“We don’t have a slow season in our business,” he told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency at the time. “What we deal with is words. We’ve learned that words have the power to kill, that words unchallenged, left in silence, words of bigotry, are part of our tradition.”

Foxman thrived for decades in a political culture where the establishment still mattered, and extremism was not considered a virtue. He granted absolution to figures as diverse as former President Jimmy Carter and right-wing broadcaster Glenn Beck and as surprising as the fashion designer John Galliano.

Foxman also knew when to despair of reforming repeat offenders.

“When you say Mr. X engaged in antisemitism, the first time that they do it you can say it’s ignorance, it’s insensitivity,” he told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in 2007, asked about his refusal to exonerate Hollywood star and director Mel Gibson. “But when you say to them that they are engaging in antisemitism when they say the Jews control the media and the Jews control universities, and when they repeat it the second time, the third time, and the fourth time, are you or are you not an antisemite?”

Foxman’s successor, ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt, lamented in a statement the passing of an “iconic Jewish leader.”

“America and the Jewish people have lost a moral voice, a passionate advocate for the Jewish people and the state of Israel, and a remarkable leader,” Greenblatt said.

Greenblatt’s announcement was followed by an outpouring of memories and tributes from leaders throughout the Jewish world and in Israel. “Abe Foxman was a mentor, a guide, and a towering presence in Jewish communal life. He showed a generation of leaders that fighting antisemitism demands clarity, courage, and the willingness to stand firm under pressure,” said William Daroff, CEO of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, in one such statement.

Amid starkly growing polarization in the United States, Foxman was known for his willingness to call balls and strikes on all sides of the aisle, as well as hug across the chasm.

The complexity of individuals – the truth that heroes could commit bad acts and that villains could at times be redeemed – was seared into Foxman from childhood.

Foxman was born in Poland in 1940 and at 2 years old was left in the care of his Roman Catholic nanny in Vilnius, Lithuania, as his parents sought to escape the Germans. His nanny was his fierce protector and insulated him from the depredations of Nazis and their enablers, baptizing him and teaching him to handily hurl anti-Jewish epithets to fit in.

When his parents returned after the war, she would not give him up: It took bitter encounters in courtrooms to restore him to his family, and to the Jewish people.

Yet he could never hate her, he would often say later in life. “She risked her life,” he told the New York Times in 1991. “She saved my life.”
In 1950, four years after besting his nanny in the courts, Foxman’s parents took him with them to New York. There he attended the Yeshiva of Flatbush followed by the City College of New York and New York University Law School.

Foxman applied his exacting standards to himself, telling JTA in the same 2007 interview that he was haunted by the mistakes he had made, in one case lacerating a 60 Minutes segment on Jerusalem only to find out the report’s criticism of the Israeli police’s use of excessive force in confronting rioters in 1990 on the Temple Mount Israel was correct. (He apologized to producer Don Hewitt and reporter Mike Wallace, and Hewitt replied, “Are you for real?”)

He also told JTA in the same interview that he anguished over one of his most controversial decisions — his refusal to describe the Ottoman massacre of Armenians in 1915 as a “genocide” — especially given the backlash his stance earned him from Jewish allies of the Armenian community.

Foxman’s reflex had been typical: defer to the Jewish community most vulnerable in a controversy, in this case the Turkish Jewish community, which feared retaliation. It was a decision that he also took at a time Turkey was one of Israel’s closest regional allies and heavily pressured Israel to oppose any U.S. efforts to recognize the killings as genocide. But Foxman acknowledged in retrospect that he had caused others pain.

“To me it was very clear, there are moral imperatives here — the moral imperative to feel somebody else’s pain, to recognize their anguish, and the moral imperative which is the safety and the security of the Jewish community,” he said.

Once Foxman had enough of someone, he truly had enough — and his sharp wit would emerge.

“My answer would be ‘Thanks but no thanks,”’ Foxman told Reuters in 2004 when Gibson said he was contemplating a film about the Maccabees, the Jewish warrior class whose stunning victory over Greek colonists is the basis of the Hanukkah holiday. “The last thing we need in Jewish history is to convert our history into a Western. In his hands we may wind up losing.”

He came across at times as a curmudgeon. Viral Hate: Containing Its Spread on the Internet, a book he coauthored in 2013, tanked, and he told a JTA reporter he was not surprised: He was lambasting the social media machine that was shaping America, tilting at virtual windmills.

“The paradigms are changing,” he said multiple times in an interview about the book.

Thirteen years later, his distaste for the self-assuredness of tech leaders who reassured him all would be good seems prescient.

“We have been talking to the geniuses at Palo Alto,” Foxman said in the interview. “We have said to them, ‘thanks but no thanks. You developed a technology that has some wonderful things but also has unintended consequences.’ ”

When Foxman retired in 2015, antisemitism appeared by many measures to be at an all-time low in the United States. Foxman hesitated to take credit for any gains but said he had appreciated the chance to build a world animated by values very different from those that reigned during his childhood in Eastern Europe.

“I don’t take credit for it, but I’m part of the effort — not only of the American Jewish community, but of decent people in this country, to fight it,” Foxman told JTA at the time.

“To what extent did my experiences in the Shoah, the D.P. camps, my Catholicism have to do with that, I don’t know,” Foxman added. “I have been very lucky. To get up every morning and to have an opportunity to try to make a difference in both fighting hate and building love — wow. I have been very privileged.”

At a retirement party at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in Manhattan in 2015, Foxman received accolades from Obama administration officials as well as from Tom Friedman, The New York Times columnist with whom he had repeatedly clashed on Israel policy. (Friedman revealed that Foxman had been his counselor at Herzl Camp in Wisconsin, where a highlight each year was reenacting the Dreyfus Affair.)

The party also drew an appearance by Roger Ailes, the Fox News Channel chief who had faced Foxman’s wrath over the conspiracy musings of one-time Fox personality Beck. (Years later, Foxman would defend having awarded an honor to Fox’s owner, Rupert Murdoch, even after Greenblatt said Murdoch was stoking hate with the network.)

Foxman was gregarious, surprising interlocutors by ending official meetings with a hug, and referring to Jewish media reporters as “tattele,” Yiddish for “good boy.”

“Within minutes of our first phone call I felt like family,” United Nations envoy Samantha Power said at the Waldorf-Astoria sendoff, describing their first interaction in Obama’s first term, when she was on the National Security Council. “We were yelling, interrupting one another and swearing. I think I almost ended this first phone call saying, ‘Love you.’”

Nicole Mutchnik, chair of the ADL’s board, referred to Foxman’s famous warmth in a statement mourning his death.

“Abe Foxman helped build the modern liberal era of America. He was recognized across the globe as a great leader and passionate advocate for tolerance, a voice of the generation rebuilding in the shadow of the Shoah, and longtime advisor to American presidents and world leaders,” she said. “To those of us who knew him, Abe was a warm friend, advisor, spirited antagonist and hugger – all over lunch.”

In 2020, five years after retiring from the ADL, Foxman did what once was unthinkable to him. He endorsed a presidential candidate, Joe Biden. He was appalled by what he saw as President Donald Trump’s flirtations with bigotry and broadsides against democracy, the system that kept the United States from living the nightmare his parents had endured.

He also did what he had for a lifetime been reluctant to do: invoke the Nazi era as a warning signal.

“Germany did have institutions and they did have democracy and it did fall apart so, yeah, it’s not Germany, and it’s not Nazism, but our antennas are quivering,” Foxman told JTA weeks before the election.

Foxman is survived by his wife Golda; his daughter Michelle and his son Ariel; and four grandchildren.

In the hours before the attack, experts in the region said they thought Israel’s aggressive posture — which prompted the United States to begin moving some personnel out of the Middle East — could have been meant to extract concessions from Iran in its nuclear talks with the Trump administration. They noted that while tensions are rising between Iran and the West over Iran’s failure to abide by past nuclear agreements, no one is yet taking concrete measures against Iran.

 But the situation was fluid enough to worry longtime observers of the region. The threat of military pressure can take on a life of its own, Shira Efron, the research director for the Israel Policy Forum who has advised Israeli governments on defense issues, said before Israel made its move.

“We can argue that the Israeli kinetic threat to attack Iran, could be pressuring the sides to come to an agreement” that Israel favors, which would be the total dismantling of Iran’s nuclear program, she said. The problem with such pressure is that Israel can’t control the outcomes, she said.

“I would advise Israel to sit aside, let the U.S. try to take their time in terms of trying to reach an agreement,” she said. She switched to Hebrew to cite a rabbinic saying: “The work of the righteous is done by others.”

President Donald Trump on Thursday said talks with Iran to forge a deal on its nuclear capabilities were still ongoing. His top envoy negotiating conflict de-escalation, Steve Witkoff, was due in Oman early next week to continue talks with Iran.

“We remain committed to a Diplomatic Resolution to the Iran Nuclear Issue!” Trump said on Truth Social, the social media platform he owns, on Thursday. “My entire Administration has been directed to negotiate with Iran.”

He’d said the same thing earlier in the day. “I’d love to avoid the conflict,” Trump said at a press conference, asked about the prospects of an Israeli attack. “Iran’s going to have to negotiate a little bit tougher, meaning, they’re going to have to give us some things they’re not willing to give us right now.”

Witkoff is seeking a deal that would allow Iran and other countries access to uranium enriched to non-weaponization levels at an offshore facility. Iran is insisting that such a facility be in Iran.

Trump’s oft-stated lack of enthusiasm for military action appeared to put a cramp on any Israeli plans to strike Iran; Israel by most estimations needs U.S. backup to carry out an effective strike.

But Israel has increasingly been seeking to show that it can act alone. And Israeli officials have told their U.S. counterparts that Israel is ready to strike, CBS reported on Thursday, citing unnamed officials.

Asked about the imminence of an Israeli strike, Trump said, “I don’t want to say ‘imminent,’ but it looks like it’s something that could very well happen.”

Here’s what you need to know about where the situation stood before Israel shook it all up with its preemptive strike.

What was happening in terms of pressure on Iran and its nuclear program?

A majority of member nations of the United Nations nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, on Thursday voted to censure Iran for its noncompliance with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, of which it is a signatory. Iran, the IAEA said, was not allowing inspectors to reach key sites.

That could lead member nations to refer Iran’s noncompliance to the U.N. Security Council, which could snap back sanctions suspended in 2015, when the United States, under President Barack Obama, brokered a sanctions-relief-for-nuclear-rollback deal between much of the world and Iran.

Trump exited the deal in 2018, saying it was worthless, but a number of nations are still parties. Some, especially in Europe, are itching to reimpose the sanctions. European nations, eager a decade ago to come to a deal with Iran, are furious with the country for allying with Russia in its invasion of Ukraine. Britain, France, and Germany have set a deadline of August for Iran to comply, or they will start the snapback process.

 Iran immediately bared its teeth, saying it would enhance its enrichment capabilities, launching a new site and replacing aging centrifuges.

 “The Islamic Republic of Iran has no choice but to respond to this politically motivated resolution,” the foreign ministry said. “Additional measures are also being planned and will be announced in due course.”

Separately, Iran’s defense minister told reporters that if a breakdown in talks results in a conflict Iran “will target all U.S. bases in the host countries.”

Trump on Wednesday confirmed that he ordered the removal of U.S. non-essential personnel within striking range of Iranian missiles. “They are being moved out because it could be a dangerous place, we’ll see what happens,” Trump said, stopped by reporters as he entered the Kennedy Center. “We’ve given notice to move out and we’ll see what happens.”

 Earlier this week, CENTCOM commander Gen. Erik Kurilla told Congress he had laid out for Trump and his defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, a “wide range” of military actions should talks fail.

 But no one had referred the IAEA censure to the Security Council, so sanctions snapbacks were not yet on the table before the attack began.

 So it looks like war. Is the United States involved?

Trump has set multiple deadlines for a deal, but these have come and gone without consequence. One expires this week which may explain the order to pull non-essential personnel from the region and Kurilla’s tough talk in Congress.

But in their most recent call on Monday, Trump told Netanyahu he prefers to wait out talks, Axios reported. And without U.S. backing, Israeli strike options have long been seen to be limited.

Israel would likely need American air cover in a strike on nuclear facilities, powerful U.S. bombs required to breach nuclear facilities buried deep beneath mountains, and American military assistance to repel a counterattack.

 Israeli officials immediately put the entire country on high alert for a counterattack early Friday, warning of a barrage of missiles targeting civilians that could be expected.

The Biden administration rallied to Israel’s side when Israel struck Iran last year in retaliation for Iranian backing for its enemies in its war against Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah and for an intense barrage of Iranian missiles on Israel.

The same pattern is not guaranteed under Trump, said Joel Rubin, a national security analyst who was Obama’s top liaison with Congress during the Iran deal. He noted that Trump recently brokered a deal with Houthi militias in Yemen that ended strikes on U.S. ships traversing adjacent waters — but allowed the militias to keep striking Israel.

“The debate inside [Israeli] military circles is, if Israel were to strike without American support, A, would it be effective in any meaningful way? And B, what would Iran’s reaction be regionally?” said Rubin. “And based upon the fact that Trump was willing to walk away from protecting Israel from Houthi missiles, I think there’s a reason to believe that he would not come to Israel’s defense, like Joe Biden did.”

 Walla, an Israeli online news site, reported on Thursday evening that the Trump administration relayed to Netanyahu that it would not directly assist Israel in an attack on Iran. It was not clear if indirect assistance, such as refueling planes, was off the table, said the news site, which quoted two American officials.

 It was unclear in the immediately aftermath of the attack what kind of strike Israel had conducted. Jason Brodsky, the policy director at United Against a Nuclear Iran, a group that for years has been advocating for the country’s denuclearization, said beforehand that Israel could carry out a limited strike that could send a message.

“What they might do and what Trump might be more comfortable with, instead of a strike taking out the entirety of the nuclear program, they might aim for a more limited strike to send a message to the Iranians that, you know, ‘this is what we’re capable of. It’s going to get worse for you if you continue to reject our overtures,’” he said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is otherwise politically unpopular, may nonetheless have the backing of a nation still rattled by the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas massacre of hundreds of people inside Israel, which sparked the current Gaza war.

“That triggered Israelis to be much more risk ready,” Brodsky said, adding that Israel may be emboldened by its successes in decapitating the leadership of Hamas and Hezbollah, Brodsky said. For years, Hezbollah’s massive presence in Lebanon was a deterrent to Israeli action against the terrorist group’s principal backer, Iran.

“This is a unique window of opportunity for Israel, given that Hezbollah is so defanged,” he said.

What happens next?

Israel’s attack is likely to do damage to Iran’s military program, but none of its previous strikes have been seen as making substantial inroads against Iran’s nuclear program.

And Iran is unlikely to back down from opposing total denuclearization, said Barbara Slavin, a fellow at the Stimson Center whose expertise is in the U.S.-Iran relationship. Non-weaponized nuclear power is considered a national prerogative.

“This is really wrapped up in the whole notion of independence, which was so central to the Iranian Revolution, and it’s one of the few aspects of the revolution that I still think has resonance for ordinary Iranians who are otherwise furious with their regime,” she said.

Netanyahu’s sine qua non has been total denuclearization, and Israel and its American backers will not back away from it soon.

“Iran cannot be trusted to abide by international norms,” the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the powerhouse lobby which led advocacy against Obama’s Iran deal, said in a tweet. “No enrichment. Complete dismantlement.”

Mark Dubowitz, the CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, an influential think tank that has advocated for Iran’s containment, said removing enrichment capabilities was a must.

“The real sunset clause is January 2029, when Trump leaves office,” he said in a text message. “If Iran keeps its enrichment [Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei will wait him out and sprint for the bomb when American power looks weak again. And let’s be honest: The next president, Republican or Democrat, won’t scare him nearly as much as Trump does.”

The problem for Iran regime opponents is that they are no longer preeminent in the Trump administration, as they were in Trump’s first term. Trump has in recent weeks sacked an array of Iran hawks from top National Security Council positions, and leans toward the isolationism embraced by his vice president, J.D. Vance.

“They’re not driving the bus, but they have an influence,” said Trita Parsi, the executive vice president of the Quincy Institute, a leading think tank that advocates against military intervention. “They’re not in the lead any longer, because on fundamental issues, Trump sees that they’re not on the same page.”

Nothing could have emphasized the point more than when Israeli fighter jets lifted off early Friday morning, flying to Iran to stage an attack in direct contravention of Trump’s preferences.