe Haven for Gaza Civilians

Hamas’ cynical human shield strategy and its use of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure as cover is enhanced as a tactical tool by the actions of Gaza’s Arab neighbors.

In Syria and Ukraine, civilians fled across borders to safety in Jordan, Poland, Turkey.

In fact, in every war in modern history, civilians have left combat zones to go to neighboring non-hostile countries.

But after October 7, Egypt and Jordan closed their borders, citing political fears. That leaves Gaza civilians trapped — forced to rely on limited “humanitarian zones” Israel sets up — zones Hamas routinely targets and even tries to stop Gazans from entering.

The result: Israel is held to an impossible standard: avoid civilian casualties even when terrorists hide themselves and their military and tactical infrastructure next to, among, and beneath them, while Gaza’s Arab neighbors are held to no standard of refuge for their fellow Arabs whatsoever.

Casualty Figures — Propaganda Masquerading as Data

To make matters worse, most media outlets parrot casualty numbers from Hamas’ so-called “Health Ministry.”

The Gaza Health Ministry’s numbers lump together civilians, combatants, natural deaths, and even those killed by Hamas’ own misfired rockets. For years before October 7th, between 5,000 and 7,000 people in Gaza died from natural causes. Meanwhile, at least 15% to 25% of Hamas and Islamic Jihad’s rockets fall short, killing Gazans.

And Hamas routinely kills Gazans it decides are “collaborators” with Israel. All these deaths — along with the death of Hamas fighters — are aggregated in Hamas’s “death tolls” for the October 7th war it started.

Yet the narrative advanced by major media outlets and on social media paint every death as of a civilian killed by Israel. This is propaganda masquerading as data.

Conclusion: Accountability, Not Convenient Narratives

Hamas will continue to weaponize its own civilians — and civilian spaces — if excuses remain for its behavior. Only when the global dialogue refuses to blame Israel for the foreseeable results of Hamas’ human-shield warfare can moral clarity return.

The responsibility lies — with Hamas, not Israel — to stop turning Gaza’s hospitals, schools, and civilian infrastructure generally into strategic targets. Let’s call this what it is: terrorism hiding behind civilian facades. Until the world stops tolerating and even rewarding Hamas’ cynical human shield tactics, they will continue.

Micha Danzig is a current attorney, former IDF soldier & NYPD police officer. He currently writes for numerous publications on matters related to Israel, antisemitism & Jewish identity & is the immediate past President of StandWithUs in San Diego and a national board member of Herut.

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What Is the Future for Russian-Speaking Jews in America?

Morris Abram (left), chairman of National Conference on Soviet Jewry, with Ed Koch, former Mayor of New York City, and Natan Sharansky, former Prisoner of Conscience. Photo: Center for Jewish History via Flickr.

The Russian-speaking Jewish community (RSJ) has traveled a long road to America.

From pogroms and World Wars to Soviet repression, our families fled in search of freedom and opportunity. New immigration to the US has slowed, and today, the future of the community rests with the children of those who arrived decades ago. What will their identity look like?

To find out, the American Russian-Speaking Jews Alliance (ARSJA) surveyed RSJ parents and received over 250 responses summarized in a new report.

The findings show a community deeply committed to raising Jewish children — even if traditional religious observance is not at the center.

Although 54 percent of the respondents do not keep kosher and only 3 percent attend synagogue daily, 89 percent of parents expect their children will have a “Very strong” or “Somewhat strong” Jewish identity.

Community life seems to be more popular than ritual. More than half of those surveyed attend RSJ gatherings or Israel-related events, and 67 percent go to synagogue on the High Holidays.

Shaul Kelner, professor of Jewish Studies and Sociology at Vanderbilt University, reminded us that, “American Jews are a diverse population, and there is no one-size-fits-all approach. It’s important that organizations like ARSJA are working to identify and respond to the specific needs of the Russian-speaking Jewish community.”

The “Russian-speaking” part of the identity is more complicated.

Most parents (58 percent) want their children to speak Russian mainly to communicate with grandparents.

Grandparents (75 percent) and parents (70 percent) are the people children use Russian with most often.

Yet only 60 percent of parents believe their children will maintain a strong RSJ identity. For some, the label recalls a painful past. One respondent said that they “see [their] Russian-speaking identity as really more of being raised in the former USSR, a totalitarian regime, the type of which we hope our children will never experience.”

Still, the community is finding new expressions of identity. Judi Garrett, COO at Jewish Relief Network Ukraine, points out that RSJs have played an active role in fundraising efforts. She noted that American-born RSJs organized campaigns that raised significant support for humanitarian aid in Ukraine. Philanthropy may become one of the ways that the next generation expresses who they are.

Parents also voiced deeper concerns. When asked what they worried about most regarding their children’s Jewish identity, the most common answers were antisemitism and assimilation. These anxieties echo across the wider American Jewish community and underscore how forces outside the family shape identity.

The survey does not provide simple answers. It does, however, spark an important conversation. For RSJs in America, the challenge is not only how to preserve their heritage, but how to pass down a Jewish identity rooted in belonging, pride, and purpose.

Mariella Favel leads data analysis at ARSJA, as well as research into how various communal and national organizations are influencing civic discourse.

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