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Unique Carnegie Hall concert to honor Japanese diplomat Sugihara, who saved 6,000 Jews
For most of his life, Chiune Sugihara received little recognition for the dramatic actions he undertook as Japanese vice-consul to Lithuania on the eve of World War II: the rescue of some 6,000 Jews from Poland and elsewhere from the Nazi death machine.
For decades, the Jewish world remained largely ignorant of his heroism. When, in 1985, Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center located in Israel, honored the unassuming retired diplomat as a Righteous Among the Nations, Sugihara was too old and sick to travel to Jerusalem to accept the award. He died shortly after.
But his renown has grown in the years since his death, and now Sugihara is being celebrated in a new way with an extraordinary piece of music composed to commemorate his heroic actions.
On April 19 at Carnegie Hall, Japanese-American-Israeli cellist Kristina Reiko Cooper will perform this original piece of music — Lera Auerbach’s Symphony No. 6, “Vessels of Light” — accompanied by the New York City Opera Orchestra conducted by Constantine Orbelian.
The gala concert, organized by Yad Vashem and the American Society for Yad Vashem, which commissioned the piece, will pay tribute to Sugihara’s legacy.
Along with the honorary Dutch consul in Lithuania, Jan Zwartendijk, Sugihara issued life-saving visas to the Jews trying to escape Europe through a complex, illegal scheme involving fake transit visas via Japan to the Dutch-speaking Caribbean island of Curaçao.
Not a single Jew actually traveled to that faraway island off the coast of Venezuela, home to the oldest surviving synagogue in the Americas. But the operation — carried out under the noses of Lithuania’s Nazi occupiers — enabled thousands of Jews to resettle in Shanghai, leading to eventual freedom.
“Being half-Japanese myself, I understand the culture, and I know as a Japanese person that opposing authority goes against every fiber of our being,” Cooper, the cellist, said this month in an interview near her home in Tel Aviv. Born in New York to a mother of Japanese descent, Cooper later converted to Judaism and moved to Israel. She and her husband, Leonard Rosen, are
raising their three children as Orthodox Jews.
“Everybody’s heard of Schindler, who had a factory. But Sugihara had nothing to gain from this. In fact, he had everything to lose,” said Cooper, a visiting professor of music at Tel Aviv University. “He didn’t want recognition and never spoke to anybody about it. He didn’t even know that he had saved anybody until the very end of his life.”
Cooper, who studied at Julliard and comes from a long line of musicians — her father is a pianist and her mother a violinist and former concertmaster of the American Symphony — has a special personal connection to the Sugihara story.
Her husband’s father, Irving Rosen, was one of the Jews whose lives was saved by Sugihara’s actions. Armed with papers enabling Rosen’s family to leave Lithuania and emigrate to Curaçao via Japan, the entire family traveled via the Trans-Siberian Railway from Vilnius to Moscow to Vladivostok, then by sea to Japan — and eventually Shanghai.
“I became obsessed with this story and wanted people to know about it, especially given everything that’s going on in the world with the rise of authoritarian governments, mass dislocations, refugees, wars, rising antisemitism and anti-Asian hate,” Cooper said. “I’m not a writer, a filmmaker or an actress. I’m a musician. People had asked me, ‘Why not put together a nice concert in tribute to Sugihara?’ But I wanted to write something that could last forever.”
Japanese diplomat Chiune Sugihara saved thousands of Jews during the Holocaust. (Courtesy of Yad Vashem)
With the backing of Yad Vashem and the American Society for Yad Vashem, Cooper asked Auerbach to write the piece, a 40-minute composition for solo cello, choir and orchestra involving 130 performers, including Yiddish “whisperers,” allusions to Psalm 121 and an introductory piece by Japanese composer Karen Tanaka titled “Guardian Angel.”
At Carnegie Hall, Cooper, who plays on an Italian-made Guadagnini cello from 1743, will perform Auerbach’s moving, large-scale symphonic work as a soloist. She’ll also perform in Prague on March 27, Los Angeles on May 18, in California’s Napa Valley on July 18 and in Warsaw on October 8.
“Most people do not pay attention to history, because they’re so wedded to current events,” said the Carnegie Hall event’s co-chair, Peter Till, a board member of the American Society for Yad Vashem. “But this is even more relevant today because of the rise of extremist hate groups. They’ll forever deny that it exists, or ignore it, or say it couldn’t happen here, but hate continues
to repeat itself and people have to face up to it.”
The Sugihara story is especially compelling, Till said, because it’s the first event of its kind that links Holocaust survivors with Asia in general — and Japan in particular.
“This is as much about the music as it is an expression of humanity, of people from diverse cultural backgrounds coming together to save lives,” he said. “For Yad Vashem, this is a very important event because it shows the depth of understanding.”
Of the roughly 28,000 non-Jews who’ve been designated by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations, only 40 were diplomats. Sugihara is the only Japanese citizen so honored.
“On the whole, the eligibility process for diplomats is slightly different than for ordinary rescuers, because they had immunity,” said Joel Zisenwein, director of Yad Vashem’s Righteous Among the Nations Department. “In most cases, they were not at physical risk. But many of them had defied the guidelines and official policies of their foreign offices. Sugihara is even more interesting because he represented an ally of Nazi Germany.”
Zisenwein said Sugihara provided between 2,100 and 3,500 transit visas, though the exact number is not known.
“Literally, all rescuers from the Holocaust era have passed away, so people accepting the award are generally descendants or even grandchildren of the recipients,” Zisenwein said. “It’s interesting that Sugihara received his award for actions prior to the German invasion of Lithuania. Most of the Jews he rescued were Polish refugees who had fled there in 1939. Many countries claim to have their own ‘Schindlers.’ But here indeed was an individual who saved thousands of Jewish lives.”
Japanese-American-Israeli cellist Kristina Reiko Cooper has a special personal connection to the Sugihara story. (Vardi Kahana)
The evening’s master of ceremonies will be Zalman Mlotek, who is also artistic director of the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene. Tickets and sponsorships are still available for the event.
“It’s not just the people Sugihara saved. It’s the worlds of those thousands of people,” said Mlotek, whose father, Joseph Mlotek, was a 21-year-old Yiddish poet working at a newspaper in Warsaw when World War II broke out. After fleeing to Lithuania, the family heard about Sugihara and was able to obtain transit visas to Shanghai, where the elder Mlotek and his brother Abram spent the war years.
“My father became a Yiddish activist here in New York and set up a network of 200 Yiddish schools all over the country. He published books with my mother and did concert tours for Yiddish musicians,” said Mlotek, 71. “I look at myself today, as artistic director of the Yiddish theater for 20 years, carrying on this same legacy that would have been decimated had it not been for the heroism of Sugihara.”
Auerbach’s composition had its world premiere last November in the Lithuanian city of Kaunas (known in Yiddish as Kovno), where Sugihara’s story took place. Additional performances are scheduled for cities around the world through 2024.
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US Involvement in Gaza Is Not a Threat — It’s a Strategic Opportunity
Then-IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Aviv Kochavi meets with then-US Central Command (CENTCOM) chief Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie at CENTCOM headquarters on June 22, 2021. Photo: CENTCOM Public Affairs / Tom Gagnier
In recent weeks, voices in Israel have argued that the country has “lost control” over the situation in Gaza and ceded it to the United States.
While there is a grain of truth to the claim — insofar as the US has indeed become a central actor in Gaza’s operational, humanitarian, and political arenas — this view misses the broader strategic transformation that has taken place. What appears to be growing American dominance in Gaza is in fact the latest expression of a deeper structural shift that began in 2022, a shift whose significance most Israelis are only now beginning to understand.
To grasp the change, one must start with how the US military is structured.
The United States operates six global geographic Combatant Commands, each responsible for an enormous region: Europe, Africa, South America, the Indo-Pacific, North America, and the Middle East. Each is headed by a four-star general who reports directly to the Secretary of Defense and the President. These commands are not mere administrative divisions, but strategic frameworks through which the US organizes alliances, coordinates multinational training, conducts combined operations, and integrates intelligence on a global scale.
Geographically, Israel naturally belongs under the Central Command, CENTCOM, which oversees the Middle East. Yet for decades, Israel was placed under the European Command, EUCOM. The reason was political rather than military: Arab states that opposed normalization with Israel refused to be grouped with it under the same command. Allocating Israel to EUCOM allowed Washington to maintain deep military cooperation with Israel without jeopardizing its relations with key Arab allies.
The Abraham Accords fundamentally altered this arrangement.
Once the UAE, Bahrain, and later Morocco agreed to open security and diplomatic cooperation with Israel, the longstanding Arab veto effectively collapsed. The US announced Israel’s move to CENTCOM in 2021, and by 2022, it was fully implemented. Israel thus became an official component of the regional security architecture that the United States had been building for years — an emerging multinational framework designed to counter Iran through shared intelligence, integrated air defense, maritime cooperation, and coordinated operational planning.
This new reality was quickly reflected in joint exercises that had been impossible up to that point. Israel took part in IMX-22, a massive naval drill led by the US Fifth Fleet, in which Arab and Israeli naval forces operated openly under the same command structure for the first time. A year later came Juniper Oak 2023, the largest US-Israeli military exercise ever conducted, involving strategic bombers, fighter jets, naval forces, special operations units, and advanced intelligence platforms. Operationally, it marked the institutionalization of deep, routine, high-tempo military cooperation.
Still, it was not until Hamas’ October 7 attack that the full meaning of Israel’s integration into CENTCOM became clear. The brutality of the massacre underscored to Washington that the Israeli-Palestinian arena is inseparable from the broader regional struggle against Iran. The US responded with a rapid, large-scale deployment: aircraft carriers, missile defense ships, electronic warfare aircraft, and enhanced intelligence assets. In effect, the US provided Israel with a strategic umbrella that reduced the likelihood of a northern escalation and signaled unmistakable deterrence toward Iran and Hezbollah.
The most dramatic developments, however, took place in the context of Iran’s large-scale missile and drone attacks on Israel in 2023 and 2024. These were among the most extensive long-range strikes Iran had ever launched. For the first time, the emerging regional defensive network was activated. US aircraft intercepted dozens of drones over Iraq and the Red Sea; American, British, and French ships shot down cruise missiles; Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE provided air corridors and shared tactical intelligence; Israel synchronized its Iron Dome, David’s Sling, and Arrow systems with US command elements. The result was an unprecedented multinational defensive effort that successfully neutralized what could have been devastating strikes. What had long been discussed as a concept became a functioning regional defense mechanism with Israel at its core.
After a temporary ceasefire was established following the Trump plan in Gaza, the US and Israel set up a joint command center in Kiryat Gat. The goal of the joint headquarters is primarily to ensure that the Trump plan is implemented on the ground. This should not be understood as an American takeover of operational decision-making, but as a mechanism to deepen coordination. The joint headquarters facilitates real-time intelligence sharing, access to American reconnaissance capabilities, humanitarian coordination with international actors, and continuous operational deconfliction in a highly complex arena. The physical presence of American officers alongside Israeli commanders has also heightened US understanding of Hamas’ methods — its use of human shields, for example, and diversion of humanitarian aid — and the impossibility of managing the Gaza arena without intense and constant intelligence work.
Israeli critics tend to focus on potential drawbacks: US political leaders may attempt to leverage rapid progress for domestic purposes; they may choose to overlook Hamas’ refusal to disarm, and American expectations may not align with Israel’s interests regarding the end state in Gaza. These risks are not imaginary. However, Israeli defense officials repeatedly emphasize that the current level of cooperation with the US is unprecedented, and no attempt has been made thus far to impose decisions contrary to Israel’s security interests.
For decades, Israel has grappled with the question of whether it should pursue a formal defense treaty with the United States. The idea resurfaced repeatedly at moments of strategic uncertainty after the Lebanon wars, during periods of Iranian nuclear acceleration, and amid discussions about long-term deterrence. A formal treaty promised clear advantages: it would codify America’s commitment to Israel’s security, bolster deterrence against regional adversaries, and guarantee large-scale military assistance in times of crisis. Yet successive Israeli governments hesitated. The central concern was a potential loss of autonomy: a treaty would restrict Israel’s freedom of action, require American approval for sensitive military operations, and bind Israel’s hands precisely in situations where speed and unilateral initiative are essential.
The current arrangement, while not a formal defense pact, effectively delivers many of the benefits associated with one without the drawbacks. It offers deep operational coordination, shared real-time intelligence, integrated regional air defense, and the ability to conduct joint action when necessary. Crucially, it does all this without formally limiting Israel’s sovereignty or imposing rigid treaty obligations. In practice, it creates a “hybrid model” in which Israel enjoys the strategic advantages of quasi-alliance integration while retaining independent decision-making.
The broader strategic reality has changed. For years, Israel feared that the United States was withdrawing from the Middle East. Today the opposite is true: the US is re-engaging, strengthening allies, escalating pressure on Iran, and signaling a renewed commitment to the regional balance of power. This shift naturally raises concerns in Israel about over-dependence, yet in practice, it represents a dramatic enhancement of Israel’s strategic position. For the first time in decades, Israel finds itself embedded within a regional defense architecture that magnifies its strengths and compensates for its vulnerabilities.
Israel has not “lost control.” It would be more accurate to say that Israel has entered a fundamentally new framework, one in which it operates shoulder to shoulder with the United States and, increasingly, with key Arab partners. This emerging de facto regional alliance provides Israel with strategic depth, intelligence and logistical support, operational coordination, and a dramatically improved international posture. In the long term, the advantages of this integration far outweigh its limitations.
Prof. Eitan Shamir serves as the head of the BESA Center and as a faculty member in the Department of Political Science at Bar-Ilan University. His latest book is The Art of Military Innovation: Lessons from the IDF, Harvard University Press, 2023 (with Edward Luttwak). This article appeared at the BESA Center, and in the Jerusalem Strategic Tribune in December 2025.
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European-Funded NGO on Palestinian TV: The World Has ‘Gotten Over’ Antisemitism
A woman keeps a candle next to flowers laid as a tribute at Bondi Beach to honor the victims of a mass shooting that targeted a Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach on Sunday, in Sydney, Australia, Dec. 16, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Flavio Brancaleone
The world has “gotten over” Israel’s “claims of antisemitism,” said the head of an EU-funded NGO on official Palestinian Authority (PA) television just a month before the Bondi Beach Hanukkah massacre of Jews.
According to Omar Rahal, director of the SHAMS Human Rights and Democracy Media Center, complaints about antisemitism were all false “claims” by “Netanyahu and his extremist government,” whereas Palestinians are the ones who are the victims of Israel’s attacks:
The Palestinian discourse has gained dominance, and the claims of antisemitism and violent discourse — the world has now gotten over them and there have been direct responses from presidents and state leaders to [Israeli Prime Minister] Netanyahu and the pillars of his extremist government. In other words, go find another topic [to talk about]. They [Israel] are the ones who attacked us.” [emphasis added]
[Official PA TV, Palestine This Morning, Nov. 16, 2025]
Rahal is absolutely correct on one point, however.
Palestinian hate speech, which calls for “Palestine to be free from the river to the sea” and for the globalization of the “Intifada,” has indeed gained dominance.
When that is combined with a world that has “gotten over” claims of antisemitism, attacks on Jews in Israel and around the world inevitably become commonplace. When antisemitism is denied as real, when violence against Jews is erased as a distinct phenomenon, and when Jews are collectively portrayed as aggressors who deserve blame everywhere, then the cost is paid in Jewish lives.
It is also unsurprising that such an outrageous statement would be featured on official PA TV. Considering how PA TV routinely denies the Holocaust, one would be hard-pressed to expect better.
The question here, though, should be: where is the condemnation of the EU and UN for Rahal’s public statements?
Rahal’s SHAMS organization is supported by the EU and proudly advertises its partnership with the UN Economic and Social Council. It incredibly also lists the International Organization for Tolerance as one of its many partners.
Palestinian Media Watch calls on the EU, the UN, and all international donors to examine not the slogans of their funded NGOs, but their actual messages.
Ephraim D. Tepler is a contributor to Palestinian Media Watch (PMW). Itamar Marcus is the Founder and Director of PMW, where a version of this article first appeared.
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Israel Says It Will Respond to Hamas ‘Violation’ of Gaza Truce, Terror Group Denies Responsibility
A drone view shows Palestinians walking past the rubble, following Israeli forces’ withdrawal from the area, amid a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, in Gaza City, Oct. 11, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Dawoud Abu Alkas
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday that Israel would retaliate after a military officer was wounded by a blast in Gaza, while the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas denied responsibility, suggesting the explosive device had been left over from the conflict.
In a speech at a graduation ceremony for Air Force pilots, Netanyahu mentioned the incident in Rafah, part of Gaza where Israeli forces still operate, and said Hamas had made clear it had no plan to disarm as foreseen under the October truce deal.
“Israel will respond accordingly,” he said.
The Israeli military earlier said that an explosive device had detonated against a military vehicle in the Rafah area and that one officer had been lightly injured.
Hamas said the incident had taken place in an area where the Israeli military was in full control and that it had warned that explosives remained in the area and elsewhere since the war, reiterating its commitment to the October 10 ceasefire.
Hamas official Mahmoud Merdawi said in an earlier post on X that mediators had been informed about the issue.
ISRAELI DELEGATION MEETING OFFICIALS IN CAIRO
A 20-point plan issued by US President Donald Trump in September calls for an initial truce followed by steps toward a wider peace. So far, only the first phase has taken effect, including a ceasefire, release of hostages and prisoners, and a partial Israeli withdrawal.
An Israeli delegation met officials from mediating countries in Cairo on Wednesday to discuss efforts to return the remains of the last Israeli hostage, police officer Ran Gvili, from Gaza, Netanyahu’s office said later on Wednesday.
The delegation included officials from the Israeli military, the Shin Bet domestic intelligence service, and the Mossad intelligence service.
Trump’s plan ultimately calls for Hamas to disarm and have no governing role in Gaza, and for Israel to pull out. Hamas has said it will hand over arms only once a Palestinian state is established, which Israel says it will never allow.
Violence has subsided but not stopped since the Gaza truce took effect, with the sides regularly accusing each other of violations. The Hamas-controlled Gazan Health Ministry, which according to analysts has falsified casualty figures, says Israel has killed more than 400 people in the territory while Israel says three soldiers have been killed in terrorist attacks.
Hamas “openly declares it has no intention of disarming, in complete contradiction to President Trump’s 20-point plan,” Netanyahu said.
NETANYAHU ALSO WARNS LEBANESE HEZBOLLAH
Netanyahu said Hezbollah in Lebanon, which Israel severely weakened in strikes last year that also ended in a US-brokered truce, also had no intention to disarm “and we are addressing that as well.”
Israel still needs to settle accounts with Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen as well as Iran itself, he added.
“As these old threats change form, new threats arise morning and evening. We do not seek confrontations, but our eyes are open to every possible danger,” Netanyahu said.
Netanyahu is set to meet with Trump next week, mainly to discuss the next phase of the US president’s Gaza plan.
Hamas said in a statement later on Wednesday that a delegation led by its chief negotiator Khalil al-Hayya had discussed Gaza with Turkey’s foreign minister in Ankara.
Al-Hayya warned against what he described as the continuation of Israeli violations of the ceasefire, saying they were aimed at hindering the move to the next phase of the ceasefire deal.