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Steven Spielberg on ‘Fabelmans’ Golden Globe: My mom is ‘up there kvelling’
(JTA) — Steven Spielberg said he was the sixth-happiest person in the world after he won best director at this year’s Golden Globes awards for “The Fabelmans,” his autobiographical film about his Jewish family.
“I think … there’s five people happier than I am,” he said in his acceptance speech, which he said he had not prepared in advance out of superstition. “There’s my sister Anne, my sister Sue, my sister Nancy, my dad Arnold and my mom. She is up there kvelling about this right now.”
“Kvell” is the Yiddish word meaning to feel quiet pride in the accomplishment of others — and it’s closely associated with Jewish mothers who are proud of their children. Spielberg’s mother, Leah Adler, was the owner of a popular kosher restaurant in Los Angeles who died in 2017. His father Arnold, who helped him make his first movie, died in 2020 at 103.
“The Fabelmans,” which also won best picture among dramas, tells the story of a child who falls in love with filmmaking and laces his family’s Jewish identity into the storytelling. The character based on Adler is played by Michele Williams, a non-Jewish actor who is raising her children Jewish, while Paul Dano plays the character based on Arnold Spielberg.
During the awards ceremony, host Jerrod Carmichael joked that he watched “The Fabelmans” with Kanye West “and it changed everything for him” — alluding to the rapper’s months-long antisemitic tirade that has cost him millions in sponsorships and led to him becoming a show-business pariah. Addressing Spielberg, Carmichael said, “That’s how good you are. You changed Kanye West’s mind.” (In response, Spielberg clasped his hands in mock prayer.)
Elsewhere, Spielberg was thanked from the stage even by actors who did not appear in his film: “Everything Everywhere All At Once” star Ke Huy Quan, who won best supporting actor in a comedy, thanked the director for giving him his first big break in “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” at the age of 12.
“I like very much the sort of easy way that Jewishness lives in this movie. It’s a very profound part of Steven’s identity, and of the Fablemans’ identity,” Spielberg’s collaborator, the Jewish writer Tony Kushner, said at a September film festival before the movie’s wide release. “But it’s a movie that’s about Jewish people, rather than entirely or exclusively about Jewishness or antisemitism or something. So it’s not a problem, it’s who they are.”
The film has been a critical darling but Spielberg’s worst-ever performance at the box office, where it is unlikely to bring in anywhere close to the $40 million spent to make it. (Many theater releases are struggling in a climate where audiences are accustomed to watching movies at home.)
Spielberg’s attendance at the ceremony was notable because many actors and directors boycotted last year’s pared-down event over years of scandal at the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which hands out the awards. The group was criticized over conflicts of interest by its members and for including few Black members; it says it has addressed both issues.
Also winning at this year’s Golden Globes was Jewish actress Julia Garner for her Netflix show “Ozark” and Justin Hurwitz, who was named best original score for “Babylon.” The Jewish songwriter has won all four of the Golden Globes for which he has been nominated, all for work with the filmmaker Damien Chazelle, his college roommate. Chazelle attended Hebrew school at a New Jersey synagogue and traveled to Israel with his classmates despite being raised by Catholic parents.
Ukraine’s Jewish president Volodymyr Zelensky also made a special pre-taped appearance at the Globes, thanking Hollywood for supporting Ukraine in its ongoing war with Russia and making a reference to the awards ceremony’s origins in 1943 in the waning years of World War II.
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NATO Should Launch Operation to Boost Security in Arctic, Belgian Minister says
Belgian Defence Minister Theo Francken speaks to journalists as he arrives to an informal meeting of European Union defence ministers in Copenhagen, Denmark, August 29, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Tom Little
NATO should launch an operation in the Arctic to address US security concerns, Belgium’s defense minister told Reuters on Sunday, urging transatlantic unity amid growing European unease about US President Donald Trump’s push to take control of Greenland.
“We have to collaborate, work together and show strength and unity,” Theo Francken said in a phone interview, adding that there is a need for “a NATO operation in the high north.”
Trump said on Friday that the US needs to own Greenland to prevent Russia or China from occupying it in the future.
European officials have been discussing ways to ease US concerns about security around Greenland, an autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark.
Francken suggested NATO’s Baltic Sentry and Eastern Sentry operations, which combine forces from different countries with drones, sensors and other technology to monitor land and sea, as possible models for an “Arctic Sentry.”
He acknowledged Greenland‘s strategic importance but said “I think that we need to sort this out like friends and allies, like we always do.”
A NATO spokesperson said on Friday that alliance chief Mark Rutte spoke with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio about the importance of the Arctic for shared security and how NATO is working to enhance its capabilities in the high north.
Denmark and Greenland‘s leaders have said that the Arctic island could not be annexed and international security did not justify such a move.
The US already has a military presence on the island under a 1951 agreement.
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IDF Strikes Hezbollah Weapons Sites in Lebanon After Army Denied Its Existence
Israeli strikes targeting Hezbollah’s terror infrastructure. Photo: Via i23, Photo from social media used in accordance with Clause 27a of the Copyright Law.
i24 News – The Israel Defense Forces carried out airstrikes on a site in southern Lebanon that the Lebanese Army had previously declared free of Hezbollah activity, Israeli officials said on Sunday, citing fresh intelligence that contradicted Beirut’s assessment.
According to Israeli sources, the targeted location in the Kfar Hatta area contained significant Hezbollah weapons infrastructure, despite earlier inspections by the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) that concluded no military installations were present.
Lebanese officials had conveyed those findings to international monitoring mechanisms, and similar claims were reported in the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar.
Israeli intelligence assessments, however, determined that Hezbollah continued to operate from the site.
During a second wave of strikes carried out Sunday, the IDF attacked and destroyed the location.
Video footage released afterward showed secondary explosions, which Israeli officials said were consistent with stored weapons or munitions at the site.
The IDF stated that the strike was conducted in response to what it described as Hezbollah’s ongoing violations of ceasefire understandings between Israel and Lebanon. Military officials said the targeted structure included underground facilities used for weapons storage.
According to the IDF, the same site had been struck roughly a week earlier after Israel alerted the Lebanese Army to what it described as active terrorist infrastructure in the area. While the LAF conducted an inspection following the warning, Israeli officials said the weapons facilities were not fully dismantled, prompting Sunday’s follow-up strike.
The IDF said it took measures ahead of the attack to reduce the risk to civilians, including issuing advance warnings to residents in the surrounding area.
“Hezbollah’s activity at these sites constitutes a clear violation of the understandings between Israel and Lebanon and poses a direct threat to the State of Israel,” the military said in a statement.
Israeli officials emphasized that operations against Hezbollah infrastructure would continue as long as such threats persist, underscoring that Israel retains the right to act independently based on its own intelligence assessments.
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Some US Senators Skeptical About Military Options for Iran
Demonstrators and activists rally in support of nationwide protests in Iran, outside the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., January 10, 2026. REUTERS/Tom Brenner
Some US lawmakers in both major parties on Sunday questioned whether military action against Iran is the best approach for the United States as Iranian authorities face growing turmoil.
US President Donald Trump in recent days has left open the possibility of American intervention in Iran, where the biggest anti-government protests in years have led to the Revolutionary Guards blaming unrest on terrorists and vowing to safeguard the governing system.
But at least two US senators sounded notes of caution during interviews on TV networks’ Sunday morning programs.
“I don’t know that bombing Iran will have the effect that is intended,” Republican Senator Rand Paul said on ABC News’ “This Week” show.
Rather than undermining the regime, a military attack on Iran could rally the people against an outside enemy, Paul and Democratic Senator Mark Warner said.
Warner, appearing on “Fox News Sunday,” warned that a military strike against Iran could risk uniting Iranians against the United States “in a way that the regime has not been able to.” History shows the dangers of US intervention, said Warner, who argued that the US-backed 1953 overthrow of Iran’s government set in motion a chain of events that gradually led to the rise of the country’s Islamic regime in the late 1970s.
The Wall Street Journal on Sunday reported that US military and diplomatic officials will brief Trump on Tuesday about options for Iran, including cyberattacks and potential military action.
Iran has said it will target US military bases if the United States launches an attack. But Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who has often touted a muscular approach to foreign policy, said Trump “needs to embolden the protesters and scare the hell out of the [Iranian] regime.”
“If I were you, Mr. President, I would kill the leadership that are killing the people,” Graham said on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures” show. “You’ve got to end this.”
Reza Pahlavi, the US-based son of the Iranian shah who was ousted in 1979, said on Sunday he is prepared to return to Iran to lead a shift to a democratic government.
“I’m already planning on that,” Pahlavi said on “Sunday Morning Futures.” “My job is to lead this transition to make sure that no stone is left unturned, that in full transparency, people have an opportunity to elect their leaders freely and to decide their own future.”