By Debra Rich Gettleman

The Jerusalem Post headline, October 22nd, 2023

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 7^th. 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 7^th. “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 19^th. 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?”