 | | Steven Mizel speaks with I.D.F's Nahal Infantry troops headed towards Gaza, May 2024 |
Few men leave the U.S. Marines without retaining the Corps inside them for life. Octogenarian Steven Mizel still does.
Though long out of US uniform, he still moves with a soldier’s sense of duty—this time to America’s closest ally,
Israel, a nation resisting the same Islamo-Marxist revolution that seeks to unmake the West from within.
Where the front lines shift, the moral fight is the same: to preserve western civilization.
At November’s Republican Jewish Coalition Leadership Summit, Mizel stood before American patriots and Jewish activists,
his foundation honoring wounded IDF reservist Itay Sagy with the
Defender of Freedom and Security Award. “To the soldiers wounded in this war—those to whom so much is owed,”
Mizel said, introducing a young man who turned near-death into testimony. The Marine’s salute to the Israeli fighter
framed the day’s theme: courage, duty, and the shared defense of liberty itself.
Setting the Stage: Steven Mizel’s Introduction
Presenter Steven Mizel framed the award as a tribute to the wounded “to whom so much is owed,” then introduced
Sagy — a reservist in the elite Sayeret Maglan unit — and summarized the ambush that would change his life.
“I Choose Life”: Itay Sagy’s Account
Sagy opens with disarming warmth — “I can’t be scared in a room full of people that cherish and love me” — before recounting
the sprint south after October 7, five days of combat, and a point-blank fight with terrorists “who fought from hate,” while his unit
fought “out of love for Israel… and for each other.”
“I feel something loving me… I see my future… a big house in the north full of kids… And I choose life.”
Gravely wounded by a grenade — neck torn open, right side unresponsive — Sagy recalls a teammate shielding him with his own body.
Shattered by the loss of brothers-in-arms, he struggled with failure until a comrade reminded him that his actions saved nine others.
From then on, he resolved to “be a hose and not a bottle” — to pour goodness forward and help others heal.
Ethics vs. Hatred: Sagy on Hamas, the IDF, and the Media
In a post-event interview, Sagy contrasts Hamas’s hatred with the IDF’s ethic of restraint — including cancelling missions if
civilians are in the perimeter. “War is terrible… mistakes happen,” he concedes, but the standard is protecting innocents.
He’s frank about skewed coverage abroad, yet prefers “educate” over “advocate,” trusting reasonable people to respond to facts plainly told.
Leadership and Resolve: Steven Mizel on the Free World
In a candid conversation at last year's Summit, Steven Mizel laments a world “in disarray,” and an America that no longer leads with confidence —
contrasting the present with periods when U.S. resolve was unmistakable. The implications, he argues, touch every American; hyper-focus on Israel
can distract from the wider threat network backed by Iran.
Veterans Day Reflection: Shared Courage, Shared Duty
The bond between American and Israeli veterans is more than alliance; it is kinship formed in the hard school of duty. Listening to Sagy
choosing life in the midst of death, and to Mizel insisting on moral clarity in a murky world, we’re reminded: the defense of freedom isn’t abstract.
It is personal, sacrificial, and — when rightly led — deeply humane.
This Veterans Day, we honor those who stand watch for all of us — who hold their fire when a civilian might be in the way, who run toward danger to pull
friends from it, and who, when the shooting stops, teach the truth patiently. May their courage steady our resolve; may their example guide our words and our vote.
Gen. Richard Clark, left, U.S. Air Force 3rd Air Force commander, and Israel Defense Force (IDF) Commander of the Aerial Defense Array, Brig. Gen. Zvika Haimovich, shake hands during the combined missile defense exercise Juniper Cobra 2018 in Israel.
Ken Abramowitz Sounds Alarm on NYC Mayoral Candidate at Republican Jewish Coalition 2025
Ken Abramowitz, President of Save The West, delivered pointed remarks about the upcoming New York City mayoral election at the Republican Jewish Coalition 2025 conference. Speaking just days before the election, Abramowitz expressed deep concerns about candidate Zohran Mamdani and what he sees as a systemic failure in the electoral process.
The Threat to New York
Abramowitz, a former New Yorker,
expressed sadness (0:24–0:30)
about the current state of New York City. He characterized the leading mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani as representing foreign interests rather than American values.
According to Abramowitz (0:51–1:13),
Mamdani represents Iranian interests and adheres to an ideology fundamentally opposed to the principles that have made New York a diverse, thriving metropolis. He questioned how someone with such views could be allowed to run for mayor of a city with the world's second-largest Jewish population.
Constitutional Concerns
At 1:51–2:27 in the video,
Abramowitz raised concerns about what he describes as coded language around “globalizing the intifada,” which he interprets as incitement to violence. He argues that anyone running on such a platform should be disqualified from public office.
“We do not need alien invaders to come to New York and say they're going to violate the Constitution because they don't care about the Constitution.” –
3:48–3:59
He emphasized (4:06–4:27)
that candidates who openly oppose American constitutional principles should not be permitted to seek office, comparing it to allowing known criminals to run for public positions.
The Three-Colored Threat
Abramowitz outlined his framework (6:27–6:59) for understanding what he sees as America's major adversaries, color-coding them as:
- Reds – Communists
- Greens – Islamists
- Blues – Globalists
Systemic Failure
Starting at 7:15–7:53,
Abramowitz argued that allowing such a candidate to run represents a failure at every level of government—federal, state, and local. He drew parallels to other moments of systemic failure in American history, including Pearl Harbor and 9/11, and in Israel with October 7th.
He stated (8:00–8:40)
that candidates should be required to publicly renounce Sharia law and affirm their acceptance of the Constitution and Bill of Rights in English, Arabic, or Farsi before being permitted to run for office.
Cultural Protection
Using analogies about golf clubs and hypothetical scenarios in Saudi Arabia
(9:12–9:54),
Abramowitz emphasized his belief that societies must protect their founding values and cultural identity. He argued that just as other nations protect their cultural norms, America should do the same.
“Every culture has to protect its culture and can't allow foreign agents to come in and upset a culture of a country.” –
9:39–9:53
In his final analogy (9:55–10:38),
Abramowitz compared the situation to someone joining a golf club but wanting to convert it into a tennis facility—illustrating his point that organizations and societies must maintain their core identity and values.
A Call to Action
Abramowitz concluded by emphasizing that protecting American institutions and values requires vigilance. He called for mechanisms to prevent candidates who he believes represent foreign interests or oppose constitutional principles from seeking public office.
The full interview provides a stark warning about what Abramowitz and Save The West see as threats to American civic life, particularly in major urban centers. As New York voters head to the polls, these concerns highlight the intense debate over immigration, integration, and what it means to be American in the 21st century.
Watch the complete interview above to hear Ken Abramowitz’s full remarks and analysis.
 | | At G2E Expo, gaming-industry executives, Benjie Cherniak and Joe Asher introduce Israeli photographer, Inor Kagno, who testifies his experience and views since surviving the Oct 7th massacre 2-years ago.
|
It's a cruel irony that Israelis who built some of the world’s most trusted verification and compliance systems now find themselves defamed by outlets that republish, without scrutiny, the unverifiable claims of a terror regime.
 That inversion of truth set the stage for Inor "Roni" Kagno’s remarks. Standing before gaming professionals who live by evidence, he told them he had nothing to sell and no platform to promote — only the story of survival that began at dawn on October 7, 2023, when his camera stopped being a tool of art and became a witness.
Mr. Kagno described the Nova Music Festival not as a battlefield but as a trap sprung on civilians — thousands of young people caught between gunfire and flaming cars, running through open fields that offered no cover. Kagno refused to call it “cross-fire.” “There was only one side shooting,” he said. “And there were no soldiers among us.”
In recounting how information was manipulated after the massacre, Mr. Kagno warned: “And the same people giving this information to Hamas.” He explained that roughly three thousand infiltrators crossed from Gaza that morning — “a thousand of them soldiers with a uniform, Nukhba and stuff … just to kidnap, just to rape civilians.” His point was clear: the same networks that feed Western reporters unverifiable casualty tallies were, in many cases, the very pipelines through which Hamas coordinated its atrocities.
He told the audience how Hamas filmed its own massacres — the deliberate mutilations, the executions in traffic jams — and how those videos now circulate as recruitment propaganda while global media amplify casualty numbers supplied by the perpetrators. “The same organizations that cannot account for the bodies of the hostages,” he said, “are the ones the press still trusts to count the dead.”
Kagno warned that Hamas’s failure even to deliver the cadavers of Israeli hostages in the agreed numbers revealed not only contempt for human life but also for truth itself. In negotiations, he said, the terror group substituted random corpses to meet quotas — and still the world called it diplomacy.
“Integrity,” he told them, “is not a luxury of peace. It’s the only thing that survives when peace collapses.” The line drew a long silence in the room — a rare pause at a convention built on the mathematics of chance.
From there he pivoted to the information war, urging his listeners — many of them data analysts and compliance officers — to recognize the parallel between statistical integrity in gaming and moral integrity in reporting. He said that if their industry demanded provable odds and verifiable data, the world should demand no less from those narrating this war.
Kagno’s closing words turned from indictment to invitation: that those who build systems of transparency, verification, and trust in commerce must be willing to defend those same principles when they’re assaulted in public discourse. “Because if truth becomes negotiable,” he said, “then so does every contract, every partnership, every life.”
The audience rose in spontaneous applause — not the perfunctory kind reserved for keynote speakers, but the quiet, standing kind that marks the boundary between professional respect and moral recognition. During the Question and Answer period, several attendees asked questions that reflected both professional curiosity and personal unease. One compliance officer from a European sportsbook said he had never heard a survivor speak so directly about “the information pipelines behind atrocity.” Kagno answered that he had no monopoly on truth — only firsthand experience. “I saw who they shot, who they dragged, and who they filmed,” he said. “Everything else is commentary.”
A data-security consultant asked whether he still believed in communication across divides. Kagno paused. “You cannot make peace with people who believe murder is prayer,” he replied quietly. “But you can still make peace with the truth.” The room fell silent again.
Another attendee asked what message he wanted the gaming industry to carry forward. Kagno said that people who work with risk understand that every system has an edge case — the one event that proves whether the model can withstand chaos. “October 7 was Israel’s edge case,” he said. “It showed which values hold under fire, and which dissolve.”
When the session ended, Benjie Cherniak, who had organized the memorial gathering with Joe Asher, took the microphone. He thanked Kagno for his courage and reminded the audience that the event was not an official G2E session but an act of conscience by colleagues who felt they could not let the anniversary pass unmarked. Cherniak said the intent was simple: ““to create a space to pause, to remember, and to be decent human beings for a few minutes before we go back out there.”
He acknowledged that among the crowd were Israelis and diaspora Jews who had spent the past two years under a cloud of hostility, caricatured for defending their own right to exist. “We wanted to give them a place to stand upright,” Cherniak said, “and remind everyone that truth still matters in business — and in history.”
As people filed out, some paused to shake Kagno’s hand, others simply nodded. Outside the ballroom, the convention floor buzzed again with lights and pitches and the sound of deals being made. But for those who had stepped into that side room, the metrics of value had shifted.
For a few minutes on October 7, 2025, in a city built on odds, integrity had the final word.
Beverly Hills Fire Chief Greg Barton stands with a wreath following the city's ceremony which commemorates America's suffering from the jihadist war launched in D.C. and NYC on September 11th, 2001
Hidden just off Little Santa Monica Boulevard, at the corner of Rexford Drive beside the Beverly Hills Fire and Police Departments, stands a solemn yet beautiful space: the Beverly Hills 9/11 Memorial Garden. Two key figures behind its creation—architect Gidas Peteris and project manager Reggie Sully—shared how this landmark came to be and what it means.
A Vision Anchored by History
Peteris designed the garden around a striking centerpiece: a steel beam salvaged from the World Trade Center. “It gives us a little height and more to show—otherwise nobody would know what it was,” he explained. Around it are engraved plaques bearing more than 2,900 names of everyone who perished in the 9/11 attacks, not just first responders. The goal, Peteris said, was to create a focal point that made the loss tangible and unforgettable.
A Hidden Time Capsule
Beneath the foundation lies a sealed time capsule containing deeply personal artifacts: a piece of one of the hijacked airplanes and the ID badge of a pilot, donated through his brother during the memorial’s planning. There’s no set plan to open it; instead, it “memorializes those particular elements” and gives the site a deeper layer of meaning.
Building With Heart and Precision
For Reggie Sully, a veteran expediter with McCoy Construction, this was his first and only memorial project. Normally he manages high-end custom homes, but this garden called for extraordinary coordination: granite imported from China, engravers handling a four-step name etching process, concrete pours, stone masons, and weld inspections. “Timing was everything,” Sully said. Yet he felt as though “angels were looking down” as deadlines were met and materials arrived against the odds.
Community Spirit on Display
Both men highlighted the flood of volunteerism and generosity. Subcontractors and suppliers routinely waived fees. “It was a living tribute to everybody who wanted to participate,” Sully reflected. Peteris added that the board of directors, landscape designer Jim Ply, and local leader Reggie all donated time and services. Together, they turned a vision into reality without a traditional commercial budget.
More Than a Monument
Quotes, inscriptions, and interpretive panels guide visitors through the story of 9/11 and the memorial’s creation. For Peteris, the garden is for “kids, for people that lost somebody, for residents who shouldn’t forget.” Sully hopes visitors take away one message above all: never forget.
 | B.H. Police Chief Mark Stainbrook
addresses the public ceremony |
First Responders and Personal Meaning
First responders pass the memorial daily, and Sully believes they take special pride in it, much as the builders did. On September 11 ceremonies, he’s focused on making sure the steel is coated and the grounds immaculate. “I’m in work mode,” he said, “but I have my private moments with it.”
A Moment That Defined the Project
Sully recounted a moving committee meeting with Brad Berlingame, brother of pilot Chuck Berlingame, whose plane was hijacked on 9/11. Brad told how the FBI returned a singed prayer card from his brother’s wallet—one of the few personal effects recovered. That story, Sully said, deeply moved the entire team and underscored the memorial’s purpose.
Why It Matters
The Beverly Hills 9/11 Memorial Garden is more than a destination. It’s a testament to collective remembrance and civic pride, transforming a corner of Beverly Hills into sacred ground. Thanks to the vision of architect Gidas Peteris, the dedication of project manager Reggie Sully, and the generosity of countless contributors, the city now holds a permanent space for reflection—linking a global tragedy to local hearts.
 | The design of the 9/11 Memorial Garden in Beverly Hills pays tribute to the jihadist attacks in both
Washington with a Pentagon shape in center and New York City with Twin Towers of the World Trade Center on the lower right |
The architect of the gardens, Gidas Peteris, walked us through the powerful symbolism and collaborative effort behind the Beverly Hills 9/11 Memorial Garden. Conceived and built by a volunteer board with widespread community donations, the site transforms a corner of Beverly Hills into a living tribute far removed from the city’s image of luxury shopping.
A Centerpiece from the Twin Towers
At the memorial’s core stands a vertical steel beam salvaged from the World Trade Center. Peteris explained that its height and texture give immediate visual impact— “otherwise nobody would know what it was” — and anchor the space as sacred ground. Surrounding the beam are engraved plaques bearing more than 2,900 names of everyone who perished in the collapse, not only first responders.
A Hidden Time Capsule
Beneath the foundation lies a sealed time capsule containing deeply personal artifacts: a piece of one of the hijacked airplanes and the ID badge of a pilot, donated with help from the pilot’s brother during the memorial’s planning. Peteris noted there is no set plan to open the capsule; instead, it serves as a way to “memorialize those particular elements” and give the site deeper meaning. Design Collaboration and Community Spirit
Peteris served as the project architect, working alongside landscape designer Jim Ply and a board of directors led by Project Manager Reggie Sully of McCoy Construction. Many materials and services—concrete, construction labor, design time—were contributed at no cost. This spirit of donation and shared purpose allowed the vision to become reality without a traditional commercial budget.
More Than a Monument
Quotes, inscriptions, and interpretive panels encircle the garden, guiding visitors through the story of 9/11 and those who helped create the memorial. Peteris emphasized that the garden is meant for students, families, and residents to remember and reflect—“something that adds to Beverly Hills’ legacy” beyond its famous shopping district.
|
