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Harry Belafonte, singer and civil rights activist who popularized ‘Hava Nagila’ in the US, dies at 96
(New York Jewish Week) — Barrier-smashing singer, actor and civil rights activist Harry Belafonte, who once boasted of being “the most popular Jew in America” because of his rendition of a Hebrew classic, died Tuesday at his longtime Upper West Side home. He was 96.
The New York City native was the one of the first Black artists to achieve widespread commercial success in the United States, and while he was raised Catholic, his life frequently dovetailed with Jewish causes, values and people. Among Belafonte’s many Jewish connections — which included brokering a meeting between Nelson Mandela and Jewish leaders in 1989 — was his marriage to his Jewish second wife, dancer Julie Robinson. The couple, who were married from 1958 to 2004, raised two children, Gina and David.
In 2011, Belafonte revealed in his autobiography, “My Song: A Memoir” that his paternal grandfather was Jewish. Belafonte’s parents were both Jamaican immigrants: his mother, Melvine, was the child of a white mother from Scotland and a Black father, and his father, Harold George Bellanfanti, who later changed the family name, was the son of a Black mother and white Dutch-Jewish father. In his book, Belafonte describes his paternal grandfather, whom he never met, as “a white Dutch Jew who drifted over to the islands after chasing gold and diamonds, with no luck at all.”
Belafonte was born Harold George Bellanfanti Jr., in Harlem on March 1, 1927. His father was largely absent during his childhood; his mother, who struggled with finding work, forged a relationship with a Jewish tailor who taught her how to mend garments. “That tailor gave me my first sense of kinship with Jews, which would deepen over time,” Belfonte wrote in his memoir. He spent a portion of his childhood with his grandmother in Jamaica, but he returned to New York to attend George Washington High School in Washington Heights — where Alan Greenspan and Henry Kissinger were also educated — before dropping out.
Following a stint in the U.S. Navy during World War II, Belafonte was bitten by the acting bug when, working as a janitor’s assistant, he was given a pair of tickets to the American Negro Theater as a gift. “It was there that the universe opened for me,” he told NPR in 2011. “I decided with any device I could possibly find, I wanted to stay in this place. What I had discovered in the theater was power: power to influence, power to know of others and know of other things.”
In the late 1940s, Belafonte enrolled in acting classes, where he met his lifelong friend Sidney Poitier. The impoverished pair would often share a single theater ticket, trading places at intermission. He also befriended Jewish actor Tony Curtis, writing in his memoir: “He lived in the Bronx with his family; why live downtown, he’d say, when he could live uptown for free? And who cared if they still greeted him up there as Bernie Schwartz?”
He and Curtis frequently went to parties together, he wrote, sometimes with the actress Elaine Stritch, “who swore more colorfully than any sailor I’d known,” and “the blunt Jewish comic” Bea Arthur, “who’d start matching wits with Elaine until the two of them had everyone in uncontrollable laughter.”
To pay for acting classes, Belafonte began dabbling in singing at nightclubs, and it was there that a true superstar was born. One of Belafonte’s early successes were his performances of the Hebrew dance hit “Hava Nagila” at the classic downtown folk club the Village Vanguard. His rendition, Belafonte joked to The New York Times in 2017, made him “the most popular Jew in America.”
In that same interview, Belafonte recalled the tough uptown streets of his childhood, and how he was drawn to the fast money his uncle’s number-running business earned. “Everybody in that world were role models in how to survive, how to be tough, how to get through the city, how to con, the daily encounters,” he said. “But my mother saw to it that unless I wanted to live life absent of testicles, she wasn’t going to have me follow her brother Lenny. Somewhere in there is a Sholem Aleichem — a rich story to be told of the lore of that time.”
With his 1953 breakthrough album, “Calypso” — which included his most iconic work, “The Banana Boat Song” — Belafonte “almost single-handedly ignited a craze for Caribbean music,” according to The New York Times’ obituary. “Calypso” climbed to the top of the Billboard album chart shortly after its release and stayed there for 31 weeks; it is reported to be the first album by a solo artist to sell more than a million copies. By 1959 he was the most highly-paid Black performer in history, according to the Times.
Known around the world as the “King of Calypso,” Belafonte recorded and performed a wide range of global and folk classics throughout his wide-ranging musical career — Jewish standards among them. In 1959, he performed “Hine Ma Tov” in England, with what appears to be an Israeli military choir; his 1963 album, “Streets I Have Walked,” includes a rendition of “Erev Shel Shoshanim” (“Evening of Roses”), a popular Jewish wedding song.
Belafonte’s greatest passion, however, was neither acting nor singing — it was civil rights activism. There, too, he worked closely with many Jewish activists, as part of the historic Black-Jewish civil rights alliance of the 1950s and 1960s. But, as he recalled in his memoir, it was racism delivered by a Jewish TV executive that first inspired him to take on racial segregation in the United States.
The executive, a Jew from Montreal named Charles Revson, asked Belafonte to stop hosting white dancers on his performance show, citing the preferences of Southern viewers. Belafonte said he rejected the instruction and let Revson cancel the show. He realized, he wrote, that TV could only reflect societal attitudes, not change them. “To change the culture you had to change the country,” he concluded.
Through his civil rights activism, Bellafonte befriended Martin Luther King Jr. in 1956; the pair remained close until King’s assassination in 1968. “My apartment was a retreat for him,” Belafonte told NPR of King and his 21-room apartment in 2008. “He had his own entrance, his own kitchen. The home became, for him, a place where he could think and reside, take his shoes off, have his collar open and be him.”
Belafonte helped provide the seed money to launch the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and he was one of the lead fundraisers for that organization and King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference. He was “deeply involved” in the 1963 March on Washington and helped fund the Freedom Rides.
Belafonte’s commitment to social justice endured throughout his long life and career. In the 1980s, he helped organize the Live Aid concert, and he served as UNICEF’s goodwill ambassador after Jewish entertainer Danny Kaye pioneered the role. He was also a co-chairman of the Women’s March on Washington in January 2017, along with Gloria Steinem, though ill health kept him from attending.
Though primarily famous for his singing, Belafonte continued to make movies throughout his career; in 1970 he produced and co-starred in “The Angel Levine” alongside the original “Fiddler on the Roof” star Zero Mostel. Based on a story by Bernard Malamud, Belafonte starred as the titular Jewish angel. (The “project had a sociopolitical edge,” the Times noted, as the entertainer’s Harry Belafonte Enterprises hired 15 Black and Hispanic apprentices to work on the film’s crew.)
The cause of Belafonte’s death was congestive heart failure. He is survived by his two children with Robinson; the two children he had with his first wife Marguerite Byrd, Adrienne Biesemeyer and Shari Belafonte; and eight grandchildren. After divorcing Robinson in 2004, he married photographer Pamela Frank in 2008; Frank also survives him, along with stepchildren Sarah Frank and Lindsey Frank and three step-grandchildren.
“There’s just so much left that’s in my basket of possibilities,” Belafonte told The New York Times ahead of his 90th birthday in 2017. “I’m not as young as I feel, or as young as I would consider myself to be. The 90 figure is a blur. But I do know that if there’s anything left for me to do, I had best hurry up and do it, because time is not an ally.”
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Rubio Says Iran War to Last ‘Weeks Not Months,’ No US Ground Troops Needed
A view of a residential building damaged by a strike, amid the US-Israeli conflict with Iran, in Tehran, Iran, March 23, 2026. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
The US expects its operation against Iran to conclude within weeks, not months, and Washington can meet all its objectives without using ground troops, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Friday.
Rubio told reporters after meeting G7 counterparts in France that Washington was “on or ahead of schedule in that operation, and expect to conclude it at the appropriate time here – a matter of weeks, not months.”
While he said Washington could achieve its aims without ground troops, he acknowledged it was deploying some to the region “to give the president maximum optionality and maximum opportunity to adjust the contingencies, should they emerge.”
Washington has dispatched two contingents of thousands of Marines to the region, the first of which is due to arrive around the end of March aboard a huge amphibious assault ship. The Pentagon is also expected to deploy thousands of elite airborne soldiers.
The deployments have raised concerns that the war, which the US and Israel launched on Feb. 28 with airstrikes that killed Iran‘s supreme leader and other top officials, could turn into a prolonged ground battle. Iran‘s response, striking US and Israeli targets in the region as well as civilian targets in Gulf Arab nations and shipping, has severely disrupted global trade in energy and other commodities, raising fears of rising prices and recession.
US President Donald Trump has appeared anxious to wind down the unpopular war, and emphasized this week what he has described as productive negotiations aimed at a diplomatic solution to the war, despite repeated assertions from Tehran that no such talks have begun. On Thursday, Trump extended a deadline by 10 days for Iran to reopen the blockaded Strait of Hormuz or face attacks against its civilian energy grid.
Rubio discussed with G7 foreign ministers the possibility that Iran, even after the conflict ends, could try to impose shipping tolls through the Strait of Hormuz. Rubio said European and Asian countries that benefit from trade through the waterway should contribute to efforts to secure free passage through the strait, downplaying the US dependence on the trade.
NEW STRIKES ON IRAN
Iranian media reported strikes on Iran‘s decommissioned heavy-water nuclear research reactor and a factory producing yellowcake uranium late on Friday, and said there were no radiation leaks or danger arising from either attack. Iran informed the International Atomic Energy Agency there was no increase in off-site radiation levels at the yellowcake facility, the IAEA said on X, adding that it would look into the report.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said on X that Israel, in coordination with the US, had also hit two steel factories and a power plant. “Attack contradicts POTUS extended deadline for diplomacy. Iran will exact HEAVY price for Israeli crimes,” Araqchi said, using an acronym for the president.
A senior Iranian told Reuters that Tehran had not decided whether to respond to a 15-point proposal the US sent this week after attacks on industrial and nuclear infrastructure on Friday. The official said Iran had expected its response to be delivered on Friday or Saturday, but said the continuing strikes while the US was seeking talks was “intolerable.”
The US proposal, sent via Pakistan two days ago, is reported to include demands ranging from dismantling Iran‘s nuclear and missile programs to relinquishing control of the world’s most important trade route for energy supplies.
The war has spread across the Middle East, killing thousands of people and causing a major disruption to energy supplies, hitting the global economy with soaring oil, gas, and fertilizer prices that have fueled inflation fears.
In Iran, more than 1,900 people have been killed and at least 20,000 injured, said Maria Martinez of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
Attacks on Israel by Iran‘s Lebanese ally Hezbollah have also prompted an Israeli campaign that has displaced a fifth of Lebanon’s population.
IRAN STILL POSSESSES MISSILES
The United States, which has set out to neutralize Iran‘s long-range strike capabilities, can only confirm that about a third of the country’s missile arsenal has been destroyed, five people familiar with the US intelligence told Reuters.
As the damage mounts, Gulf Arab states are telling the US that any deal must not merely end the war but also permanently curb Iran‘s missile and drone capabilities and ensure global energy supplies are never again weaponized, four Gulf sources said.
Far from being laid low, Iran‘s clerical rulers and the increasingly powerful Guards are still peppering the region with airstrikes, driving up energy prices and roiling financial markets.
While a third of Iran‘s missile stock may still be available for use, another third is likely to be damaged or buried in tunnels, some of which could be recovered once fighting stops, said four of the sources familiar with US intelligence, who asked to remain anonymous.
One source said the intelligence on Iran‘s drone capability was similar, with about a third most likely destroyed.
Stock markets continued their slide on Friday, while the Brent crude oil benchmark topped $112, having risen more than 50% since the war began.
In the US. where Trump is politically vulnerable to rising fuel prices, diesel in California hit an all-time high at an average $7.17 a gallon, the American Automobile Association said.
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More Than 400 Hezbollah Fighters Killed in New War With Israel So Far, Sources Say
Smoke rises after an Israeli strike, amid escalating hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah, as the US-Israeli conflict with Iran continues, in southern Lebanon, March 24, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Stringer
More than 400 fighters from Hezbollah have been killed since the Iran-backed Lebanese terrorist group launched the opening salvoes of a new war with Israel on March 2, two sources familiar with Hezbollah‘s count told Reuters.
The figure was the first overall toll provided of Hezbollah fighters killed in Israel‘s expanding air and ground campaign in Lebanon. The group has issued sporadic notices for a few individual fighters but has not provided an official overall toll.
In a 2023-2024 war with Israel, Hezbollah issued daily death notices for each fighter killed and said after the war that some 5,000 had been killed in total.
The Israeli military gave a higher toll of the group’s latest losses than the sources, saying this week it has killed at least 700 Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon, including hundreds of members of the group’s elite Radwan Force.
Lebanon’s health ministry said on Friday that Israeli strikes and ground operations had killed 1,142 people in Lebanon. They include 122 children, 83 women, and 42 medical personnel. The health ministry does not otherwise distinguish between civilians and combatants.
On Friday, the Israeli military said that a soldier and a combat officer had been severely injured overnight during its operations in Lebanon. The military has previously said four of its soldiers have been killed in fighting in southern Lebanon.
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Iran-Linked Hackers Breach FBI Director’s Personal Email, Publish Photos and Documents
The website used by the Handala Hack Team, an Iran-linked hacker group which has claimed credit for the breach of FBI Director Kash Patel’s personal email, is shown on a screen in Washington DC, US, March 27, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Raphael Satter
Iran–linked hackers have broken into FBI Director Kash Patel’s personal email inbox, publishing photographs of the director and other documents to the internet, the hackers and the bureau said on Friday.
On their website, the hacker group Handala Hack Team said Patel “will now find his name among the list of successfully hacked victims.” The hackers published a series of personal photographs of Patel sniffing and smoking cigars, riding in an antique convertible, and making a face while taking a picture of himself in the mirror with a large bottle of rum.
The FBI confirmed Patel’s emails had been targeted. In a statement, bureau spokesman Ben Williamson said, “we have taken all necessary steps to mitigate potential risks associated with this activity” and that the data involved was “historical in nature and involves no government information.”
Handala, which presents itself as a group of pro-Palestinian vigilante hackers, is considered by Western researchers to be one of several personas used by Iranian government cyber-intelligence units. Handala recently claimed the hack of Michigan-based medical devices and services provider Stryker on March 11, saying they had deleted a massive trove of company data.
Handala did not return messages. Reuters could not access its website late on Friday.
Alongside the photographs of Patel, the hackers published a sample of more than 300 emails, which appear to show a mix of personal and work correspondence dating between 2010 and 2019.
Reuters was not able to independently authenticate the Patel messages, but the personal Gmail address that Handala claims to have broken into matches the address linked to Patel in previous data breaches preserved by the dark web intelligence firm District 4 Labs. Alphabet -owned Google, which runs Gmail, did not respond to a request for comment.
‘MAKE THEM FEEL VULNERABLE’
Iran–linked hackers – who initially kept a low profile after the United States and Israel launched coordinated strikes against the Islamic Republic last month – have increasingly boasted of their cyber operations as the conflict drags on.
In addition to the hack against Stryker, Handala on Thursday claimed to have published the personal data of dozens of defense company Lockheed Martin employees stationed in the Middle East. In a statement, Lockheed Martin said it was aware of the reports and had policies and procedures in place “to mitigate cyber threats to our business.”
Gil Messing, chief of staff at Israeli cybersecurity company Check Point, said the hack-and-leak operation against Patel was part of Iran‘s strategy to embarrass US officials and “make them feel vulnerable.”
The Iranians, he said, are “firing whatever they have.”
It is not unusual for foreign hackers to target senior officials’ personal emails, and breaches and leaks both happen periodically. Hackers famously broke into Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s personal Gmail account ahead of the 2016 election and published much of the data to the WikiLeaks site. In 2015, teenage hackers broke into then-CIA director John Brennan’s personal AOL account and leaked data about US intelligence officials.
Relatively unsophisticated breaches of this nature are in line with a U. intelligence assessment reviewed by Reuters on March 2. The assessment said Iran and its proxies could respond to the killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei with low-level hacks against US digital networks.
Iran–linked hackers may have other emails in reserve.
Last year, another group operating under the pseudonym “Robert” told Reuters it was considering disclosing 100 gigabytes of data stolen from White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and other figures close to US President Donald Trump.
Reuters has not been able to verify the claim and the group has not responded to messages in several months.