Tony Dokoupil's News On CBS

 Nadene Goldfoot                                          

Tony Dokoupil is an American broadcast journalist and author who has been the anchor of the CBS Evening News since January 2026. He was previously the co-host of CBS's morning program, CBS Mornings, making him about 46 years old.  

 Dokoupil was born in Connecticut on December 24, 1980. He is of Czech descent. His mother, Ann, worked as a teacher, while his father, Anthony, when growing up, was told of his father's involvement in real estate, which was a front.  It turned out he was a marijuana dealer. His mother remarried.  His family relocated to Miami in 1981. Baby Tony, his mother, and his step-father Ray relocated to Maryland in 1992, shortly after his father's drug operation received greater attention from law enforcement.

He attended George Washington University, where he received a bachelor's degree in business administration and played NCAA Division 1 baseball, graduating in 2002. Dokoupil earned a master's degree in American studies from Columbia University and spent two years on a PhD track fellowship in media studies at Columbia before leaving to pursue journalism in 2007.

Dokoupil married an Israeli, Danielle Haas in the early 2008s,  and had two children. Dokoupil converted to Judaism in 2008 while engaged to Haas. He took classes at a progressive synagogue (Conservative ? ) in Manhattan and received a second circumcision as an adult to complete his conversion, which he wrote about for The New Republic.

Tony's first wife was Danielle Haas whom he married in the early 2000s before divorcing in 2015 when she filed for divorce.She is a writer defending Israel.  She wrote an opinion piece, "Amnesty's Descent Into mcCarthyism:  The Case of Israel, Gaza and Genocide, where people have been accusing Israel of just that-Genocide.  

  She is a private individual who relocated to Israel with their two children following the separation.  Dokoupil and Haas were married for over a decade, with the marriage ending in 2015.   Following the divorce, Haas has kept a low public profile, while Dokoupil has spoken about his children's safety in Israel during times of conflict. 

Danielle Haas was senior editor at Human Rights Watch from 2009 to 2023. She wrote about  "a boy walks through rubble as rescuers search for casualties following an Israeli" bombing . Actually, "Human Rights Watch has been calling on businesses to stop operating in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank as part of their duty to avoid complicity in human rights abuses. However, even though Human Rights Watch calls on businesses to comply with this duty in many other countries as well, the court found that applying this principle to ensure respect for Palestinians’ rights constitutes a call for boycott, based on a broad reading of a 2017 law that bars entry to people who advocate a boycott of Israel or its West Bank settlements."  It's the slippery slope of playing fair to people's rights, yet noticing who gets hurt by them.  

 I can see where the talent of both in writing and in defense of honesty in reporting may have brought them together, but matters of living inIsrael may had driven them apart.  

Dokoupil later married journalist Katy Tur in 2017. It was love at first sight.  After around two years of dating, Dokoupil eloped with fellow broadcast journalist Katy Tur in October 2017. They have two children together. After the birth of his fourth child, Dokoupil announced on CBS Mornings that he had undergone a vasectomy, urging other men to consider it to take on the burden of birth control from their female partners.

On September 30, 2024, Dokoupil discussed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with author Ta-Nehisi Coates during the latter's appearance on CBS Mornings to promote the book The Message. Dokoupil implied that the book reads like the work of an extremist and questioned Coates about his opinion regarding Israel's right to exist. Some CBS staffers were angered by the interview, and CBS executive Adrienne Roark said that an internal review found that it did not meet network standards.

 Shortly after the October 7 attacks, Dokoupil had spoken about how he struggled to separate his views as a journalist from his fear for the safety of his children from his first marriage, who live in Israel with their mother.

Dokoupil was defended by Paramount chair Shari Redstone and other CBS staffers, including Jan Crawford, who argued that Dokoupil was journalistically correct to challenge Coates's argument.

Dokoupil’s best night of the week was Monday, January 12, where he drew in 6.38 million viewers. However, ABC’s numbers were also way up on that night (10.88 million viewers), which was likely due to NBC’s evening news program being preempted for NBA coverage, forcing their loyal viewers to tune into one of the other networks. Sports comes first to many viewers.  As for myself, I've just discovered Portland, Oregon's Trailblazers and their star player from Israel, Deni Avdija from Maccabi Games in Tel Aviv.  

Resource:

Night Movies, by Sean Mandell- in People magazine) Jan.19,2026;p. 32-33.

https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/11/05/israel-supreme-court-greenlights-deporting-human-rights-watch-official

https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2024-12-15/ty-article-opinion/.premium/amnestys-descent-into-mccarthyism-the-case-of-israel-gaza-and-genocide/00000193-c90a-dc34-adb7-cb3e42a50000

Germany in 1934, The Holocaust Begins-Part 2

 Nadene Goldfoot                                                         

              

  January 1, 1930, already an anti-Jewish poster in a shop window telling 

people to defend themselves against Jews                     

1934 means a lot to me because that's when I was born in the USA, but in Germany, there was a campaign going on  to create "Jew-free"villages, and I'm Jewish.  In February Stormtroopers (started in 1921) entered the village Arnswalde in Pomerania and they threw stones at all the Jewish homes, shops and meeting halls.  They broke into the synagogue, the house of the rabbi and destroyed furnishings, tore up and trampled on the Torah and put out the Eternal Lamp, like the lamp in our history that was out and needed runners to go to the next town to bring back more oil and it had burned for 8 days with a drop of oil while waiting-a miracle, our Chanukah story. All night long they attacked other Jewish homes and beat up any Jew outside their home.  The Jews all left that next morning, and the German children went into these homes and helped themselves to toothpaste, soap and sponges found in the wreckage,  of a Jewish chemist's shop while adults watched them.

   April 2, 1933, Nazis boycott Jewish shop in Berlin

Palm Sunday came a month later: Stormtroops marched into Gunzenhausen which housed 19 Jewish families who were dragged outside.  The leader, Kurt Baer, caught a woman and dragged her by her hair.  They beat up the Jews all night long, and whipped and cursed them so bad that 2 died by the next morning;  a 75 year old man, Rosenfelder  had his chest torn open with knife wounds, and a 30 year old man, Rosenau, was found hung on a garden fence. 

Finally, on May 1, 1934, the Nazi Germany's semi-official and fiercely antisemitic newspaper Der Stürmer warned of a Jewish program for world domination in this 1934 issue of the.newspaper.  Der Sturmer, wrote about this in this 14 page issue, but it took the side of the stormtroopers by reviving the medieval "blood libel" accusation against the Jews of using Christian blood in the baking of their Passover bread, and in other "Judaic" rituals. 

Jewish deportees march through the German town of Würzburg to the railroad station on April 25, 1942. (Photo: US Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration.)

 It was so popular that they printed 130,000 copies and sold them, and found on public noticeboards,, reproduced showing 4 rabbis sucking the blood of a Christian child through straws. Even in those days they could photoshop pictures somehow.  Another picture was of Jesus drinking Christian blood in the Communion ceremony.  That went too far, so Hitler ordered the issue banned because it was an attack on Christ.                          

     Two Jewish girls awaiting deportation in Munich on Nov. 11, 1942. Their identities are not known. (Photo: City Archive Munich DE-1992-FS-NS-00013.) I would have been an 8 year old in 1942, maybe like these little girls.  

Even in a photograph clearly showing two Jewish girls, we do not know anything other than that the Gestapo deported them to Kowno with the same transport depicted in the image showing Munich Jews being deported  The nearly 1,000 deportees from Munich were shot soon after they arrived at their destination in Nazi-occupied Lithuania.

The Jews had no idea the Holocaust officially will start in 1939 and not end till 1945.  I would have been 5 years old at the whistle-blowing start.                     

From Home to an Unknown Fate: The Deportation of the Jews of Wurzburg:  By the end of 1941, World War II had entered its third year. Germany advanced from one conquest to the next; they controlled almost all of Europe, from the outskirts of Moscow to the Pyrenees Mountains on the Spanish border. For the.. leaders of the Nazi regime, it was the opportune moment to eliminate the remaining Jews from Germany. The two thousand Jews of the small city of Würzburg in southern Germany, located between Frankfurt and Nuremberg, were among the first to be deported..

Yet the village cleansing went on.  By May 26th, a German newspaper wrote how at Hersbruck in Franconia, Streicher's province, "on Thursday at 5pm, the swastika flag was hoisted on the property of the last Jew to leave Hersbruck, now purged of Jews.  Other districts "will soon follow suit and that the day is not now far off when the whole of Franconia will be rid of Jews, just as one day there will no longer be one single Jew throughout the whole of Germany.  

June 3rd, and the people of that famous town of Worms celebrated the 900th anniversary of the foundation of its Old Synagogue.  According to legend in Roman days, the Jews of Worms declined to take part in the Sanhedrin elections in Jerusalem, claiming to have built their own "new" Jerusalem on the banks of the Rhine.  Now the Jews of Worms had to decide to ride out the storm or to leave Germany.  People had started leaving in 1933, with 62 going to France, 43 for Palestine, and 32 for Poland. So, in 1934, 29 left for the USA, 26 to Palestine.  By the end of 1934, 264 Jews had left-meaning almost 1/4 of the population of Worms were gone.   In court at Nuremberg on 14 June, a gentile wife of a Jewish man was put in prison for 4 months for"race-defiling."

A Courtroom was a scary place.  On July 15th, 1934, Kurt Baer shot dead 2 Jews, Simon Straus and his son who had given evidence against him after he had been accused of killing of the 2 other Jews in Gunzenhausen in March.  The court said the 2 had committed suicide.  Baer was only found guilty of "a breach of the peace."                        

The 1934 Constantine riots were an incident of antisemitic ^violence in the Algerian city of Constantine, targeting the local Jewish population. A mob of around 300 local Algerians attacked the Jewish quarter and targeted Jewish businesses and homes over a period of several hours, with the violence spreading to nearby towns. The French colonial authorities did little to rein in the violence.

It is uncertain what the exact cause of the riots was, but various accounts suggest that the riots were triggered by an altercation between a Jewish man and some Muslims at the Sidi Lakhdar Mosque in Constantine. Multiple sources report that 25 Jews and 3 Muslims died over the course of the three-day riot, and several Jewish establishments were pillaged. The events have been described as a pogrom.

Nazis started broadcasting their hatred to the Arab world using Radio-Berlin and Radioi-Stuttgart.  This caused on August 3, 1934 the beginning of 3 days of anti-Jewish riots in Constantine, Algeria. In it, 23 Jews were killed and 38 wounded. German refugees going to Palestine could not be halted by riots they knew nothing about.  In 1934, 6,941 German Jews were admitted to Palestine. 

By the end of 1934, only 50,000 German Jews had left Germany.  450,000 still stayed in in Germany. The feeling was that the anti-Jewish excesses would pass;  but they didn't.  They were followed by a newer Jewish policy, embodying moderate restrictions and disabilities.  There were even cases of a few Jews returning to Germany who were "unable to adjust themselves abroad, so they didn't help the escape from the worst.

By the end of 1935, hopes of Jews that this anti-Semitism would pass seemed to be happening.  But shops were just being discreet in telling Jews they wouldn't be  serving them, like a note in their teacup telling them so in one.  

Jews who had been interned in Dachau in 1933 found less there in 1935.  13 Jews had did there in 1933. One, Erich Gans, was killed there in on July 1,1934.   But the lull was over by March 1, 1935. A plebiscite (the direct vote of all the members of an electorate on an important public question such as a change in the constitution) in the League of Nations) . 

The Saar (or Saarland) was a heavily industrialized, coal-rich territory on the German-French border, historically detached from Germany twice as a separate entity under international or French control after both World Wars. It served as a League of Nations mandate (1920–1935)  and now a part of Hitler's Germany.  5,000 Jews chose French or Belgian citizenship.  In Germany, 20,000 Jews left their homes seeking sanctuary in Berlin.    On June 14, 1935, Otto Hirsch and Max Kreutzber ger in New York needed financial help others in  getting out of Germany was told that no campaigning would happen in 1936.  On July 15 there were anti- Jewish riots in Berlin and a few Jews were beaten.  12 days latear an article read, "Finish up with the Jews".  It went on to warn German girls of Jewish men, both dating, marrying or buying from makes you a betrayer of your German Volk and its Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler, and you would be committing a sin.  

Resource:

The Holocaust by Martin Gilbert 

 

Remember the Holocaust and How It Started, Similar to Today's Events-Part I b

 Nadene Goldfoot                                     

  Field Marshall  Paul Von Hindenburg on March 9, 1922-Paul von Hindenburg was elected president of Germany on April 26, 1925, and inaugurated on May 12, 1925, succeeding Friedrich Ebert. As a widely respected World War I general, he won the election as an independent candidate. Hindenburg served as the second president of the Weimar Republic until his death in 1934.                                      

• Hitler's government took over Germany on January 30, 1933, when President Paul von Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler as Chancellor. Following this, the Nazis rapidly dismantled Germany's democratic institutions, turning the Weimar Republic into a one-party dictatorship within months. 
• 1934 Plebiscite: A New York Times article from August 1934 reported that 89.9% of voters (roughly 38 million) approved of Hitler uniting the offices of President and Chancellor, while nearly 10% disapproved.
• 1933 Election: In the last, partially competitive election in March 1933, the Nazi Party received 43.9% of the vote, rising to a majority when combined with coalition partners.
•                         Hitler:  January 1, 1939
• Support Levels: By the time war broke out in 1939, intense indoctrination and terror made public opposition extremely rare. While popular support was high, it was heavily influenced by propaganda, fear of the Gestapo, and the success of the regime's economic and foreign policies up to that point. 

From 1934 to 1939, it was obvious as to what was going on in Germany that the German government, now taken over by  a new regime, hated Jews and wanted them out of the country.  Jews traditionally all over the world have been treated as the scapegoats, for they had not converted to Christianity. They remained the mother religion that brought about Christianity in the first place out of polytheism.

Two or Three thousand Jews traveled by boat from German ports to Shanghai and got in without visas.  An English man, Captain Foley, supported this method of emigration though the Foreign Office in London hesitated.  "They would rather die as free men in Shanghai than as slaves in Dachau."  None had any idea how bad it would become.      

                                 Hitler's Speech

                                               

     After his speech on 26 September 1925 for the Deutschen Tag in Fürth's evangelist house: very popular,    

On January 30, 1939, on the sixth anniversary of his seizure of power, Adolf Hitler delivered a major two-hour speech to the German Reichstag (parliament) that is best known for containing a public prophecy or threat of "annihilation" against the Jewish people in Europe. 

The speech included a statement by Hitler that if "international finance Jewry" were to cause a world war, it would lead to the "annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe". Delivered during a period of international tension, the speech blamed Jewish people for the impending war. Historians debate the precise meaning of "annihilation" at that time, though it is seen as an escalation of Nazi rhetoric that preceded the Holocaust. Hitler employed anti-Semitic theories, alleging a Jewish plot. The speech and its threat were later used in Nazi propaganda and followed Kristallnacht in late 1938. Hitler made similar statements elsewhere in 1939.                       

                           Hermann Goering on January 1, 1939

Six days before Hitler's 1939 speech, Field Marshall Goering had instructed General Heydrich to "solve" the so-called Jewish problem "by emigration and evacuation".   An empty army camp in England at Richborough in Kent was opened In February for future arrivals which could hold 3,000 at a time.  Individual visas were not required by those who arrived. They only needed a block permit.   So England was aware of Germany's goal. Did the USA? 

                      He plotted a way to solve the Jewish problem.

Reinhard Heydrich (born March 7, 1904, Halle, Germany—died June 4, 1942, Prague, Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia [now in Czech Republic]) was a Nazi German official who was Heinrich Himmler’s chief lieutenant in the Schutzstaffel (“Protective Echelon”), the paramilitary corps commonly known as the SS. He played a key role in organizing the Holocaust during the opening years of World War II.

Within 12 months 8 thousand Jews  passed through getting to homes in Britain, most being young men who were sent to Dachau, Sachsenhausen and other concentration camps after the Kristallnacht, and had later been released.  Kristallnacht, also known as the "Night of Broken Glass," occurred on the night of November 9-10, 1938, when Nazi paramilitary forces and civilians destroyed Jewish businesses, homes, and synagogues across Germany and Austria, marking a violent escalation of anti-Jewish persecution before the Holocaust. 

Hitler spoke in Berlin on 30 January 1939, and said,  "That in the event of war:  the result will not be the bolshevization of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe."                                 

                          London Embassies

By March 1939, an Eric Lucas was still trying to find a foreign embassy in London willing to give his parents a visa. Following are their questions:

1. Have you sufficient money for your parents to live there without working?  

     Answer:  "A small sum could be got together." 

2. Have your parents a valid passport?

    Answer:  "No, because they can only apply for a passport to leave the country if they have a visa and permission to proceed to this country to which they want to go."  

3. Yes, I see, but they cannot get a visa until they have a valid passport.

His parents perished in Germany 3 years later. 

Jews were kept out of countries and were forced to remain in Germany until the gas chambers were ready.  

Operational gas chambers used for the mass murder of Jews were located in six Nazi extermination and concentration camps, all in German-occupied Poland: Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Bełżec, Sobibór, Chełmno, and Majdanek. 

The largest and most notorious of these sites was the Auschwitz camp complex, which combined a concentration camp and a major killing center. The gas chambers at these camps were central to the Nazis' "Final Solution," their plan to systematically murder the Jewish population of Europe.  Auschwitz-Birkenau was located in Oświęcim, Poland, a town in occupied Poland where Nazi Germany built a large complex of concentration and extermination camps during World War II, serving as a primary site for the Holocaust. It's now preserved as the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, honoring the victims and serving as a research center. 

Resoource:

The Holocaust by Martin Gilbert, book

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristallnacht

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/30_January_1939_Reichstag_speech#:~:text=On%2030%20January%201939%2C%20Adolf,world%20war%20were%20to%20occur.&text=Nazi%20propaganda%20minister%20Joseph%20Goebbels,policies%20of%20the%20Nazi%20government.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extermination_camp#:~:text=Nazi%20Germany%20used%20six%20extermination,the%20Independent%20State%20of%20Croatia.

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Reinhard-Heydrich

Maccabi Basketball in Israel Introducing Players Like Portland's Deni Avdija

 Nadene Goldfoot                                           

                    Deni Avdija #8 in 2019; now here and in Portland, Oregon with Trail Blazers 2025-2026

The IDF facilitates mandatory service for elite Israeli basketball players through a special "Exceptional Athlete" status, allowing them to balance training and games with military duties. These athletes typically serve in non-combat, flexible roles, often with shortened daily hours, enabling them to pursue professional careers abroad or in Israel. For example, NBA player Deni Avdija was drafted as an "Exceptional Athlete" in a non-combat role. 

Starting from the 2015–16 season, the team was named Maccabi FOX Tel Aviv, referring to the new main fashion line sponsor. New players were signed, including some proven players such as Taylor Rochestie and Vítor Faverani. Jordan Farmar returned, and prospect Dragan Bender gained more playing time as well.  On 24 October 2019, at the age of 18, Avdija made his first start in the EuroLeague, recording six points and three rebounds in 16 minutes in a 76–63 victory over Valencia.

ISRAEL'S Maccabi Tel Aviv Basketball Club  known for sponsorship reasons as Maccabi Rapyd Tel Aviv , is a professional basketball club based in Tel Aviv, Israel. The team plays in the Israeli Premier League and internationally in the EuroLeague.

              Draft Members sponsored by State Farm Insurance Co. 

Maccabi Tel Aviv is known as one of the best teams in Europe, having won 6 Euroleague titles since joining, and having sent numerous players to the NBA draft. (The NBA draft is an annual National (American) Basketball Association's event, dating back to 1947, in which the teams in the league draft players to join their organizations who are eligible and who declare for the draft.)

The club was established in the mid-1930s, as part of the Maccabi Tel Aviv Sports Club, which had been founded in 1906.  Maccabi Tel Aviv is a prominent Israeli sports association founded in 1906, featuring highly successful football and basketball teams. The football club, owned by Mitch Goldhar since 2009, is the most decorated in Israel, while the basketball club plays at Menora Mivtachim Arena. Both teams are known for their deep history and competitive, top-tier performance. 

The first sports club in Israel, "Rishon LeZion" Jaffa, which later became Maccabi Tel Aviv, was founded in 1906 by Dr. Leo Cohen, a doctor at the Hebrew Gymnasium in Jaffa (later Herzliya Gymnasium), who had previously led the defense of Kishinev, and Yehezkel Hankin. The club had 25 gymnasts and was equipped with horizontal bars, parallel bars, and weights. The activities of this sports club were based on the activities of the Zionist sports clubs in Europe, which were built according to the German tradition of gymnastics and muscle stretching as non-competitive-exercise activities. 

The club underwent a change a year after its establishment when Zvi Orloff (Nishri), an immigrant from Russia, was appointed a special teacher of gymnastics and physical education at the Hebrew Gymnasium in Jaffa. Under his supervision, a beam was installed in the schoolyard on two high poles, from which ladders, ropes, and swings were hung. The first organized sports competitions in the history of the old settlement were held in Rehovot between 1908 and 1914, with the first event taking place during Passover in 1908 in coordination with "Rishon LeZion" Jaffa and lasted one day. Nishri, representing "Rishon LeZion" Jaffa, won the running competition (the other participants were independent and did not represent organized clubs). In 1908, the club had 45 men, 22 women, and 25 youths as members. On Saturdays, club members would go for walks or sail in the sea.

On 18 May 2014, Maccabi Tel Aviv won its sixth EuroLeague championship, after it defeated Real Madrid, by a score of 98–86, in overtime, to win the EuroLeague championship. Tyrese Rice was named the EuroLeague Final Four MVP. The game received worldwide media attention, after in response to Real Madrid's loss to Maccabi, over 18,000 anti-Semitic messages were posted on Twitter, in an outpouring of hatred against Jews. Maccabi entered the EuroLeague Finals as an underdog, with few expecting the team to even make it into the EuroLeague Final Four, let alone to go all the way and win the championship.

In the 2020–21 season, Maccabi Tel Aviv started off with no fans in attendance due to the COVID-19 pandemic in Israel, and got off to a rocky start, winning 14 out of 34 Euroleague games. In the Winner League, Maccabi beat Hapoel Gilboa Galil to win the Israeli finals series 2–1, to win its 55th championship.

Maccabiah Games 2026
The 22nd Maccabiah Games, the world's largest Jewish athletic competition, will take place in Israel from June 29 to August 14, 2026, featuring various sports. 

Maccabi Tel Aviv BC is competing in the 2025–26 EuroLeague and Israeli Winner League, holding a 9-13 EuroLeague record as of mid-January 2026. Following a 100-97 victory over Zalgiris, the team is fighting to recover from a 2-8 start and climb into the playoff places. Due to ongoing security situations, Maccabi has been playing home games in Belgrade. 

Maccabi Tel Aviv held on to defeat Zalgiris 100-97 in Euroleague play over the weekend as the yellow-and-blue improved its record to 9-13 in front of over 10,000 fans at Yad Eliyahu, who cheered the club on from the tip-off all the way to the final whistle.

Resource:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maccabi_Tel_Aviv_B.C.#:~:text=In%20the%202020%E2%80%9321%20season,the%202023%E2%80%9324%20EuroLeague%20season.

https://www.maccabisport.org/about-maccabi/