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Three-time war veteran and longtime JTA correspondent Tom Tugend dies at 97
(JTA) — It was the kind of story that Tom Tugend loved to tell, except he lived it.
He left Berlin, aged 13, on Adolf Hitler’s birthday, in 1939, driven out by the ideology reflected in the swastikas on the banners fluttering in the streets. Six years later, he was back in Germany as an American soldier interrogating the Nazis who had driven his family out.
“I had been a refugee a few years before,” Tugend told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in 2021. “They kicked me out, they were the masters. And suddenly they couldn’t be nice enough, and couldn’t do enough for us. And of course, each one, some of his best friends were Jews.”
Tom Tugend, who fought in three wars — two for the United States and one for Israel — spent decades as Jewish media’s gentleman correspondent, covering, among other beats, Hollywood.
He died at his home in Sherman Oaks, California, on Wednesday at 97, his daughter Alina said.
“His authenticity came through to anyone who knew him,” Alina Tugend told JTA Thursday. “He was a hero to many people.”
Tugend was unfailingly kind and soft-spoken, including in an interview last year with the JTA, in which he shared story after story, from firing swastika-emblazoned anti-tank guns in Egypt to his experience facing antisemitism as a young German immigrant in the United States.
Born in 1925, Tugend was raised in a well-to-do German Jewish family. His father, Gustav Tugendreich, a respected pediatrician, understood the danger of Hitler’s rise and left for the United States in the mid-1930s after securing a lectureship at Bryn Mawr College.
When he was able to bring them over, he urged his family to follow him, but life remained good enough in Germany that they resisted until it was almost too late — they left four months before World War II started.
It was Hitler’s 50th birthday, April 20, and the city’s trees and poles were draped with massive swastika banners. “Gee, I mean, they may not like the Jews, but it’s very nice of them to give us such a nice sendoff,” Tugend recalled last year with a laugh.
The transition to life in the United States was not easy. The family encountered antisemitism in their new home.
In eighth grade, for example, Tugend’s class read Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice,” which famously includes Shylock, a Jewish moneylender, as a main character. One of Tugend’s classmates, whom he had considered a friend, raised his hand and asked the teacher, “Wouldn’t you rather buy from an American than a Jew?”
“I don’t generally talk about it because it goes so counter, it sounds almost disloyal that you say I had a more difficult time initially in the United States than I had in Germany,” Tugend recalled.
He was restless, and joined the army when he was 18 — where he found more antisemitism. He was deployed in March 1944 and spent time in Marseille helping the French army fight SS units. When his commanders learned he spoke fluent German, they sent him to that country to interview Nazis.
He returned to the United States in March 1946 but remained unsettled. Two years later he saw an opportunity.
“Since a Jewish state is established only every 2,000 years, I was afraid I might not be around the next time,” he said, so he enlisted in the nascent and notoriously strapped Israeli army, which got its material where it could.
Tugend served as a squad leader in an English-speaking anti-tank unit, where he wound up using German guns that featured large swastikas on the barrel.
When that war ended, Tugend returned to California to complete his journalism degree. That stay was short-lived, too — he was drafted again in 1950 but was spared combat. Instead, he went to San Francisco to edit an Army newspaper.
After Korea, Tugend said, he ran out of wars. He shifted his focus to writing. He spent 30 years working at the University of California, Los Angeles and also had a parallel career in Jewish journalism, starting in 1964. He would go on to write for the Jerusalem Post, the Jewish Chronicle and the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, and he spent decades as the Jewish Telegraphic Agency’s West Coast correspondent.
Lisa Hostein, the longtime former JTA editor-in-chief and current executive editor of Hadassah Magazine, remembered meeting Tugend on a Jewish press trip to Argentina in 1986. She told JTA last year that Tugend was “always the consummate professional and gentleman.”
Over the years, Tugend was honored by the Greater Los Angeles Press Club and the Society of Professional Journalists. He also received a lifetime achievement award from the American Jewish Press Association.
His last published article was last month in the Jewish Journal of Los Angeles; it was an obituary for Edward Robin, a Los Angeles philanthropist and businessman, who was 80, 17 years Tugend’s junior.
Weeks before his own death, Tugend infused the article with his gentle and generous warmth. “A mere listing of his leadership roles in Jewish organizations worldwide would call for a book-length article,” Tugend wrote about Robin.
Honored at last month’s Jewish Journal gala, which he attended, Tugend never lost his love of writing. “You still get a certain kick in seeing your byline,” he told JTA last year.
Tugend is survived by his wife of 66 years, Rachel, and their daughters Alina Tugend, Orlee Raymond and Ronit Austgen.
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Trump Wants Say on Iran’s Next Leader, Claims Tehran Calling US About a Deal
US President Donald Trump speaks on the day he honors reigning Major League Soccer (MLS) champion Inter Miami CF players and team officials with an event in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC, US, March 5, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
US President Donald Trump claimed the right to join Iran in deciding its next leader as the war escalated on Thursday, with US and Israeli jets hitting areas across the country and Gulf cities coming under renewed bombardment.
In a phone interview with Reuters, Trump said Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of the late Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei – a hardliner who has been considered a favorite to succeed his father – was an unlikely choice.
“We want to be involved in the process of choosing the person who is going to lead Iran into the future,” he said.
Trump also encouraged Iranian Kurdish forces to go on the offensive.
“I’d be all for it,” said Trump, whose administration has had contact with Iranian Kurdish groups since the US-Israeli strikes began. He would not say whether the United States would provide air cover for any Kurdish offensive.
The attack is a major political gamble for the Republican president, with opinion polls showing little public support and Americans concerned about the rise in gasoline prices caused by disruption to energy supplies. Trump dismissed that concern.
He said later in the day that Tehran was reaching out to the United States about making a deal amid US and Israeli strikes on Iran, adding that further action to reduce pressure on oil was imminent.
“They’re calling, they’re saying ‘how do we make a deal?’ I said you’re being a little bit late,” said Trump, speaking at an event with the Inter Miami soccer team at the White House.
Trump touted the US military actions in Iran, saying they were destroying Tehran’s missile and drone capability and that “their navy is gone – 24 ships in three days,” as he called on Iranian diplomats to request asylum and help shape a better country.
“We also urge Iranian diplomats around the world to request asylum and to help us shape a new and better Iran,” he said.
ISRAELIS WARN TEHRAN RESIDENTS
On the war’s sixth day, Iran launched a series of attacks on Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar. Fire crews in Bahrain extinguished a blaze at a refinery following a missile strike.
Two drone attacks targeted an Iranian opposition camp in Iraqi Kurdistan, as well as an oil field operated by an American firm, security sources said.
The Israeli military warned residents to evacuate areas including eastern Tehran, while Iranian media reported blasts were heard in various parts of the capital. An air attack killed 17 people in a guest house on a road northwest of the capital, Iranian state television said.
MANY MUNITIONS, IRAN‘S ATTACKS DROPPED
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Admiral Brad Cooper, who leads US forces in the Middle East, said that the US has enough munitions to continue its bombardment indefinitely.
“Iran is hoping that we cannot sustain this, which is a really bad miscalculation,” Hegseth told reporters at Central Command headquarters in Florida. “Our munitions are full up and our will is ironclad.”
Cooper said the US had now hit at least 30 Iranian ships, including a large drone carrier that he said was the size of a World War Two aircraft carrier. He added that B-2 bombers had in the past few hours dropped dozens of 2,000 penetrator bombs targeting deeply buried ballistic missile launchers, and that bombings were also targeting Iran‘s missile production facilities.
Iran‘s ballistic missile attacks had decreased by 90% since the first day of the war, while drone attacks had decreased by 83% in that time frame, he said.
WARNING SIRENS BLARE IN MULTIPLE NATIONS
Azerbaijan on Thursday became the latest country drawn in, as it accused Iran of firing drones at its territory and ordered its southern airspace closed for 12 hours. Iran, which has a significant Azeri minority, denied it had targeted its neighbor, but the episode underlined how rapidly the war has spread since the surprise US and Israeli airstrikes that killed Khamenei on Saturday.
Along with the gleaming cities of the Gulf, in easy range of Iranian drones and missiles, Cyprus and Turkey have both been targeted. European nations have pledged to deploy ships to the eastern Mediterranean and hostilities have been seen as far afield as waters off Sri Lanka, where a US submarine sank an Iranian warship on Tuesday, killing 80 crew members.
In Iran, at least 1,230 people have been killed, according to the Iranian Red Crescent Society, including 175 schoolgirls and staff killed at a primary school in Minab in the country’s south on the first day of the war. Another 77 have been killed in Lebanon, its Health Ministry says. Thousands fled southern Beirut on Thursday after Israel warned residents to leave.
NETANYAHU SAYS ‘MUCH WORK STILL LIES AHEAD’
Shares on Wall Street fell on Thursday, weighed by surging oil prices, as the economic impact of the campaign intensified, with countries around the world cut off from a fifth of global supplies of oil and liquefied natural gas and air transport still facing chaos and global logistics increasingly snarled.
On Thursday, Iran‘s Revolutionary Guards said they had hit a US tanker in the northern part of the Gulf and the vessel was on fire, the latest of numerous reports of such attacks.
Visiting an air force base in the south of the country, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel’s achievements so far in Iran had been “great” but that “much work still lies ahead.”
Iran‘s foreign minister said Washington would “bitterly regret” the precedent it had set by sinking a ship in international waters without warning. A commander of the Revolutionary Guards, General Kioumars Heydari, told state TV: “We have decided to fight Americans wherever they are.”
The body of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, killed in the first hours of the US-Israeli air campaign in the first assassination of a country’s top ruler by an airstrike, had been due to lie in state in a Tehran prayer hall from Wednesday evening to launch three days of mourning.
But the memorial, expected to draw many thousands of mourners to the streets, was abruptly postponed.
Two sources familiar with Israel’s battle plans said that Israel, having killed many Iranian leaders, was now planning to enter a second phase when it would target underground bunkers where Iran stores its missiles.
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Israel Decided to Kill Khamenei in November, Defense Minister Says
Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz and his Greek counterpart Nikos Dendias make statements to the press, at the Ministry of Defense in Athens Greece, Jan. 20, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Louisa Gouliamaki
Israel took the decision to kill Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in November and was planning to carry out the operation around six months later, Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Thursday.
Khamenei was killed in the first hours of the US-Israeli air campaign that began on Saturday in the first assassination of a country’s top ruler by an airstrike.
The joint air assault is nearing the end of its first week after opening salvos killed the country’s leaders and set off a regional war, with Iranian attacks in Israel, the Gulf and Iraq, and Israeli attacks against Iran’s ally Hezbollah in Lebanon.
“Already in November we were convened with the prime minister in a very tight forum and the prime minister [Benjamin Netanyahu] set the goal of eliminating Khamenei,” Katz told Israel‘s N12 TV news. The timing was set for mid-2026, he said.
The plan was eventually shared with the Washington and brought forward around January after protests broke out Iran, when Israel was concerned its pressured clerical rulers might launch an attack against Israel and US assets in the Middle East, Katz said.
Israel has said its aim is to eliminate the existential threat it sees in Iran’s nuclear program and ballistic missile project, and to bring about regime change. Iran’s rulers have so far shown no sign of relinquishing power.
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China in Talks With Iran to Allow Safe Oil and Gas Passage Through Hormuz, Sources Say
An oil tanker unloads crude oil at a crude oil terminal in Zhoushan, Zhejiang province, China, July 4, 2018. Picture taken July 4, 2018. Photo: REUTERS/Stringer
China is in talks with Iran to allow crude oil and Qatari liquefied natural gas vessels safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz as the US-Israeli war on Tehran intensifies, three diplomatic sources told Reuters.
The war, which entered its sixth day on Thursday, has left the critical shipping passageway all-but shut, with countries around the world cut off from a fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas supplies.
China, which has friendly relations with Iran and relies heavily on Middle Eastern supplies, is unhappy about the Islamic Republic’s move to paralyze shipping through the Strait and is pressing Tehran to allow safe passage for the vessels, according to the sources.
The world’s second-largest economy gets about 45% of its oil from the Strait.
Ship tracking data showed a vessel called the Iron Maiden passed through the Strait overnight after changing its signaling to “China-owner,” but far more sailings will be needed to calm global markets.
Crude oil prices are up more than 15% since the conflict began amid production stoppages as Tehran attacks energy facilities in the Gulf as well as ships crossing the Strait.
Its missiles have also reached as far afield as Cyprus, Azerbaijan, and Turkey, destabilizing global markets and prompting major economies to warn about inflation risks.
Crude tanker transits through the strait fell to four vessels on March 1, the day after hostilities broke out, versus an average of 24 a day since January, Vortexa vessel-tracking data showed.
Around 300 oil tankers remain inside the Strait, according to Vortexa and ship tracker Kpler.
Sugar industry veteran Mike McDougall told Reuters that Middle East sugar executives say there are some ships transiting the Strait at the moment, all of which are either Chinese or Iranian-owned.
Jamal Al-Ghurair, the managing director of Dubai-based Al Khaleej Sugar, told Reuters some ships carrying sugar are currently allowed to pass through the Strait while others are not, without giving further details.
Iran‘s government said earlier in the week that no vessels belonging to the United States, Israel, European countries or their allies would be allowed to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, but the statement made no mention of China.