The official Senate portrait of Joe Lieberman.

In a world where politicians are not often trusted to do what they believe is right, Joe Lieberman was an exception.I once interviewed his mother and when I spoke with him in 2010 and asked about nearly becoming vice president, he said it was “all in God’s hands.”

The new documentary Centered: Joe Lieberman, includes the chaos of the 2000 election in which Republicans George W. Bush and Dick Cheney ran against Democratic Vice President Al Gore and Lieberman. The film includes that Gore called Bush to concede and retracted it. Ultimately, the Supreme Court voted 5-4 to stop a recount of an election in which some Jewish voters in Palm Beach County, Florida, said they accidentally voted for Pat Buchanan while trying to vote for Gore. The Gore/Lieberman ticket won the popular vote, but with Florida going to Bush, he won the presidency.

The film traces Lieberman’s political beginnings – losing a bid for Congress in 1980, but then becoming Connecticut state attorney general and upsetting Republican Lowell Weicker to take a Senate seat in 1988.

Lieberman, who observed Shabbat, was critical of Democratic President Bill Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, in which Clinton  first claimed he did not have relations with the White House intern – then admitted he lied. In the documentary, Lieberman explains why he stood true to his values and spoke out.

A strong supporter of Israel, the film includes Lieberman criticizing Democratic New York Senator Chuck Schumer for giving a speech which called for the resignation of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Lieberman was primaried and lambasted for supporting the Iraq war. In the documentary, Lieberman says that if he knew beforehand all the lives that would have been lost, he would have been against it.

“The fact that he acknowledged [that] was a pretty big deal for people who know Lieberman and his stance on the Iraq war” director Jonathan Gruber told me in an interview for this article in The Algemeiner. “When we watched a rough cut of it with him, he looked around the table and said, ‘I’ve never said that in public.’ Then he paused and said, ‘But I’m glad I said it.’”

The film also shows the backlash Lieberman faced for supporting Republican senator John McCain for president rather than Barack Obama. 

Gruber said one of the challenges in making the documentary was getting Democrats to agree to be in it, because there was a lot of resentment.

“People were and still are upset at him,” Gruber said. “They feel betrayed.”

There are emotional moments of Lieberman’s funeral shown. He died at the age of 82 in March 2024, after complications from a fall.

“He did what he felt he had to do from a moral and ethical standpoint,” Gruber said. “There are a lot of politicians these days who know what they should do and they don’t.”

What was the main lesson Gruber learned from interviewing Lieberman and making the documentary?

“You should figure out how to disagree without being disagreeable,” Gruber said. “Discourse over discord, and that a person you don’t agree with is not your blood enemy. People on the extremes sticking to their beliefs, saying if you’re not with me 100 percent, forget it, is really simplistic and now we have extremes on both sides. Joe was one of the early cancel culture victims … because of his vote of the Iraq war. I didn’t agree with that vote. But he was excoriated for it.”

Lieberman lost in the 2006 Democratic primary for Senate but won as an independent. The film shows that one of the reasons Lieberman married his second wife Hadassah was they were at a similar religious level, and that the Secret Service would accompany him to the synagogue during the presidential campaign.

Centered also includes the fear of some Jews in 2000 who worried that if Gore/Lieberman won in 2000 and something terrible took place, Jews would be blamed.

Gruber said Lieberman told him that President Obama told Lieberman that his decision to run as an Orthodox Jewish vice-presidential candidate opened the door for him as an African-American presidential candidate.   

Gruber, who directed the impressive Follow Me: The Yoni Netanyahu Story does great work again here, telling the story of a noble man who seemed at times too kind for politics, but was quite effective. Also touched upon was the No Labels Party, for which Lieberman was criticized, but ultimately, it did not put forth any presidential candidate in the 2024 presidential election.

Centered: Joe Lieberman is a well-crafted documentary that shows Lieberman’s humor, his guts, and his humility, and should be shown in Jewish schools where many students may not be familiar with the man who nearly became the first Jewish vice president.

The author is a writer based in New York.

The post Almost a Vice President — New Joe Lieberman Documentary Is Heartwarming and a Must-See first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Israeli soldiers of the Golani Brigade eat a Passover meal. Photo: Edi Israel / Flash90.

Here are eight key things to know ahead of this year’s celebration of Passover:

1. Passover is a Jewish national liberation holiday, highlighting the Exodus, the Parting of the Sea, the Ten Commandments, the 40 years of wandering in the desert, and the return to the Land of Israel 3,600 years ago.

2. According to Heinrich Heine, the 19th century German poet, “Since the Exodus, freedom has always spoken with a Hebrew accent.”

3. On December 11, 1964, upon accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said: “The Bible tells the thrilling story of how Moses stood in Pharaoh’s court centuries ago and cried, ‘Let my people go!’” M

Moreover, the Abolitionist and human rights movements were spurred by the Exodus. For instance, in 1850, Harriet Tubman, who was one of the leaders of the “Underground Railroad” was known as “Mama Moses.”

4. The US Founding Fathers were inspired by the Exodus, in particular, and the Mosaic legacy, in general, shaping the Federalist system, including the concepts of (anti-monarchy) limited government, separation of powers among three co-equal branches of government, featuring Congress, as the most powerful legislature in the world.

Thomas Paine’s Common Sense referred to King George III as “the hardened, sullen-tempered Pharaoh of England.” And the Early Pilgrims of The Mayflower and The Arabella considered their 10-week-sail in the Atlantic ocean as “the modern day Parting of the Sea,” and their destination as “the modern day Promised Land.”

5. According to the late Prof. Yehudah Elitzur (Bar Ilan University), one of Israel’s pioneers of Biblical research, the Exodus took place in the second half of the 15^th century BCE, during the reign of Egypt’s Amenhotep II. Accordingly, the 40-year-national coalescing of the Jewish people — while wandering in the desert — took place when Egypt was ruled by Thutmose IV. Then, Joshua conquered Canaan when Egypt was ruled by Amenhotep III and Amenhotep IV, who were preoccupied with domestic affairs to the extent that they refrained from expansionist ventures.

7. Passover highlights the unique resilience in the face of adversity, which is currently characterizing Israel.

Resilience has surged the Jewish people to new heights (for the benefit of all of humanity) following a multitude of crises such as: the 722 BCE destruction and exile of the Kingdom of Israel by Assyria, the 586 BCE destruction of the First Temple by Babylon, the 70 AD destruction of the Second Temple by Rome, the 135 AD crushing of the Bar Kochba’ rebellion against Rome, the 484 AD, 1736 and 1865 pogroms of the Jews in Persia, the 627 AD massacre of the Jewish tribe of Quraysh by Muhammed, the 873 AD pogroms by the Byzantines, the 1096 First Crusade’s pogroms, the 1141 pogroms in Moslem-ruled Andalusia, the 1147 Second Crusade’s pogroms, and many more — right up until today.

8. Passover highlights the central role of women in Jewish history, and Passover is the first of the three Jewish pilgrimages to Jerusalem, followed by Shavouot (Pentecost), which commemorates the receipt of the Ten Commandments, and Sukkot (Feast of Tabernacles), which was named after Sukkota — the first stop in the Exodus.

The annual story of Passover (as related in the Haggadah) is concluded by the vow: “Next Year in the reconstructed Jerusalem,” the exclusive and undivided capital of the Jewish people since King David established it as his capital, 3,000 years ago.

The author is a political commentator and former Israeli ambassador. 

The post A Passover Guide for the Perplexed, 2025 first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

A Palestinian man walks near Israeli military vehicles, during an Israeli raid in Jenin, in the West Bank, August 31, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ammar Awad

The Irish Times has published some breathtakingly poor journalism over the years. It once described Israel’s military campaign in Gaza as evidence of a national “thirst for war,” defended Hezbollah as a “defensive” force in Lebanon, and, in one memorable dispatch, its Middle East correspondent appeared impressed by the idea of the Iranian regime launching a hypersonic missile at Tel Aviv.

Yet even by those standards, the paper’s latest international story marks a new low.

Authored by that same Middle East correspondent — Michael Jansen — the piece is headlined: “Israeli army intensifies attack on Jenin refugee camp in northern West Bank.”

Unsurprisingly, the body of the article is every bit as misleading as its title suggests.

Even beyond the headline that claims Israel is attacking a refugee camp rather than the terrorists inside, this @IrishTimes story is a case study in bias.

Let’s take a closer look.  pic.twitter.com/0oLU9ngjka

— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) April 1, 2025

The opening paragraphs read more like a dramatic screenplay than a news report.

According to Jansen, the Israeli military is not conducting counterterror operations targeting Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and other armed groups embedded in Jenin. Instead, she frames the operation as an unprovoked, almost vindictive, disruption of a sacred holiday:

The Israeli army on Monday intensified its 70-day assault on Jenin city and the adjacent Palestinian refugee camp … Despite the Muslim feast of Eid al-Fitr, Israel troop reinforcements and armoured vehicles stormed the city … and ransacked dwellings. In the Jenin refugee camp, Israeli forces demolished homes and ravaged infrastructure.

Conspicuously absent is any acknowledgment that these raids are targeting entrenched terrorist networks that operate from within densely populated civilian areas — a grim reality that imposes both legal and moral obligations on Israel to act.

The irony, of course, is glaring. Jansen bemoans the desecration of Eid, yet omits any mention of Palestinian terror attacks deliberately timed to coincide with Jewish holidays — including Hamas’ October 7 massacre on Simchat Torah.

She also neglects the rocket attacks launched during Ramadan in 2021 by the very same groups Israel is now confronting. Evidently, Jansen is more concerned about the sanctity of Islamic holidays than Hamas is.

Later in the piece, Jansen refers to Jenin as the center of “resistance,” quite literally borrowing Hamas’ terminology without the slightest nod to Israel’s far more accurate descriptor: a hub of terrorism.

Jenin has long served as a launchpad for deadly attacks and is home to some of the West Bank’s most unrepentant perpetrators of violence.

The article then ends with a bizarre cinematic endorsement — of a film that has done more than almost any other to spread one of the most persistent and damaging blood libels in recent memory:

That assault inspired the film Jenin, Jenin, which contributed to the camp’s reputation and made it an anti-occupation beacon.

In fact, Jenin, Jenin is a widely discredited propaganda film that peddles the thoroughly debunked lie that Israeli forces committed a massacre in 2002 — a fabrication repeatedly disproven by international investigations but still parroted by anti-Israel activists and antisemites alike.

The Irish Times is no longer just editorializing against Israel. It is now platforming and promoting blood libels in its international news section. Just when you thought it couldn’t sink any lower.

The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.

The post Irish Times Invites Readers to Watch Blood Libel Movie About Palestinian ‘Martyrs’ Capital’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.