Detroit Jewish leader found stabbed to death outside her home
The caption under Samantha’s photo reads: “Samantha Woll, an interfaith activist who also worked in politics, was 40. It is unclear if the killing has any connection to the war in Israel.”
It is unclear? To whom is this unclear? Detroit police say there is no evidence of a hate crime. Read about the woman. She didn’t have an enemy in the world. She advocated for all people, Jews, Muslims, believers, non-believers. She was young, fresh, hopeful, and now…dead.
I cannot unsee this. I cannot unsee any of this. For the first time in my life, I am seriously imagining the unspeakable here in America. I’ve studied the Holocaust throughout my life. The absurdity in Germany in the early years of the 1930s that Jews, who were cultured, intellectual, wealthy pillars of society, would end up in gas chambers in concentration camps was unthinkable. And yet, it happened.
There is a palpable antisemitic vibe in the world right now. To some degree, maybe it’s better that it’s coming to the surface. It’s not like this all just started on October 7th. The reality according to an October 16, 2023 FBI report posted on the ADL website confirms a striking increase in antisemitism in the US. According to Jonathan Greenblatt, ADL CEO, “Reported hate crime incidents across the country have once again reached record highs, with anti-Jewish hate crimes at a number not seen in decades,” After the deadliest day for Jews since the holocaust, antisemitic acts are increasing at warp speed. Greenblatt goes on to say, “The reality of this data is incredibly sobering. And yet, these numbers are not surprising. They are consistent with ADL’s own data and the trends we have been monitoring for years.”
The floodgates of civility have burst open and unleashed a deluge of hatred that is gushing across the globe. I was checking out at my local grocery store yesterday. The cashier asked me if I wanted to round up to donate to whatever children’s relief fund they were supporting. I normally say, “of course.” But instead, I said, “Not today. Right now, all of my funds are going to Israel.” I thought this was an innocuous statement to make in a suburban Phoenix organic grocery store.
The woman behind the register looked shocked. Her face clearly registered disdain. She looked away. She didn’t say another word. She set my change on the counter, not in my hand as is usually the custom here. I bagged my own groceries and left the store feeling uneasy.
This morning I read a post on reddit about a young Jewish woman who had been dating a man for several months. We’ll call him Sam. They had been close friends before things turned romantic. She was falling in love with him.
She noticed that over the last several weeks, Sam had ceased posting on Instagram, one of his favorite pastimes. She didn’t think much of it at the time. Sam was sympathetic to her anger, fear, and volatile emotions over Hamas’ unimaginable inhuman slaughter of Israeli civilian women, children, and elders on October 7th. “He said all the right things,” she noted. “He held my hand as I cried.”
In a café, a colleague asked her if she had seen a recent post by Sam on Instagram. This was surprising since Sam had all but abandoned the platform.
As she perused several of Sam’s posts supporting “the other side” she read Hamas talking points, posts supporting driving Israel “from the river to the sea,” descriptions of Jews as occupiers. Was Sam actually antisemitic? “What should she do?” She asked her reddit community. Confront him? Leave him? Continue to live a lie?
As sad as this story is, the 170 or so replies were even more devastating. Some comforted by sharing their own “low-key” antisemitic relationship stories. Another wrote, “Don’t worry it has happened to all of us at one point or another.”
The one that really stopped me was a response quoting advice once given to a Jewish person in an interfaith relationship. “There’s going to come an awkward moment at the dinner table where someone in your significant other’s family is going to slip with “fuc#in’ Jews.”
Many responses encouraged the young woman to jump ship immediately. Antisemitic or not, the guys a liar and a coward and is hiding critical information about himself from you. Red flags everywhere. Save yourself.
I have non-Jewish friends, “like-family” friends. They don’t want to talk about “the war” with me. I’ve been unclear about why. Their hesitancy feels evasive.
I forced the issue with one friend, making sure she knew the truth about the hospital bombing. “I’m not really up on all that,” she said. “What?” I responded. “You read the NYT, right? You know the al-Ahli hospital was destroyed by a misfired Palestinian rocket?” She pushed back insisting it was still a debatable issue. “They don’t know who dropped that bomb,” she told me sternly. It felt like a dagger.
They know. They know! They know who was responsible for blowing up al-Ahli Arab hospital. It wasn’t Israel. It was the Palestinian Islamic Jihad armed militant group in Gaza.
Turn on the news and see pro-Palestinian rallies with hundreds of thousands of people in Brooklyn, London, Paris, Sydney. Protestors hold signs and chant in unison. But read the signs. Listen to the chants. They don’t say “come together to support a two-state solution.” They don’t condemn Hamas’ brutality. They say, “Zionism is Genocide,” and, “Resistance is justified.” They say, “Globalize the intifada,” “From the river to the sea.”
Dave Chappelle went off on an anti-Israel tirade Thursday night at his show at TD Garden in Boston inciting audience cries of “Go Palestine. Go Hamas.” Jews in the audience had to leave. Maybe out of fear. Maybe out of disgust. It really doesn’t matter, does it? A spokesperson for Chappelle insisted he wasn’t even in Boston on October 19th. But the venue says he was and confirms the performance. Where are the facts?
I don’t understand this. I feel alone. I feel the need to hide my beliefs behind a façade of peacenik liberalism. But I refuse to do that.
I don’t know who to trust. Who, Jewish or not, has taken me off their insta feed? Who is silently siding with terrorists? Who is sitting around their table accidentally denouncing the “fuc#ing Jews?”
@jewishbreakingnews is reporting that two of the 203 hostages have been freed. They are American’s Natalie and Judith Raanan, from Evanston, Illinois. They were visiting family for their grandmother’s 85th birthday. They are being transferred through Egypt and will be flying into USA soon. A source told US media that the two are being released on “humanitarian grounds” because the mother is in poor health.
The release of the two is the result of negotiations between Qatar and Hamas which started after Hamas abducted around 200 people from Israel during its October 7 attack.
We will report more as the information becomes available. We pray that all of the hostages are released safe and soon.
It’s about time someone schooled parents on what our finest academic institutions are teaching our kids. Undoubtedly you’ve seen or heard something about our Ivies and their unconditional disdain for Israel. Well, professor Shai Davidai is tired of sitting silent in the face of unmitigated anti-Israel rhetoric on the campus of Columbia Business School.
Davidai’s bio on the Columbia Business School website reads:
“Shai Davidai is Assistant Professor in the Management Division of Columbia Business School. His research examines people’s everyday judgments of themselves, other people, and society as a whole. He studies the psychological forces that shape, distort, and bias people’s perceptions of the world and their influence on people’s judgments, preferences, and choices. His topics of expertise include the psychology of judgment and decision making, economic inequality and social mobility, social comparisons, and zero-sum thinking.”
Who better to speak out on the University’s pro-militant, anti-Israel bias that is endangering the safety of not only Jewish students on campus, but professors like Davidai as well.
In his interview with the New York Post this week, Davidai confessed his own fears of anti-Israel campus activities, “I am 40 years old and I was shivering to come to my own employment. Imagine not being able to go to your work because your boss does not value your, life because your boss supports pro-terror organizations.”
His boss is Columbia’s president, Minouche Shafik, who in failing to stand up for what is right and good and condemn inhuman torture, rape, kidnapping, and murder, shows a tacit acceptance of terrorism and slaughter of innocent civilians. “Where are you, President Shafik of Columbia University?” Davidai pleads. “We are waiting for you to eradicate all pro-terror student organizations from campus.”
The answer from the University? Deafening silence.
One Jewish sophomore at Columbia was quoted in a New York Post article as saying, “I think [Davidai] hit the nail on the head. The silence of the school is really deafening. When people chant, ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,’ that’s calling for the extermination of the Jewish people — and that needs to be condemned,”
Harvard President, Claudine Gay, under the guise of protecting free speech, has also been complicit in failing to denounce 30+ Palestinian campus groups in their support of Hamas. At Yale University, “Free Palestine” messages were written in chalk around campus. More anti-Israel sentiment is being espoused at Stanford. Silence at the University of Pennsylvania, speaks volumes. In a Sunday op-ed in The Wall Street Journal called “Don’t Hire My Anti-Semitic Law Students,” Steven Davidoff Solomon, a corporate law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and the adviser to the Jewish law student association argued that “The student conduct at Berkeley is part of the broader attitude against Jews on university campuses that made last week’s massacre possible. It is shameful and has been tolerated for too long.”
We are at a pivotal moment in history and we can no longer be silent in the face of the misinformation that is fueling the divide between young and older people in this country. Write to your alma mater. Withhold financial support if the rhetoric being disseminated is antisemitic. Insist that all students’ safety is protected on campus. Demand that educators present facts not fiction in their critical discussions about the Middle East.
And don’t be afraid to speak out. Like Shai Davidai, be brave. Be unapologetic. Tell the truth. Because even if we aren’t sure who said it, “The only thing necessary for evil to triumph in the world is that good [people] do nothing.”
Watch Montana Tucker’s amazing coverage of LA Rally and Floyd Mayweather
Thank you to boxing legend, Floyd Mayweather, for stepping into the ring to support IDF forces. Considered by many to be the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world, Mayweather is as strong in his convictions as he was between the ropes.
Not only has he taken a powerful public stance against the brutal Hamas terror campaign against Israeli civilians, but he marched in LA on Sunday in the “Solidarity March for Israel” in Century City. And if that wasn’t enough, the three-time national Golden Gloves winner and Olympic gold medalist sent 5000 pounds of essential supplies (including bullet proof vests) to Israel aboard his private plane “Air Mayweather.”
“I will continue to support Israel and its right to defend itself and its right to exist. I condemn the Hamas terrorists,” He said in a powerful TMZ sports interview this week.
Take that Kylie Jenner, Penelope Cruz, and Selena Gomez.
“Hate never goes away; it just goes underground until it is given a little oxygen.”
— President Joe Biden
78% of Americans 45 and older support the U.S. pro-Israel stance against Hamas. Before you celebrate the fact that the majority of us believe in Israel’s right to defend herself against the brutal murderous Hamas terrorists who kidnapped, raped, and murdered innocent civilians on October 7th, hear this:
Only 48% of Americans under the age of 45 believe the U.S. should voice public support for Israel.
This comes from a new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll. The same poll noted that only about 44% of Americans say Israel’s response so far has been appropriate.
While some in the media seem to report this as good news, I’m having trouble accepting that. Maybe it’s my “Nudelman negativity,” (my mom’s family’s predilection to see every glass half empty), but Israel needs us right now. And if only a week has passed since the disgusting rampage Hamas led on Gaza, how does this bode for the future?
Black Lives Matter groups rally against Israel as Pro-Palestinian student groups on our top University campuses sign statements condemning Israel at a time when there should be no question of moral equivalency.
President Biden, appearing strong and presidential, affirms that America stands with Israel, full stop. But eight out of 10 Americans fear the current war will broaden across the Middle East and possibly across the world.
Israel sanctifies human life and urges innocent Palestinians to evacuate Northern Gaza. Hamas refuses to allow them to leave by blocking roads, bombing cars, and confiscating car keys.
We see more and more mainstream press outlets blaming Israel for the plight of everyday Palestinian civilians who want to escape the war-torn area and flee for safety. But where is the outrage at Hamas for holding an innocent civilian population hostage, using children as human shields, and blowing up their own infrastructure to wage a public relations campaign against Israel?
According to the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism, a group that monitors violent language and threats on social media, in the first 18 hours after the Hamas attack, threats and calls for violence against Jews rose by approximately 488 percent.
So, what can you do?
Stay informed
No matter how ugly and ruthless the Hamas crimes against humanity are, do not stop reading. Do not turn off the tv. Do not look away. These are real images and facing them head on is critical at this moment.
Educate yourself
Read everything you can. Understand what is actually happening. Don’t simply listen to one side of the story. Pay attention to facts and draw honest conclusions based on evidence.
Tell people you are Jewish. Tell people where you stand. Tell your colleagues and employer to stand up for Israel. In fact, the ADL is asking CEOs of Fortune 500 companies and other corporations to sign a corporate pledge to fight antisemitism and stand with their Jewish employees.
Tell your story
Remaining silent will not protect anyone. Speak your truth with facts and compassion. Disagree when friends, family, or co-workers say something insensitive or blatantly antisemitic. Saying nothing at this point in time is tantamount to agreeing with the false narratives, anti-zionist propaganda, and ill-informed justification for Hamas’ unbridled cruelty, violence, and disregard for the sanctity of human life.
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