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‘They Can Never Defeat Us’: Jewish Students Commemorate Oct. 7 Victims at George Washington University
George Washington University senior and Chabad GW president Sabrina Soffer delivering a speech at “Remember, Resolve, Rededicate,” a commemoration of the victims of the Oct. 7 massacre, on Oct. 5, 2024. Photo: GW Chabad
Jewish students at George Washington University in Washington, DC came together on Saturday to commemorate the lives of the kidnapped and deceased ahead of the one-year anniversary of Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel, a tragedy which claimed more Jewish lives in one day than any since the Holocaust.
Organized by Chabad GW, the event — titled “Remember, Resolve, Rededicate” — was held at Kogan Plaza, a section of campus that has seen both memorials to the victims of Hamas’s barbarism and celebrations of their afflictions led by pro-Hamas activists. On Saturday, however, a generation of Jewish students whose lives and conceptions of self have been upended by the events of the past year claimed the space as exclusively theirs, transforming it into a realm of healing and perseverance.
Speaking to The Algemeiner on Monday, several students who attended the gather remarked on the swiftness of the passage of time and why, one year removed from Oct. 7, it still feels like only the day after.
“It still feels like Oct. 8, because we’re still missing our loves ones,” GW Chabad president Sabrina Soffer said during an interview on Monday. “Israel is such a small country, and there, everyone is like family. We’re still missing over 100 people; we’ve lost so many, people are displaced from their homes — and the war is still ongoing and only escalating from here. I just hope that Israel will achieve victory. I want the war to end, but Israel must win.”
The presence at the vigil of those seemingly hostile to those gathered in support of Israel and the Jewish community also shrunk the distance between one year ago and now. At one point, a young woman wearing a keffiyeh roamed through the crowd, taking pictures of the students as they listened to speeches and comforted one another. She did not disclose what the pictures were for nor which media outlet she represented.
“It was an amazing visualization, the more I think about it,” freshman Nate Neutstadt told The Algemeiner. We’re here together as a community celebrating life, celebrating love, and on the other hand, there were people coming up to us trying to fuel the fire and spread hate.”
A native of San Diego, California, Neutstadt chose to attend GW — which he described as his “dream school” for its highly reputed school of international affairs — fully aware that every day on campus would see his Jewish identity scrutinized and maligned. Resisting any notion that Jewish identity can be driven underground, he accepted the challenge. The unknown woman was one of many obstacles against which he, as well as other first-year Jewish students, had steeled themselves long ago. Soon, she became an afterthought. No one photographed her in return.
“We were all just here in the moment, celebrating. And I think all of our mindsets at this point is that they’re going to do what they’re going to do and we’re going to be here celebrating life and love,” he added, explaining that he intends to fight hatred with Jewish pride. “There’s so much hate going around towards Jews just over our existing, and I think the best way to fight against it is to be a proud Jew, to live Jewish life in the face of hate. Because no matter what these antisemites try to do, chanting in the streets ‘intifada, intifada,’ they can never defeat us.”
Others, such as senior Ari Shapiro, have experienced an awakening of Jewish identity in the post-Oct 7. world. Throughout most of his life, Shapiro explained, Jewishness was an overlooked component of his identity, a detail of his biography which entitled him to a bar mitzvah but was attenuated by the comfort and banality of suburbia.
“I’m in a different boat than some of the others Jewish students you’ll talk to,” he said. “Before Oct. 7, 2023, I had never really considered what it meant to be Jewish. I never really felt an attachment to the identity or had even considered it to be a barrier between me and anyone else who wasn’t Jewish. That’s ironic, I know, given my name, which doesn’t get more Jewish than that. But seeing how Hamas butchered and slaughtered thousands of people, many of whom were part of the kibbutzim, which is usually the farther left group in Israel; and then seeing people on this campus demonstrate in support of their killers — that forced me to realize that no matter how much I made being Jewish as part of my identity, I would still share in the fate of others whose Judaism and Jewishness is the basis of how they are perceived by the world.”
For Natasha Halbfinger, who lived in Israel for four years during adolescence, Oct. 7 affirmed values in which she has always believed.
“We, as the Jewish people, will continue to be proud of our identities,” she proclaimed during a speech delivered on Saturday night. “We will not be Jews with trembling knees. We will continue to turn horror into beautiful celebrations of life — because Am Israel Chai.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post ‘They Can Never Defeat Us’: Jewish Students Commemorate Oct. 7 Victims at George Washington University first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Fresh conversations on the state of Canadian arts in a twice-monthly podcast from The CJN
Culturally Jewish debuted in April 2023 as an audio magazine highlighting stories of creators across Canada along with critical tips about new and upcoming events. Click here to listen and […]
The post Fresh conversations on the state of Canadian arts in a twice-monthly podcast from The CJN appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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Trump Nominates Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee as US Ambassador to Israel
Mike Huckabee looks on as Donald Trump reacts during a campaign event at the Drexelbrook Catering and Event Center, in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania, US, Oct. 29, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Brendan McDermid
US President-elect Donald Trump has nominated former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee to serve as the next US ambassador to Israel, adding another staunch ally of the Jewish state to a senior role in his incoming administration.
“I am pleased to announce that the highly respected former Governor of Arkansas, Mike Huckabee, has been nominated to be the United States Ambassador to Israel,” Trump wrote in a statement on Tuesday.
“Mike has been a great public servant, governor, and leader in faith for many years. He loves Israel, and the people of Israel, and likewise, the people of Israel love him. Mike will work tirelessly to bring about peace in the Middle East!” Trump continued.
Huckabee, an evangelical Christian, has long been a stalwart ally of the Jewish state. He has repudiated the anti-Israel protests that erupted in the wake of Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel last Oct. 7 and criticized incumbent US President Joe Biden for sympathizing with anti-Israel protesters during his speech at the 2024 Democratic National Convention (DNC). The incoming ambassador also lambasted the anti-Israel encampments at elite universities, stating that there should be “outrage” over the targeting and mistreatment of Jewish college students.
Huckabee has defended Israel’s right to build settlements in the West Bank, acknowledging the Jewish people’s ties to the land dating back to the ancient world.
“There is no such thing as the West Bank — it’s Judea and Samaria,” Huckabee has said, referring to the biblical names for the area. “There is no such thing as settlements — they’re communities, they’re neighborhoods, they’re cities. There is no such thing as an occupation.”
During Huckabee’s 2008 US presidential campaign, he stated that “there’s really no such thing as a Palestinian,” and that land for a potential Palestinian state should be taken from other Arab states and not Israel.
Huckabee will replace the current ambassador to Israel, Jack Lew.
Trump’s pick for ambassador to Israel during his first term, David Friedman, praised the president-elect’s selection of Huckabee.
“I am thrilled by President Trump’s nomination of Governor Mike Huckabee as the next Ambassador to Israel. He is a dear friend and he will have my full support. Congrats Mike on getting the best job in the world!” Friedman wrote on X/Twitter.
During Trump’s first term in office, his administration helped foster the Abraham Accords, a series of landmark normalization agreements between Israel and its Arab neighbors. Trump also recognized Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights, a strategic region on Israel’s northern border previously controlled by Syria, and moved the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, recognizing the city as the Jewish state’s capital.
Over the course of his campaign, Trump promised to resume efforts to strengthen the Abraham Accords upon his return to the White House. He has also urged Israel to move faster with its military campaign to eradicate the Hamas terrorist group from the Gaza Strip.
The post Trump Nominates Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee as US Ambassador to Israel first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Suspect Remanded Without Bail for Attempted Kidnapping of Jewish Boy in New York City
Masked male attempts to abduct Orthodox Jewish child in broad daylight in New York City on Nov. 9, 2024. Photo: Shomrim Crown Heights Rescue Patrol/Screenshot from social media
The man who was charged for attempting to abduct an Orthodox Jewish child in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, New York City this past weekend will remain in jail until he faces a judge again next month.
Stephan Stowe, 28, reportedly a gang member with 33 prior arrests, was arrested early Sunday and subsequently charged with attempted kidnapping and endangering the welfare of a child. Citing court documents released on Monday, CrownHeights.info reported that a judge refused bail for Stowe and ordered him to be remanded to Rikers Island prison until his next court date on Dec. 9.
The legal action came after a masked man was caught on video approaching a visibly Jewish father walking with his two sons and grabbing one of the children on Saturday afternoon, in broad daylight. He was unable to secure possession of the child, whose father fought back immediately and did not let go of his son. The assailant put the child down.
This video is shocking. A perpetrator grabbed a Chasidic child who was walking with his father today at approximately 3:30pm on Kingston near Lefferts Ave.
Something is clearly going on in Crown Heights—there have been incident after incident over the past two weeks.… pic.twitter.com/7nIkZWhssk
— Yaacov Behrman (@ChabadLubavitch) November 10, 2024
The video was widely circulated online and fueled concern about a wave of violent crimes targeting Jews in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn.
Following news of the arrest, a local Jewish leader praised what, for now, appears to be a victory for law and order advocates and a Jewish Brooklyn community reeling from a spate of hate crimes in recent weeks.
“The perpetrator has been arrested,” Yaacov Behrman, a liaison for Chabad Headquarters — the main New York base of the Hasidic movement — posted on X/Twitter. “Known to police, the perpetrator has allegedly been arrested over 30 times. He is under 30 years old and has also been arrested in [the] past for criminal possession of a weapon. What is wrong with our legal system? What is wrong with our society? How is this possible?”
Behrman also noted on Sunday that he spoke to the father, who expressed his appreciation for local police and Crown Heights Shomrim, a Jewish organization that monitors antisemitism and also serves as a neighborhood watch group. According to Behrman, the father also said that his kids were doing well.
Saturday’s attack was the fourth time in less than two weeks that an Orthodox resident of Crown Heights was targeted for violence and humiliation. In each case, the assailant was allegedly a Black male, a pattern of conduct which continues to strain Black-Jewish relations across the Five Boroughs.
Last Wednesday, a middle-aged Hasidic man was chased and beaten by two assailants after he refused to surrender his cell phone.
Earlier that week, an African American male smacked a 13-year-old Jewish boy who was commuting to school on his bike in the neighborhood, which is heavily Jewish.
Less than a week earlier, an assailant slashed a visibly Jewish man in the face as he was walking in Brooklyn.
Black-on-Jewish crime is a social issue which has been studied before. In 2022, a report published by Americans Against Antisemitism (AAA) showed that Orthodox Jews were the minority group most victimized by hate crimes in New York City and that 69 percent of their assailants were African American. Seventy-seven percent of the incidents took place taking in predominantly Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods in Brooklyn. Of all assaults that prompted criminal proceedings, just two resulted in convictions.
“We’ve never seen anything like this,” AAA founder and former New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind (D) told The Algemeiner at the time. “Shouldn’t there be a plan for how we’re going to deal with it? What’s the answer? Education? We’ve been educating everybody forever for God’s sake, and things are just getting worse.”
The problem has become acute in recent years. In July 2023, for example, a 22-year-old Israeli Yeshiva student, who was identifiably Orthodox and visiting New York City for the summer holiday, was stabbed with a screwdriver by one of two men who attacked him after asking whether he was Jewish and had any money. The other punched him in the face. Earlier that year, 10- and 12-year-olds were attacked on Albany Avenue by four African American teens.
According to a report issued in August by New York state comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, antisemitic incidents accounted for a striking 65 percent of all felony hate crimes in New York City last year. The report added that throughout the state, nearly 44 percent of all recorded hate crime incidents and 88 percent of religious-based hate crimes targeted Jewish victims.
Meanwhile, according to a recent Algemeiner review of New York City Police Department (NYPD) hate crimes data, 385 antisemitic hate crimes have struck the New York City Jewish community since last October, when the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas perpetrated its Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel, unleashing a wave of anti-Jewish hatred unlike any seen in the post-World War II era.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Suspect Remanded Without Bail for Attempted Kidnapping of Jewish Boy in New York City first appeared on Algemeiner.com.