Wednesday, August 19, 2026
Bereaved Mother: 'I never thought it would be the last hug'
The parents of Hillel Mordechai Dadon, the seven-and-a-half-year-old boy from Beit Shemesh who was brutally murdered by a neighbor in an inflatable pool in his backyard, spoke to i24NEWS about the tragedy that has shattered their family.
Hillel’s father, Amos Dadon, spoke of his son with profound grief. “God entrusted him to us for seven and a half years, and we say thank you," he said. “It’s not a conflict or anything. It happened suddenly."
Hillel’s mother, Tamar, said she sensed something unusual on the morning of the tragedy. “In the morning, he said goodbye to me. He hugged me for a long time, a hug that didn’t end, like he had never hugged me before. I didn’t imagine it was the last hug I would ever have."
She described how her life changed in an instant. “I went to buy balloons and refreshments for a birthday. I was called back home and understood that something was wrong. The suspect in the murder is my brother’s neighbor. My brother’s child was also bleeding. At first, I was sure it was a nationalistic attack. I never thought he would die. I hoped there would be a miracle, but there wasn’t."
Through tears, Tamar eulogized her son. “He was a cute, smiling boy. I called him Smiley. He always had a happy face. He was frustrated that he was the youngest and always wanted another brother."
Harav Ronan Shauliv Tells Chayilim that "if there was an IDF During WW2 there wouldn't have been a Holocaust"
הרב רונן שאולוב מתנצל בפני חיילי צה״ל על השלט הבזוי ״עדיף היה למות בשואה מלמות במחנות צה״ל
“Rabbi Ronen Shaulov apologizes to IDF soldiers for the disgraceful sign that read: ‘It would have been better to die in the Holocaust than to die in IDF camps.’”
Tuesday, August 18, 2026
The Story behind Satmar Idolizing the Staunch Zionist Militant -- Ben Hecht !
Why would Satmar idolize, Ben Hecht, known for his marital infidelities
and who was characterized as an "un-Jewish-Jew " by the historian Julien Gorbach.?
Hecht wrote a novel in 1931, called "A Jew in Love" that reveal his conflicted relationship with Jewish identity and assimilation.
His portrayal of a Jew in this novel was so grotesque that critics called the main character " the caricature of an antisemite come to life."
Jews were outraged and Rabbis in Cleveland declared they would never allow Hecht to be buried in their city.
So how did Hecht turn around and become a Zionist militant?
Hecht looked around in 1939 and was horrified to see Jews around the world under siege (sound familiar?) and most American Jews seemingly hesitant to respond.
Many had "discarded their Jewishness out of the belief that as Jews they could line up only for a snubbing" (Hecht in a letter)
Hecht became an active Zionist after meeting Peter Bergson, who came to the United States with Jabotinsky near the start of World War II!
Peter Bergson's real name was Hillel Kook a nephew of the great Harav Avraham Yitzchok Kook z"L , and was a Revisionist Zionist activist and politician
Kook led the Irgun's efforts in the United States during World War II and the Holocaust in order to promote Zionism, attempting thereby to save the abandoned Jews of Europe. His rescue group's activism was a factor leading to President Franklin D. Roosevelt establishing the War Refugee Board, which rescued as many as 200,000 European Jews, partly via the Wallenberg mission.
One of the Committee's more memorable activities was a protest in Washington, D.C. that Kook organized, which took place on October 6, 1943—three days before Yom Kippur. Known as the Rabbis' march, the event involved solely Orthodox rabbis, who were intent on pleading for the lives of the European Jews before the US government
.
In 1947, Hecht, shocked and outraged newspaper readers across the world with a full-paged ad supporting terrorist attacks against Great Britian.
So even though he was characterized and epitomized as the assimilated "Un-Jewish Jew" he turned into a Jewish Jew in 1939,
He later wrote:
"The German mass murder of the Jews, recently begun, brought my Jewishness to the surface"
From 1939 on, British land, sea, and air forces had shut Europe's Jews out of Palestine, effectively clamping Adolf Hitler's trap shut during the war years and in the aftermath, leaving survivors to languish as "displaced persons" in the liberated concentration camps.
Hecht and the Irgun Tzvi Leumi, the militant faction of Zionist fighters that he championed, believed a guerrilla war was the best way to finally smash the blockade, open the gates to mass immigration by Holocaust survivors, and thus clear a path to Jewish statehood.
Who was Rivka Anikster? The Mechaber of the Sefer "Zecher Oilam"?
יצאו לאור בדפוס
האישה הראשונה ביישוב הישן שחיבוריה זכר עולם
Have you heard of Rivka Anikster, the first woman writer of the Old Yishuv?
The story behind her sefer will break your heart.
From a young age, Rivka Anikster was drawn to writing. Her father and five brothers used to write and print their works. She herself was a merchant and lived in great wealth with her husband, Rabbi Meir Anikster. They lived in the town of Krakynova, where they lost seven of their children.
In 1862, the couple decided to immigrate to the Land of Israel alone, because living in the Holy Land was considered a segulah for long life. They believed that through this segulah, their remaining children would stay alive.
They parted from their young children, who remained in the town and were raised by other relatives. “Our journey to Jerusalem was very heavy. The "nisayon" was like the binding of Yitzchok… and this "nisayon" is equal to the trial of the Akedah… and through these troubles we merited to come here,” Rivka wrote.
She described leaving her children:
“And what shall I say, when you were little chicks whose feathers had not yet grown. And when I went far from you, my compassion overflowed and I wondered where I had left my motherly mercy, for I left you small, and from my great sorrow my old illness was awakened.”
She traveled from Krakynova to Slonim, to Ruzhin, then to Karlin, and from there to Odessa, from which she sailed to the Land of Israel, docking in Jaffa.
Upon arriving in the Land of Israel in 1862, she and her husband immediately went to Jerusalem. They visited all the holy sites.
After reaching the Old Yishuv in Jerusalem, her husband was appointed director of the Vilna Kollel and was responsible for distributing most of the charity funds in the city. He was also the financial manager of the Talmud Torah and the Etz Chaim Yeshiva.
In the Land of Israel, the family experienced great poverty. They lived in a small house with no light or air, next to the home of Rabbi Shmuel Salant, the rabbi of the Ashkenazi community in Jerusalem.
Like many women of the Old Yishuv, Rivka devoted herself to acts of kindness. She made sure to feed and clothe widows and orphans, spun tzitzit threads for the children of the Talmud Torah, and more.
Five years after her arrival, Rivka traveled to Tiberias and the Galilee to pray at “the grave of our holy relative, the Ari, of blessed memory, and his son Moshe who is buried beside him.”
She visited more than ten graves of tzaddikim in Safed and the surrounding area, which made her feel energetic and healthy. Bathing in the hot springs of Tiberias also contributed, she said, to improving her health.
In the Tiberias region she visited additional graves: the Rambam, Rabbi Akiva, Yitro, and others. She felt a deep closeness to the prophets, Tannaim, and sages buried in the Land of Israel.
Rivka was a sickly woman even before immigrating, and the fact that she survived twenty years after her arrival was, in her eyes, a miracle.
As her surviving children grew older, they left their hometown and emigrated to America. Contact with them was lost, and she did not know their addresses.
Rivka came up with a remarkably original idea for how to reach them — to publish a sefer, hoping that one copy would somehow reach them and awaken them to write back to her.
This was an extremely unusual step in the Old Yishuv. Only men wrote and published books — not a woman.
Thus Rivka became the first woman in the Old Yishuv to publish a sefer:
Kuntres Zekher Olam.
The sefer was written in Yiddish and translated into Hebrew by an anonymous translator. The first edition was published in both languages in 1882.
The book was a huge success. Within two years the edition sold out, and she added more pages and published a second edition in 1884.
Those copies also sold out, so in 1891 she published a third edition.
Such a thing had never been seen in the Old Yishuv — a woman publishing a religious sefer, and three printings.
So what is the sefer about?
Zekher Olam is a collection of Rivka’s guidance and teachings for her children, after they had emigrated to America and contact with them was severed.
She embedded her educational and religious messages within autobiographical writing about her experiences in the Diaspora and in the Land of Israel.
She hoped that the printed booklet would reach her lost sons and that she would receive letters from them.
Rivka Anikster’s groundbreaking project, as the first woman author, made waves in the Old Yishuv of Jerusalem. Two other women were inspired by her: Reitze Chen-Tov and Toibe Pesil. Both published printed booklets not long after her. The first, Reitze, explicitly mentioned Rivka Anikster in her book.
In her later years, Rivka lived in Jerusalem with her daughter Rachel, who was born in the Land of Israel, and with her grandchildren, after her husband passed away in 1885.
Rivka died in 1893 in Jerusalem. After her death, additional editions of Zekher Olam were published.
Crying on Trump’s shoulder: Erdogan complains about Israel in call with Trump
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan urged Donald Trump to pursue diplomacy with Iran while using their phone call to once again criticize Israel over its military operations in Gaza.
Erdogan told Trump it was essential to “make the utmost use of diplomacy” amid tensions between Washington and Tehran, offering Ankara’s support for peace efforts. At the same time, he accused Israel of stepping up operations against Palestinians as the US pushes to advance the next phase of its Gaza plan.
The Turkish leader also praised the new Turkey-Saudi Arabia-Pakistan defense pact as a powerful step toward regional security. Trump has welcomed the alliance himself, calling it a “big, bold, and important first step” and saying it shows the Middle East is “coming together.”
Kushner’s direct Hamas talks trigger alarm in Palestinian Authority
Palestinian Authority officials are increasingly alarmed after US envoy Jared Kushner met directly with senior Hamas leaders in Cairo, warning that Washington is sidelining Mahmoud Abbas while giving the terrorist group new political relevance.
The irony is that the talks focused on Hamas’s disarmament and removal from power — both long-standing PA demands. But Ramallah’s concern is who has a seat at the table: Kushner is talking to Hamas in Cairo and Israel in Jerusalem, while bypassing Abbas in Ramallah.
“It harms the PA’s representational status and gives Hamas new cards to play,” one Palestinian official warned, raising fears that direct US-Hamas diplomacy could further erode the PA’s already weakened standing.
INSANE: Spain Blocks Israeli Rescue Flight En Route to Quake-Shattered Colombia
Spain denied overflight permission to an Israeli rescue team en route to Colombia Saturday. The aircraft was forced to reroute through Moroccan airspace, taking a longer route to reach its destination.
Open-source intelligence and other reports have indicated that the Israeli military aircraft avoided Spanish airspace after Spain allegedly denied it passage.
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The Home Front Command and humanitarian delegation included 80 experts drawn from the reserves and active duty and arrived in Colombia Saturday to aid in rescue efforts following a devastating magnitude 7.4 earthquake last week. Despite Spain’s refusal of overflight permission, the team arrived in Colombia and immediately began assisting in rescue operations.
Spain had passed a comprehensive ban on Israeli military materials, and the aircraft that bore the delegation belonged to the Israeli military. Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has also strictly forbidden any access to foreign aircraft that bear any connection to the conflict in Israel.
Spain has fiercely criticized Israel during the war in Gaza, and it has backed up its rhetoric with action, joining South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice, implementing an arms embargo against Israel, recalling its ambassador from Tel Aviv, recognizing Palestinian statehood, and imposing strict restrictions on Israeli military and fuel shipments through its airspace.
Forty-four percent of American Jews view Mamdani favorably
Forty-four percent of American Jews view Zohran Mamdani favorably, according to an AP-NORC poll released in July 2026 - 1,022 Jewish adults nationwide, margin of error ±5 points. The mayor of New York City - a democratic socialist born in East Africa who ran on Palestinian Arab solidarity, endorsed by progressive Jewish organizations - helped gain office due to Jewish money.
We can reveal that money included funds from Spielberg's Righteous Persons Foundation, built with Schindler's List profits.
Between 2020 and 2024, the Righteous Persons Foundation directed $3,065,000 to progressive organizations that endorsed Mamdani's mayoral campaign, advocated for U.S. arms embargoes on Israel, opposed the IHRA definition of antisemitism, and organized protests against the Israeli military. During the same period, the foundation allocated $125,000 to Holocaust-related projects. For every dollar spent on Holocaust remembrance since 2020, it spent roughly $19 funding organizations that work against the Jewish state.
Fifty-nine percent of American Jews hold an unfavorable view of Netanyahu. Thirty percent believe the false accusation that Israel committed genocide in Gaza. Thirty-eight percent say the U.S. is too supportive of Israel. Just 42% support continued military operations in Gaza - even as 73% say Israel's initial response to October 7 was justified. These numbers were built - deliberately, over decades - by a progressive Jewish infrastructure funded by Diaspora liberal Jews, including Steven Spielberg and George Soros.
Steven Spielberg called the profits from Schindler's List - a film about the murder of six million Jews - "blood money." He put it into the Righteous Persons Foundation, established in 1994 with approximately $100 million from the film's earnings. The stated mission: support Holocaust education and Jewish life in America.
Thirty years later, the foundation's tax returns reveal that money funds the progressive Jewish infrastructure that endorsed Mamdani, mobilizes for Palestinian Arab rights, advocates to defund the police, and publicly defended Mahmoud Khalil - the Columbia University activist facing deportation.
The 990 filings show Bend the Arc received $1.2 million across five years. T'ruah received $690,000. Jews United for Justice received $925,000. The Jewish Social Justice Roundtable received $250,000. The foundation's last donation to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum came in 2019. Its last grant to the USC Shoah Foundation - Spielberg's own creation - was $500,000 in 2015.
The Recipients of Spielberg's Money
Bend the Arc received $1.2 million. The largest progressive Jewish advocacy organization in the country. Its political arm - Bend the Arc Jewish Action - was co-founded by Alex Soros, who serves as founding chair. The Foundation to Promote Open Society has directed over $13 million to Bend the Arc's 501(c)(3) charitable arm. The (c)(3) and (c)(4) share the same CEO, address, and cost-sharing agreements for staff.
Bend the Arc endorsed Mamdani on September 26, 2025 - its first-ever mayoral endorsement. It ran paid media, canvassing, and Jewish voter outreach for the campaign. It demanded a U.S. arms embargo on Israel and defended campus protest movements. On Khalil, Bend the Arc launched a petition with nearly 5,000 signatures demanding his release, published an op-ed in Haaretz titled "Smokescreen Antisemitism," and co-led a letter to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem.
T'ruah received $690,000 since 2021. A rabbinic organization (almost all of whose members are Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist with a few Open Orthodox) commanding over 2,300 rabbis and cantors - described by JNS as "the rabbis training clergy to oppose Zionism." T'ruah organized protests against Israel's military operations in Gaza, falsely accused Israel of deliberately starving civilians, and mobilized its clerical network against Israeli government policy.
Jews for Racial and Economic Justice (JFREJ) received approximately $925,000. Opposed the IHRA antisemitism definition. Advocates to abolish the NYPD and ran the #DefundNYPD campaign.
Jewish Social Justice Roundtable received $250,000. A collective whose members include both Bend the Arc and T'ruah - meaning Spielberg's money flows to the same organizations through multiple channels.
A detailed investigation cross-referencing these IRS filings documents the year-by-year grant flow from the Righteous Persons Foundation to each of these organizations - and the political activities funded with Spielberg's money.
Decision Makers:
The board has included Margery Tabankin since 1995 - Executive Director and Senior Advisor for nearly three decades.
Tabankin's background: a former Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) member and anti-Vietnam War activist who studied community organizing under Saul Alinsky. Among the early American Jews advocating for Palestinian Arab statehood, she traveled to Ramallah in 1989 and met Yasser Arafat. Spielberg hired her in February 1995. A celebration party in New York was attended by Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.
The remainder of the board is Steven Spielberg as Chairman; wife Kate Capshaw Spielberg as Director; and Kristie Macosko Krieger, Spielberg's longtime film producer - she started as his assistant in 1998 and rose to produce Bridge of Spies, The Post, West Side Story, and The Fabelmans.
Day One with Zohran
On January 1, 2026 - inauguration day - Steven Spielberg officially became a New York resident. Days later, he hosted a private meeting with the new mayor at his apartment overlooking Central Park. They were joined by Kate Capshaw, their son Theo and his wife, and Morris Katz, Mamdani's senior Jewish adviser. The meeting did not appear on the mayor's public schedule. It was confirmed only after New York Times inquiries. Both sides described it as a "friendly introduction." There was "no particular agenda."
Munich: Spielberg and Palestinian Arab Terrorists
In "Munich" (2005), Mossad agent Avner - played by Eric Bana - hunts the Black September operatives who murdered eleven Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics. The film is structured as a revenge thriller. Its argument runs the other direction.
In a safehouse scene, Avner encounters Ali, a PLO operative who does not know Avner is Israeli. What follows is the most sympathetic case for Palestinian Arab nationalism in a major American studio film. NPR called it "Spielberg's most provocative film."
"You don't know what it is not to have a home," Ali tells Avner. "Home is everything." He continues: "We have a lot of children. They'll have children. So we can wait forever... The world will see how they've made us into animals."
Spielberg lets Ali make this argument without interruption or narrative correction. Avner manages only: "You'll never get the land back." Ali is given the philosophy. Avner is given the gun. Avner's arc is a man destroyed by violence committed on behalf of a state whose moral authority he can no longer locate. By the film's end, Avner is paranoid, isolated, undone.
Ali accuses Jews of exploiting German guilt over the Holocaust to secure Western support for Israel. Spielberg - the filmmaker who built his reputation on Schindler's List - put this argument into the mouth of a character the audience is positioned to sympathize with. One side received the philosophy. The other received the doubt.
Progressive Jews: Enemies of the Jewish State
The "blood money" from Schindler's List - his term, not ours - now funds opposition to the Jewish state and the political movement that elevated Zohran Mamdani. The foundation, the film, the grants, and the meeting all tell the same story: Steven Spielberg took the profits from a movie about the murder of six million Jews and built a machine that works against the Jewish people and the Jewish state.
Forty-four percent of American Jews now view Mamdani favorably. That did not happen organically. It was engineered - by Bend the Arc, T'ruah, JFREJ, and the Jewish Social Justice Roundtable. Funded by the Righteous Persons Foundation and people like Steven Spielberg and George Soros.
These are not critics. These are not dissenters. These are Jews who fund, organize, and mobilize against the survival of the Jewish state - while claiming to speak for Jewish values. They endorsed a mayor who ran on Palestinian Arab solidarity. They defended an activist facing deportation for campus protests against Israel. They demand arms embargoes. They reject the internationally recognized definition of antisemitism. They call the IDF's operations war crimes.
The progressive Diaspora Jew has become an enemy to Zionism and Israeli Jews.
Steven Spielberg took the proceeds from a film about the murder of six million Jews and directed them to organizations that defend the enemies of the Jewish state. What can one say?
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