Tag: 60-minutes

Touching my heart

Posted on by Keith Dvorchik

Last week had two significant interviews that touched my heart. I also had a friend share his opening talk at his business’s conference. Each of them, in their own ways, found their way into my soul. Each of them left me thinking deeply about my family and how blessed I am. Each of them reminded me of what is really important in the world. All three of them filled me with gratitude and taught me multiple lessons about life, values, grief, and community. The video of all three are included in this post. I urge you to watch them all. If you are like me, they will impact you deeply.

Yaron Bibas

Since October 7, 2023, the Bibas family has been front of mind for so many people. The iconic image of Shiri Bibas, holding her sons, 4 year old Ariel and 8 month old Kfir, as Hamas kidnapped them and took them into Gaza as hostages is one everybody has seen. I had their pictures at my Passover Seder on empty chairs to remember them, make sure they could ‘be’ at a Seder, and ensure that we didn’t forget that this beautiful family had been kidnapped, taken into captivity as hostages, and was likely being poorly treated. People wore Batman costumes for Purim since he was Ariel’s favorite superhero. What we didn’t know at the time was that Shiri, Ariel, and Kfir, had already been brutally murdered by Hamas. These two beautiful children were choked to death. A Hamas terrorist put his hands around their neck and squeezed the life out of them.

Yarden Bibas, the husband of Shiri and father of Ariel and Kfir, was also taken hostage. He was kept separate from his family and didn’t know if they were alive or dead. When he was released, he learned the horrible news that he had lost his entire family. His precious wife and his beautiful children. Yarden, unlike other hostages who were released, chose to withdraw. He didn’t write a book, he didn’t give interviews, he wasn’t public. As somebody with a wife and 2 sons, I can’t even imagine the pain Yarden deals with on a daily basis. I don’t ever want to understand what that type of loss is like. Yet Yarden eventually chose to speak. He gave his first interview last week and you can watch it below. It is painful. It is beautiful. It is crushing. Watching videos of him with the Ariel and Kfir breaks my heart. Seeing the love that he and Shiri shared and hearing how much he depended on her broke my heart. Hearing his struggle to be alive was painful. It’s also a reminder to appreciate every single day. To love your family and make sure they know how much you love them. Ensure you don’t waste a single day because you never know when the last day will be. I hope that you watch and that it impacts you the way it impacted me.

Mark Schnurman

Mark is a long time friend and fraternity brother from college. We lost touch over the years. After October 7th, we reconnected. We texted, zoomed, and spoke on the phone. In September of 2024 we met in Israel and got to hang out. Even he will tell you that he is an October 8th Jew – awoken by the horrific events that happened on October 7th. After never visiting Israel in his life, since October 7th he has now been 7 times. It was a transformative experience for him and his wife, Lisbeth. They are passionate and philanthropic. They are generous and giving. They are real and not afraid to share their feelings and what is important to them. They are real inspirations.

As you listen to Mark talk passionately about why he chose to sell The Perfect Franchise (TPF), you will begin to understand his passion for Judiasm and for Israel. You will see how an awakening on October 7th created an opportunity to explore and understand the beauty of both Judaism and Israel. What I love about Mark is that his experience is available to each and every one of us. It is not unique. It is not limited. We all have the opportunity to understand more, to learn more, to get involved and make a difference. Mark and I often talk about how each of us, in our limited way, is working to change the world. How we each have that responsibility to do our part. To learn. To experience. There is nothing like going to Israel and volunteering. Helping to build the only Jewish state. Being in our homeland in the same place that our ancestors were thousands of years ago. Connecting with the Israeli people.

Mark teaches us all a lesson. It’s never too late to make a change. It’s never too late to invest in Jewish identity, connection to Israel and to the Jewish people. We all have the ability to make that decision today. We all have the ability to find a teacher, a mentor and learn. We all have the ability to do a little something Jewish that we haven’t done before. Light Shabbat candles. Have challah on Friday night with your dinner. Ensure that the entire family is together on Friday night to make it a Shabbat dinner, whether you say prayers or not. Growing up, my parents had the requirement that we all be together for Shabbat dinner. We could go out afterwards, but Shabbat dinner was sacred. It created a Jewish connection for my brother, my sister and me.

As you listen to Mark talk, don’t just hear his words. Feel his emotion. Feel that connection. Allow it to create a spark inside you to take that next step, whatever it may be, to get just a little more Jewishly connected. It doesn’t matter what that actually is, just something meaningful to you. And if you aren’t Jewish, let his emotion be an inspiration for you to reach out to your friends who are Jewish to check in on them. To make sure they know you are there. We live in a world that right now isn’t easy to be Jewish. The hate continues to grow and isn’t being hidden. Jews are being stabbed on the streets of London, murdered on the beach in Australia, assaulted in New York. Trust me that your friends see it and feel it.

Rachel Goldberg-Polin

The other interview I referenced was with Rachel Goldberg-Polin, the mother of Hersh Goldberg-Polin (z’l) on 60 minutes. Remarkably, since October 7th, I have found that I have multiple ‘one degree of separation’ from Hersh (z’l). Instead of the interview from 60 minutes, I have shared the extended interview. The extended one is age-restricted so you have to click on it and watch it on YouTube. While the 60 minutes interview was cut to 13 minutes, the extended one is 52 minutes. I encourage you to watch the extended version to get the real depth of Rachel, October 7th, the hostages, Hersh, and the pain of Rachel and Jon.

The pain of Anderson Cooper, as the interviewer, is remarkable. His grace and horror at what happened on October 7th and with the hostages stands out among the reporters who have been involved since that day. He was human. He was honest. He was humble. His questions were deep and not easy but also were with intention to get Rachel to share her journey. The emotion was palpable on his face. You could see him seeing his children in Hersh’s story. It gave me hope that perhaps there are mainstream journalists that are more interested in truth than clicks and ratings.

When Rachel explains her mantra of “Hope is mandatory” it hit home. My last post was all about hope. How hard it has been and how critical it is to have. When I hear Rachel, who lost her beloved son to terrorists, who was a leader and the face of the effort to get the hostages returned, state that “Hope is mandatory”, I realized that I have no excuse not to live with hope.

As I watched and listened to Rachel standing at the border with Gaza, screaming Hersh’s name, tears came to my eyes. As she gave him the priestly blessings, my heart ached. When they tell us that he was murdered that same day that they stood on the border of Gaza, my jaw clenched, my heart filled with pain, tears in my eyes. As a parent, I could feel her pain deeply in a way that I never want to understand.

When they talk about Or Levy needed to see them upon being released, before his family and his son, it was powerful. He shared with Rachel and Jon that Hersh’s mantra in captivity, taken from Viktor Frankl’s book Man’s Search for Meaning, was “If you have a ‘why’, you can survive any ‘how.'” This was a reminder to me of our collective responsibility. No matter how much antisemitism explodes in the world, no matter how many challenges we face, we have a why. And with our why, we can get through the how. We have done it for centuries and we will do it for centuries in the future. It is precisely because of our why that we survive. What an incredible lesson that Hersh provided us all with his mantra and with Or sharing it with Rachel who shared it with the world.

At the end of the interview, Anderson Cooper asks Rachel about the future and potential peace. Her answer is haunting. She says, ‘we have to figure out how to live near each other, we don’t have to all be best friends, there don’t have to be any unicorns or rainbows, but we either figure out how to live near each other, or we will all die here together.” Those words ring so true to me. They remind me of sitting in the living room of a Palestinian friend of mine as he told us the following. “We aren’t going anywhere. You aren’t going anywhere. So we have to figure out how to live together.” That is where we need to get. Despite the negativity. Despite the hate. Despite the fact that it is hard to believe that will be possible, if we don’t hold out hope for that type of future, I think Rachel is correct. That outcome isn’t one I want nor one that I will accept.

I was deeply touched at the end of the interview when Rachel is asked if she thinks she will see Hersh again. A sparkle came into her eyes that wasn’t there the entire interview. A smile broke out on her face that was missing the entire interview. Her answer, “I’d like to think so” reminded me of how lucky I am to get to see my children. How important it is for me to make time for them. To enjoy every minute that I get with them because the one thing we never get more of is time. When it’s over, it’s over. Rachel and Hersh’s time ended in a tunnel under Rafa due to Hamas terrorists. I want to ensure that I treasure every minute of the time I get with my children, with my mother, with my family. Because we never know when that time is over.

The extended interview. I urge you to watch this one. It’s worth your time. It will touch your heart deeply

Two incredibly powerful interviews of two people who have suffered terrible loss. Three powerful, deeply personal messages shared from the heart. Three people struggling with hope and working to find their own ways to access it. Two people struggling to see a future because of the loss while one working to create a different one because of all the loss.

As Rachel said in her interview, “I’m a nothing, a nobody” yet she is changing the world. Each of us are nothings, nobodys, who have the ability to change the world. As one of my close friends often reminds me, we are just these small figures on an insignificant rock, spinning in space amongst hundreds of thousands of other insignficant rocks. Yet each of us has the ability to do amazing things and change our world. Listening to Yarden, Mark and Rachel inspires me to do what I can, whatever that is, and to play my part in making this crazy, often obscene world we live in, just a little bit better. It is why I do the work that I do. It’s why I am choosing to live my life the way I do. I hope it inspires you to do the same.

Leslie Stahl, CBS, and the media should be embarrassed and ashamed

Posted on by Keith Dvorchik

On their website, CBS states, “One of America’s most recognized and experienced broadcast journalists, Lesley Stahl has been a “60 Minutes” correspondent since 1991.” She should be embarrassed for her lead in to the interview she just did with Yarden Bibas for 60 minutes. Planting a false narrative to blame Israel, stating that Israel broke a ceasefire that expired when Hamas refused to move into phase 2 of the ceasefire, and holding Israel accountable for hostages being scared while kept in captivity, she showed herself to be a stooge for the media and their anti-Israel narrative.

When Yarden told her that the Hamas terrorists wouldn’t give them much food, she took the side of terrorists, trying to blame Israel by stating that perhaps they just didn’t have any food. Yarden corrected her that they did have food and would eat it front of her. That Hamas terrorists would tell them that they were giving them just enough food to keep them alive for 5 years in horrible conditions. He further told her that they learned that one of the terrorists liked massages so they would give him massages for extra food. Her response? Silence. No condemnation.

Watch the 60 minutes piece in which Yarden Bibas is interviewed.

Yarden tells her that they told him he would find a better wife and have better children after telling him that Shiri, Ariel, and Kfir were dead. Her response was “did they really say that?” and nothing more. It’s disgusting. As I watched the interview, I found her repugnant and the CBS angle an attempt to take the barbaric actions of Hamas and make them Israel’s fault.

The pain of the stories told in the piece were clear. The horrific actions of Hamas were clear. Yet Stahl and the editors at CBS were unmoved. There was no condemnation. No shock and awe at this inhumane treatment. As I watched it, I got the feeling that both Stahl and the bigwhigs at CBS believed that they deserved what they got. They seemed only sad that they had to cover it at all and shed any light on the proof of Hamas being evil and terrorists.

The piece ended and they transferred to 60 minutes Overtime, and additional online peace to extend the “conversation.” In 60 Minutes Overtime, Stahl talks with Keith and Aviva Siegel, the “Hamas militants” according to Stahl. She can’t even call them terrorists. Once again, she begins the interview and piece by framing Hamas as simply “militants”. She talks about Kibbutz Kfar Aza and shows a little bit of video from the Kibbutz but nothing that comes close to what it really looks like. I’ve been to Kfar Aza twice since October 7th and the things I saw there will never leave my mind. The brutality that occurred there is something I will never forget. The stories I heard from the IDF and from residents who lived there and had just returned are beyond horrific. Yet Stahl and CBS show none of these images. They minimize what happened that day.

The roof in one of the young people’s apartments, destroyed by grenades while she was there.
Listen to the description of what happened at this house in Kfar Aza. CBS and Lesley Stahl won’t tell you

When she reports on Keith’s release from captivity, she calls it a ‘bizarre ceremony’, quite an understatement for what it really was. Ongoing terrorism. Brutal treatment of a hostage.

The emotion from the hostages and the videos was clear. How anybody can watch and listen and not be horrified, not be offended, not believe that what happened is not just criminal but also not want to outwardly speak out against it is beyond my comprehension. Stahl and CBS show their bias throughout.

The CBS Overtime interview with Keith and Aviva Siegel

It goes beyond just CBS and Lesley Stahl. This week, Tal Shoham testified at the UN in Vienna. The UN has showed itself to hate Jews and hate Israel. There are decades of proof that they treat Israel and the Jews differently than any other group or country in the world. Read Shoham’s testimony – it’s difficult to get through. After reading it, try to defend Hamas in any way. Try to defend Hezbollah, the Houthis or Iran. It’s pure evil that must be eradicated.

Tal Shoham testifying at the UN in Viennna

“During these 50 days in isolation, shackled and starved, it was not ordinary hunger, but survival hunger, where a crumb becomes your entire world. When your body aches constantly from hunger pains.

On day 34 two human skeletons entered my room. Evyatar David and Guy Gilboa-Dalal. They told me they were beaten daily, forced to sit facing the wall, with bags over their heads, unable to move. If I thought my hunger was extreme, their was even worse. Their thirst was so intense that they would drink foul smelling salty toilet water contaminated with metals and filth.

In an act of deliberate cruelty, the terrorists forced Guy and Evyatar to watch me being released. Why, I ask you. Why would any human go to such length to inflict such torment.

During 505 days in captivity we were rarely not starving. There were many times we received just one pita bread for an entire day. We begged our captors, flattered them, even agreed to give them massages. Anything for another crumb of food. Traumatized by hunger, we collected crumb after crumb, dividing any grain of food after careful counting. Guy would sometimes spend an hour, ensuring fair distribution of every ounce.

You might assume this is the situation throughout Gaza. But the terrorists holding us always had abundant food, including fresh vegetables and fruits.

For the final 8 months of my captivity, we were held in a dungeon dozen of meter underground, with only a hole serving as a toilet. The humidity left our clothes and matrasses perpetually wet. We sweated and choked from lack of oxygen. In conditions so deplorable, no animal has ever been kept this way. We were constantly hungry and thirsty. Severe vitamin C deficiency caused Evyatar and me develop muscle inflammation.

Sadistic guards tortured us daily physically and mentally. Sometimes we were in darkness so profound, we could not see our hands in front of our faces. Meanwhile next door Hamas terrorists enjoyed a well-lit air conditioned room with plenty of food.

Hamas most dangerous weapon is not their rockets or their cruelty. It’s the fundamentalist education used to raise the next generation of terrorists. This education rejects the possibility of any state or people not governed by extreme Islamic law. In Hamas value system human life holds no worth. If we don’t recognize this, we live in illusion that will first doom Israel and then threaten the entire world. The International community must reject beliefs that foster terrorism.”

This is the reality of Hamas. They are not freedom fighters They are terrorists and pure evil. Those defending them are fools, bigots, and evil as well. Imagine being so thirsty that you would want to drink contaminated toilet water. Imagine being forced to humiliate yourself and give terrorists torturing and starving you massages for crumbs of food. Imagine living with constant hunger pains, choking from lack of oxygen…

Then imagine you are Leslie Stahl, hearing this firsthand. Talking to the parents of a current hostage who is being beaten, starved, and abused. Watch how she reacts with a flat affect. Watch and listen to how she responds. It’s as if she is a robot. No empathy. No compassion. As I watch her, I find myself thinking that she is trying to find a way to defend them, as she did earlier in the interview, and is upset that she can’t.

Watch and listen to Lesley Stahl and her lack of empathy, flat affect, and inability to condemn Hamas.

I am disgusted by Leslie Stahl and 60 minutes. How does she sleep at night? How do the higher ups at CBS keep their jobs? How do these people live with themselves?

How can the main stream media not make a major story as Hamas reduces their reported death toll by 3,400 names? They actually removed people’s names from the most recent death reports in Gaza, admitting they lied about people being killed who weren’t. For those who pay attention, this raises new concerns of inflated figures by Hamas.

This change included removing 1,000 children that had previously been reported killed in the war. Andrew Fox, associate fellow at the UK-based think tank Henry Jackson Society, was quoted stating, “If you were seeing indiscriminate killing, you would expect roughly 26% adult male deaths.” He continued, “In the 13 to 55 age group, which is Hamas’ fighter range because we know they use child soldiers, it’s 72% male in that age group.” 

“So all these things clearly point towards combatants being targeted rather than just indiscriminate killing.”

Yet the media remains silent. CBS, 60 minutes and Lesley Stahl make sure to tell their story based on lies. You won’t see this in the NY Times or Washington Post. None of the other major networks will cover this. They prefer the lies.

I know that October 7th and the aftermath has become a part of who I am. I spoke out against all hatred before October 7th. Now, I will never stop speaking out against evil and hate. There may be consequences as a result. It may impact my business and who will work with me. I don’t care. The fight against evil and hate is too important. If people like the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Anwar Sadat, and Yitzak Rabin can risk, and lose, it all, then who am I to not be willing?

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Anwar Sadat, and Yitzhak Rabin (A.I. generated picture).

At the end of the day, we all have to live with ourselves and our decisions. When I close my eyes at night, I must live with my decisions and actions. How I sleep is determined by my decisions and actions. I want to be an example of morals, ethics, and values to my children and eventually my grandchildren. My children know what I have done, said, and written since October 7th. They can answer the questions my future grandchildren may ask with stories of my visits to Israel, volunteering there, and show them what I have written to stand up to hate and evil. What about yours? What do you stand for? Will you be one of those people that your grandchildren look back upon and ask where you were? What you did? Why you were silent? Only you can answer that question. Know that it is NOT too late to start now. The fight against evil and hate is nowhere close to being over. Join in the fight. Stand for something that is based on morals, ethics, and values.

Or don’t, and let the future generation judge your inaction.