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Michael Shafir, who played a key role in Holocaust memory in his native Romania, dies at 78
BUCHAREST (JTA) — When Michael Shafir moved to Israel from his native Romania as a teenager in the 1960s, it wasn’t because the Jewish teen was burning with Zionist fervor. Instead, it was the first country that agreed to take him.
“I would have left for wherever there was no communism, because I could no longer live with the feeling that you say one thing outside the house and another at home,” Shafir once said in an interview with Romanian media.
More than four decades later, Shafir would return to the country where he was born, as a professor of international relations. From his post at Babes-Bolyai University, in northwestern Romania, Shafir studied and published extensively on how post-communist right-wing nationalists distorted the past and trivialized or denied the Holocaust in Eastern Europe.
Shafir, who died Nov. 9 at 78, was known in his work and in his personal life for his straightforward and often humorous presentation of difficult truths.
“He was among the first to see the early emergence of nationalism in the [Romanian] communist regime’s politics,” his friend and colleague Liviu Rotman, an Israeli historian of Romanian Jewry, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Rotman said Shafir’s 2004 book “Between denial and trivialization. Holocaust denial in post-communist countries in Central and Eastern Europe” represented a “real encyclopedia” of Holocaust denial, as it outlined three forms that Shafir observed in post-communist states — outright, deflective (which “minimizes own-nation participation”) and selective (a combination of the other two). Shafir also took aim at what he called “comparative trivialization” of the Holocaust, or denying its uniqueness by equating it with communist crimes.
“I used to joke with Michael and told him that he produced a Mendeleev Table of Holocaust denial,” Rotman wrote on Facebook after his friend’s death, referring to the formal name for the periodic table that organizes elements according to their characteristics.
Known in Romania for his irreverent sense of humor and his chain smoking, Shafir’s massive figure wearing a trench coat — and occasionally a hat — could often be seen in the threshold of the conferences and events he attended.
“He was a person with an exceptional sense of humor, who always sent his friends jokes, who always found things to laugh about,” Jewish studies scholar Felicia Waldman told JTA.
“He liked to share everything he discovered, everything he thought,” added Waldman, who also recalled Shafir’s “undiplomatic” vehemence. “Sometimes that created problems for him.”
Shafir promoted his ideas in books and scholarly writing and conferences, but also in the Romanian press, where he proved to be a redoubtable polemicist. As a member of the International Commission for the Holocaust in Romania, he worked to make sure that people in his country understood the truth about the Holocaust and Romanian authorities’ collaboration with the Nazi regime. That history was obscured during the communist era and contested after it.
The commission was established by Romanian president Ion Iliescu in 2003 and headed by Romanian-born Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel. Shafir and his fellow commission members concluded that between 280,000 and 380,000 Jews were murdered in territories under Romanian control during World War II.
In 2004, their report was officially adopted by the Romanian state, which for the first time acknowledged its participation in the destruction of the European Jews.
“Today’s negationism can no longer have the excuse ‘I’ve not read, I’ve haven’t access to information,’” Shafir said in a podcast by the Wiesel Institute in 2021, in which he warns about the crafty and convoluted nature of most contemporary Holocaust denial.
Shafir was still working with the Elie Wiesel National Institute for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania at the time of his death, which the institute and his family members confirmed.
Born in Bucharest in 1944, Shafir managed to move to Israel as a teenager in 1961, during one of the periods when Romania relaxed emigration rules for its Jews. He had run afoul of the Communist regime and sought to escape it.
In Israel, Shafir served in the army before moving to Munich, to work as a researcher on audiences at Radio Free Europe, the U.S.-funded radio station for communist Europe. From then on he balanced journalism with academic work: He then returned to Israel, earning a bachelor’s degree in political science and English literature at Hebrew University while directing foreign news at the Kol Israel radio station, a position he held until 1982. He had just earned a political science PhD at Hebrew University after writing a thesis on the Romanian intelligentsia under communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu.
Shafir rejoined Radio Free Europe in the mid 1980s and held positions there until well after the fall of the Iron Curtain. His return to Romania and reclamation of his Romanian citizenship in 2005 inspired the country’s progressive left.
“Shafir meant a lot to me; he’s been a reference for his honesty and intellectual courage, and someone capable, like not many others, to review his positions when new data or historical sources asked for it,” Romanian-American software engineer-turned-historian Andrei Ursu told JTA.
Ursu was recently appointed scientific director of the Institute of the Romanian 1989 Revolution, an organization whose mission is to study that year’s Romanian anticommunist revolution. Two of his great-grandparents and a grandfather were killed during the Holocaust.
Ursu — whose father Gheorghe died after being savagely beaten while in politically motivated detention by Romania’s Communist secret police, the infamous Securitate — has been fighting for decades to combat the whitewashing of the Securitate in the country’s public discourse.
He described Shafir as “a person with an endless humor” and “without the exaggerated vanity common to many Romanian intellectuals.” Despite his frail health, Ursu said, Shafir agreed to review part of Ursu’s latest editorial project on the 1989 Romanian anti-communist revolution, “The Fall of a Dictator.”
Like other specialists who collaborated with Shafir, Ursu praised his work ethics and the precision of his sourcing and investigative work.
His media comments and public appearances were frequently peppered with jokes and anecdotes. In 2019, while speaking in an interview about the tens of thousands of Jews whom Ceausescu let emigrate in exchange for cash payments from Israel, Shafir told an old Romanian joke that starts with the Romanian dictator visiting a cooperative producing corn.
“How much do you get for a ton of maize?” Ceausescu asked the apparatchik in charge of the cooperative. “Just that? I get more if I sell 10 Jews.” To which the apparatchik retorts: “Then it’d be good if we start sowing Jews.”
In the interview, Shafir also recalled that the Jewish community headquarters in Bucharest used to display a sign warning gentiles desperate to get a visa to Israel and escape communism that “no conversions are accepted.”
“In the end, a conversion is much less dangerous than crossing the Danube swimming,” Shafir observed.
Although Shafir left Israel, he remained close to his family there and invested in the country’s politics. An activist with Peace Now who defined himself as a “critical Zionist,” Shafir rejected characterizations of Israel as an apartheid state but saw the Israeli continued military presence in the Palestinian territories as incompatible with democracy in the long term.
“He was very much worried about our future here in a country that is drifting to the right,” his daughter, Maurit Beeri, wrote on Facebook after her father’s death. She said he had recently spent time in Israel with his family, including his grandchildren.
Shafir’s body lay in state Nov. 13 at one of his university’s buildings in Cluj, Romania, where he lived with his wife, Aneta Feldman-Shafir.
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Netanyahu’s pardon request is a staggering act of hypocrisy — and it should be granted, with one condition
It’s hard to imagine a more staggering act of hypocrisy than Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s request for a pardon, given his own public and legal arguments over the past several years. This is the same man who stood before Israel’s Supreme Court and declared there was no problem with serving as prime minister while under criminal indictment — insisting he’d have “no issues” running the country during a trial, if allowed to run for the job.
Now, in documents submitted to President Isaac Herzog Sunday, he wants the very same trial paused so he can focus on running the country. The audacity is jaw-dropping.
Worse still, the request is wrapped in the claim that a pardon would “heal the national divide” — a divide he personally ignited the moment indictments were filed in 2019, when he unleashed a furious campaign against the police, prosecutors, judges and then-attorney general Avichai Mandelblit. This isn’t merely gaslighting but a form of extortion. Until Netanyahu launched his demonization campaign against the courts, the Supreme Court was one of Israel’s most trusted institutions. He poisoned that trust — and now plays peacemaker.
At the core of this crisis stands a simple principle: equality before the law. No Israeli — not a general, not a mayor, not a cabinet minister — is exempt from accountability. And yet one man now tries to rewrite the rules because he can weaponize politics and public pressure.
Some may cite the 1980s “Bus 300 Affair,” when President Chaim Herzog — the current president’s father — pardoned senior officials from the Shin Bet security agency involved in executing captured terrorists. But the comparison collapses immediately: those officials admitted guilt, resigned their posts, and accepted responsibility.
Netanyahu — who is standing trial for bribery, fraud and breach of trust — has not yet agreed to admit anything.
His allies, meanwhile, are waving around President Donald Trump’s pressure on Israel’s president as if it were helpful. It is, of course, an outrageous intrusion into Israel’s sovereignty — though Trump, volatile and vulgar as ever, will not care. We should expect escalation: threats about military aid, tariffs on Israeli exports — whatever suits his fancy. He slapped illegal tariffs on Canada in October because of a commercial he disliked. It is not paranoid to assume Netanyahu is coordinating the playbook — which could add treason to the list of crimes.
A clear and present danger
The implications stretch far beyond Netanyahu. If a sitting leader can wage a domestic and international campaign to pardon himself, then accountability collapses. How can any citizen believe the justice system exists for the public, rather than for the powerful? In Russia and Turkey, they cannot. Israel cannot allow itself to join that list.
Yet the question is unavoidable: should Israel consider a pardon in exchange for Netanyahu’s permanent retirement from public life? Opposition voices have floated the idea. It deserves consideration — but it comes with massive pitfalls. Such a deal would spare Netanyahu a verdict and spare Israel the catharsis of a resounding election defeat next fall — a defeat every credible poll suggests is on the horizon.
It could crown his fraudulent narrative of victimhood: Netanyahu the martyr, crucified by elites. That risks deepening the national wound rather than healing it. After all, a resounding Likud loss — a party now reeking with historically global levels of corruption — is oxygen Israel desperately needs.
There’s also a practical problem: Israeli law offers no clean mechanism to tie a pardon to a permanent political ban. One could sign a document or make a declaration — but enforcement would rely entirely on trust. And who trusts Netanyahu? The only reliable barrier would be a formal “moral turpitude” finding — until his loyalists rewrite that statute too.
There’s another reason not to wait for an electoral loss: it is obvious to anyone paying attention that Netanyahu’s camp will try to skew or even falsify the results of an election. The obsession with power is absolute. They will surely attempt to disqualify Arab parties that are an important element of the opposition. Expect efforts to suppress Arab turnout, perhaps even stoking street violence to frighten voters away from the polls. Those who think this warning is cynical simply do not know the players involved. They have no limits.
The venom Netanyahu has injected into Israel’s civic bloodstream is a clear and present danger to the state’s future.
Which is why I reluctantly believe a pardon should be considered, but on one immovable condition: a full personal admission of guilt — spoken aloud by Netanyahu himself. Only that could puncture the cultish bubble sustaining him. And absolutely, under no circumstances, should a pardon allow him to retain or regain power. A leader cannot be pardoned for abusing power and then allowed to keep the very same power.
Years ago, between Israel’s endless election cycles, Netanyahu went on TV and swore he would never weaken the judiciary or interfere in his own trial. “No tricks and no shticks,” he promised — an immortal phrase. We got tsunamis of tricks, and rivers of shticks, and this was no surprise. Now comes Olympic-level hypocrisy as the cherry on top.
This same Netanyahu once claimed, in the 1990s, that prime ministers must be term-limited because power corrupts. And in 2008, attacking then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, he said: “A prime minister who is up to his neck in investigations has no moral or public mandate to make such fateful decisions for the State of Israel. There is a real and well-founded fear he will make decisions based on political survival, not the national interest.”
The only thing that has changed since then is the identity of the man up to his neck. Israel must not permit this man to stand above the law.
The post Netanyahu’s pardon request is a staggering act of hypocrisy — and it should be granted, with one condition appeared first on The Forward.
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Trump Confirms Conversation with Venezuela’s Maduro
Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro holds Simon Bolivar’s sword as he addresses members of the armed forces, Bolivarian Militia, police, and civilians during a rally against a possible escalation of US actions toward the country, at Fort Tiuna military base in Caracas, Venezuela, November 25, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Leonardo Fernandez Viloria
US President Donald Trump confirmed on Sunday that he had spoken with Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, but did not provide details on what the two leaders discussed.
“I don’t want to comment on it. The answer is yes,” Trump said when asked if he had spoken with Maduro. He was speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One.
The New York Times first reported Trump had spoken with Maduro earlier this month and discussed a possible meeting between them in the United States.
“I wouldn’t say it went well or badly, it was a phone call,” Trump said regarding the conversation.
The revelation of the phone call comes as Trump continues to use bellicose rhetoric regarding Venezuela, while also entertaining the possibility of diplomacy.
On Saturday, Trump said the airspace above and surrounding Venezuela should be considered “closed in its entirety,” but gave no further details, stirring anxiety and confusion in Caracas as his administration ramps up pressure on Maduro’s government.
When asked whether his airspace comments meant strikes against Venezuela were imminent, Trump said: “Don’t read anything into it.”
The Trump administration has been weighing Venezuela-related options to combat what it has portrayed as Maduro’s role in supplying illegal drugs that have killed Americans. The socialist Venezuelan president has denied having any links to the illegal drug trade.
Reuters has reported the options under US consideration include an attempt to overthrow Maduro, and that the US military is poised for a new phase of operations after a massive military buildup in the Caribbean and nearly three months of strikes on suspected drug boats off Venezuela’s coast.
Human rights groups have condemned the strikes as illegal extrajudicial killings of civilians, and some US allies have expressed growing concerns that Washington may be violating international law.
Trump said he would look into whether the US military had carried out a second strike in the Caribbean that killed survivors during a September operation, adding he would not have wanted such a strike.
U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has said the strikes are lawful but are intended to be “lethal.”
Trump told military service members last week the US would “very soon” begin land operations to stop suspected Venezuelan drug traffickers.
Maduro and senior members of his administration have not commented on the call. Asked about it on Sunday, Jorge Rodriguez, the head of Venezuela’s National Assembly, said the call was not the topic of his press conference, where he announced a lawmaker investigation into US boat strikes in the Caribbean.
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US Sees Progress After Talks in Florida with Ukraine, but More Work Needed to Reach Deal
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, and US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner meet with a Ukrainian delegation in Hallandale Beach, Florida, US, November 30, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Eva Marie Uzcategui
US and Ukrainian officials held what both sides called productive talks on Sunday about a Russia peace deal, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio expressing optimism about progress despite challenges to ending the more than 3-year-long war.
Rubio met with a Ukrainian delegation led by a new chief negotiator in Florida, his home state, for talks that he said were meant to create a pathway for Ukraine to remain sovereign and independent.
“We continue to be realistic about how difficult this is, but optimistic, particularly given the fact that as we’ve made progress, I think there is a shared vision here that this is not just about ending the war,” Rubio told reporters after the talks concluded. “It is about securing Ukraine’s future, a future that we hope will be more prosperous than it’s ever been.”
The discussions were a follow-up to a new set of negotiations that began with a fresh US blueprint for peace. Critics said the plan initially favored Russia, which started the conflict with a 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
Special envoy Steve Witkoff and US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, were also present representing the US side. Witkoff leaves on Monday for Moscow, where he is expected to meet Russian counterparts for talks this week.
“There’s more work to be done. This is delicate,” Rubio said. “There are a lot of moving parts, and obviously there’s another party involved here … that will have to be a part of the equation, and that will continue later this week, when Mr. Witkoff travels to Moscow.”
Trump has expressed frustration at not being able to end the war. He pledged as a presidential candidate to do so in one day and has said he was surprised it has been so hard, given what he calls a strong relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has largely resisted concessions to stop the fighting.
Trump’s team has pressured Ukraine to make significant concessions itself, including giving up territory to Russia.
The talks shifted on Sunday with a change in leadership from the Ukrainian side. A new chief negotiator, national security council secretary Rustem Umerov, led the discussions for Kyiv after the resignation on Friday of previous team leader Andriy Yermak, chief of staff to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, amid a corruption scandal at home.
“Ukraine’s got some difficult little problems,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One on Sunday, referring to the corruption scandal, which he said was “not helpful.” He repeated his view that both Russia and Ukraine wanted to end the war and said there was a good chance a deal could be reached.
Umerov thanked the United States and its officials for their support. “US is hearing us, US is supporting us, US is walking besides us,” he said in English as the negotiations began.
After the meeting, he declared it productive. “We discussed all the important matters that are important for Ukraine, for Ukrainian people and US was super supportive,” Umerov said.
The Sunday talks took place near Miami at a private club, Shell Bay, developed by Witkoff’s real estate business.
Zelensky had said he expected the results from previous meetings in Geneva would be “hammered out” on Sunday. In Geneva, Ukraine presented a counter-offer to proposals laid out by US Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll to leaders in Kyiv some two weeks ago.
Ukraine’s leadership, facing a domestic political crisis fueled by a probe into major graft in the energy sector, is seeking to push back on Moscow-friendly terms as Russian forces grind forward along the front lines of the war.
Last week, Zelensky warned Ukrainians, who are weathering widespread blackouts from Russian air strikes on the energy system, that his country was at its most difficult moment yet but pledged not to make a bad deal.
“As a weatherman would say, there’s the inherent difficulty in forecasting because the atmosphere is a chaotic system where small changes can lead to large outcomes,” Kyiv’s first deputy foreign minister Sergiy Kyslytsya, also part of the delegation, wrote on X from Miami on Sunday.