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I was in a high school production of ‘Anne Frank’ — today in Minnesota, I feel her fear more than ever
I want to tell you what it is like in Minnesota right now.
I grew up in a small town in southeast Minnesota, right on the Mississippi. I graduated with 98 other classmates, most of whom I’d known since kindergarten. This was a predominantly white high school in a very white community of Catholics, Lutherans, Methodists and Episcopalians. I remember only one Jewish family with kids at my school, but none of those kids were in my grade and we didn’t participate in any of the same activities. I was raised Lutheran and didn’t really have an awareness or understanding of Judaism beyond “it’s another type of religion, kinda like being a Catholic.”
I was involved in the arts from a young age and grew up watching plays at the local high school, waiting for the day I’d finally be able to perform there myself. Every year the school did one big play in the fall and, in 2005, my freshman year, it was The Diary of Anne Frank. I auditioned and was cast as Peter van Daan.
As diligent young actors will, my castmates and I dove into research and watched Schindler’s List as part of our dramaturgy. I’d read some historical fiction set in the time period around World War II and had learned about the Holocaust in school, but other than The Sound of Music, this was the first time it was more than words on a page.
We brought our newfound sense of understanding to rehearsal, but the play was still set in the 1940s. Yes, it was a story of real people, but it took place in the past and we were all Gentiles so there was still a sense that we were just pretending to understand. Even though it was realism, this was always a story, and there was always some distancing from it (In college, I would learn that this was a hint of what Bertolt Brecht called Verfremdungseffekt). After curtain call, we took our high school theater make-up off and went to Perkins for a cast party, leaving Anne’s story on the stage.
In 2009, I moved to Minneapolis, and in 2017, I moved to the Central Neighborhood. For the next four years, I lived four blocks from where Derek Chauvin would murder George Floyd in 2020. In 2021, I moved just across the interstate to the next neighborhood over and, since then, have lived eight blocks from where, on Jan. 7, 2026, Jonathan Ross shot Renee Nicole Good in the face and killed her.
The influx of federal agents to Minnesota began before the murder of Renee, but the surge that has followed and the devastation, chaos and destruction are unlike anything I ever thought I would witness in my lifetime.
In May 2020, a curfew was placed on the city after George Floyd was murdered and the city dared to demand justice. On the second or third sleepless night of the uprising, I watched several of my neighbors walk to the corner of the block to check out a loud noise. Within 30 seconds they were surrounded by officers from the police department and the National Guard. They began to flee back to their homes as the officers tried to grab and arrest them for breaking curfew. My roommates and I saw what was happening and stepped out on our front steps, screaming that those were our neighbors, that they lived there, and to just let them go inside.
For the mere act of standing on our front steps and advocating for our neighbors, officers pointed their guns at our faces and ordered us back in the house. They did end up letting the neighbors go, but made sure to roll what felt like an entire battalion of officers and tanks down my quiet residential side street afterwards. I’ve been mugged before, but that was the most unsafe I had ever personally felt in this city.
Since Jan. 7 of this year, I have felt even less safe. The scale of the reign of terror currently being enacted upon the Twin Cities and all across the state is truly unfathomable. A general sense of fear pervades the air. We all know that each of us is at a different level of risk, but we all feel like possible targets of the regime, whether because of the color of our skin or because we dared to say that what is happening here is wrong.
Schools were closed after federal agents descended on Roosevelt High during pick-up. Elected officials, including the president of the Minneapolis City Council, have been assaulted while advocating for their constituents and simply observing and documenting the activity of federal agents. Many of these agents do not wear official uniforms. They cover their faces. They drive around our neighborhoods recklessly. Families are in hiding and fear answering the door. Workers are staying home and struggling to pay rent or buy groceries because they are afraid to leave their homes.
Federal agents are abducting our neighbors. They are going through red lights and ramming people’s cars. They are taking people from bus stops, hospitals, workplaces, schools, daycares, and even from their homes. They lie to our faces and they seem to take pleasure in it. They are demanding to see identification on the street, based on nothing other than skin color. They are kicking down doors, entering homes without judicial warrants, and kidnapping residents. They are tear-gassing our business corridors. Beloved local small businesses are closing or have reduced hours because they don’t have enough staff to stay open — because the staff has been abducted by the feds and whisked away to another state before their families and attorneys could find them, or they are afraid to leave their homes because this might happen to them. Unsurprisingly, Minnesota’s corporate leadership remains silent while masked goons abduct their employees who are on the clock.
None of this is just. None of this is right. And certainly none of this is good or moral.
I no longer feel distanced from Anne Frank’s reality. I know that there have always been horrors in this world, but there is new urgency and fear when this happens in your community. In her diary, Anne wrote that in spite of everything, she still believed that people are really good at heart. I am working to hold onto that hope as well. I do believe that people are good, that it is better to care for our neighbors, and in the words of the late Senator Wellstone, we all do better when we all do better.
Minneapolis believes in this too. The community is taking care of each other. Like Miep Gies, we are donating to food banks and delivering food to those who aren’t able to leave their homes. Notaries roam to witness signatures on paperwork. People are raising money to cover rent for those unable to work. Parents and community members are patrolling daycares and schools during drop-off and pick-up to make sure their kids, teachers and staff are safe. The incredible teachers are offering distance learning options for students who don’t feel safe attending in person. We are whistling and banging drums and letting these agents know that when this is all over, justice will find every one of the miserable souls that ripped apart families and attempted to destroy our community with hate, fear and oppression.
I want to tell you all this because I want you to be prepared if they come to your neighborhoods.
I want to tell you this because we need you to be loud and clear with us that what is happening right now is not ok.
I want to tell you this because there are more of us than there are of them, and the way that Minnesotans of all backgrounds have come pouring out into the streets in the cold, showing up for their neighbors, is the way that we will win. We take care of us.
The post I was in a high school production of ‘Anne Frank’ — today in Minnesota, I feel her fear more than ever appeared first on The Forward.
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Hezbollah Pays Steep Price in Battle to Reverse Its Fortunes
Workers remove a coffin with a body from temporary graves and prepare for transport for a funeral ceremony of four Hezbollah fighters and two civilians, amid a temporary ceasefire between Lebanon and Israel, in Tyre, southern Lebanon, April 26, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Marko Djurica/File Photo
Hezbollah has paid a heavy price for going to war with Israel on March 2: Israel has occupied a chunk of southern Lebanon, displaced hundreds of thousands of its Shi’ite Muslim constituents and killed as many as several thousand of its fighters, according to previously unreported casualty estimates from within the group.
The move has brought severe political consequences, too. In Beirut, opposition has hardened to its status as an armed group, which domestic rivals see as exposing Lebanon to repeated wars with Israel.
In April, Lebanon’s government held face-to-face talks with Israel for the first time in decades, a decision Hezbollah firmly opposed.
However, more than a dozen Hezbollah officials told Reuters they see a chance to reverse deteriorating fortunes by aligning with Tehran in its war with Israel and the United States. The group, founded by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in 1982, opened fire two days into the conflict, which began with U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran on February 28.
The group’s calculations are based on the assessment that its participation would force Lebanon onto the agenda of U.S.-Iranian negotiations, and that Iranian pressure can secure a more robust ceasefire than one that took effect in November 2024 following a conflict sparked by the war in Gaza, the officials said.
Hezbollah was mauled in the last war, which killed its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, along with some 5,000 fighters, and weakened its long-dominant hold over the Lebanese state.
Rearmed with Iranian help, it has used new tactics and drones, surprising many with its capabilities after a fragile 15-month truce during which Hezbollah held fire, even as Israel continued to kill its members.
Hezbollah lawmaker Ibrahim al-Moussawi denied the group was acting on Iran’s behalf when it resumed hostilities, as alleged by opponents. He told Reuters Hezbollah saw a window to “break this vicious cycle … where the Israelis can target, assassinate, bombard, kill, without any revenge.”
He acknowledged losses and damage in southern Lebanon but said “you don’t go into making calculations of how many are going to be killed” when “pride and sovereignty and independence” are at stake.
Hezbollah’s media office said the figure of several thousand fighters killed in the present war was false.
While a US-mediated ceasefire that took effect on April 16 has led to a significant reduction in hostilities, Israel and Hezbollah have continued to trade blows in the south, where Israel maintains troops in a self-declared “buffer zone.”
Yezid Sayigh, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, said Hezbollah had “shown more resilience than many thought possible, but that was not a strategic gain in itself.”
“The only thing that will contain Israel is a comprehensive US-Iran deal,” he said. “Without a deal, there’s going to be a lot of pain for everyone. At best, a hurting stalemate.”
GRAVES FRESHLY DUG, AND QUICKLY FILLED
More than 2,600 people have been killed since March 2, around a fifth of them women, children and medics, Lebanon’s health ministry has reported. Its toll does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
Three sources, two of them Hezbollah officials, said the ministry’s figures do not include many of the group’s casualties. They said several thousand Hezbollah fighters have been killed, though the group does not have the full picture yet.
In a statement to Reuters, Hezbollah’s media office denied the figures cited by the sources, and that the numbers published by Lebanon’s health ministry included its members killed in Israeli strikes.
One source, a Hezbollah commander, said scores of fighters had gone to the frontline towns of Bint Jbeil and Khiyam intending to fight to the death. Their bodies have yet to be recovered.
In the Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs of Beirut, more than two dozen freshly dug graves were quickly filled with fighters’ bodies in the days after the ceasefire took hold. Simple marble tombstones identify some as commanders, others as fighters.
In one southern village alone, Yater, the council recorded the deaths of 34 Hezbollah fighters.
Lebanon’s Shi’ite Muslim community has borne the brunt of Israel’s attacks, forced to flee into Christian, Druze and other areas, where many blame Hezbollah for starting the war.
Israel has been entrenching its hold over a security zone stretching as far as 10 km (6 miles) into Lebanon and demolishing villages, saying it aims to shield northern Israel from attacks by Hezbollah militants embedded in civilian areas.
An Israeli government official said Hezbollah had abrogated the November 2024 ceasefire by firing on Israeli citizens on March 2. The threat to northern Israel would be eradicated, the official said, adding thousands of Hezbollah militants had been killed, and Israel was steadily destroying the group’s infrastructure.
The Israeli military says Hezbollah has fired hundreds of rockets and drones at Israel since March 2. Israel has announced 17 soldiers killed in southern Lebanon, along with two civilians in northern Israel.
Citing ongoing Israeli strikes, Hezbollah has called the April ceasefire meaningless and continued to attack.
IRAN ‘WILL NOT SELL’ THEIR FRIENDS
A diplomat who has contact with Hezbollah described its decision to enter the war as a big gamble and a survival strategy, saying it felt it needed to be part of the problem so it could be part of an eventual regional solution.
It has yet to be seen if the gamble will pay off.
Tehran has demanded that Israel’s campaign against Hezbollah be included in any deal on the wider war. But US President Donald Trump said last month that any deal Washington reaches with Tehran “is in no way subject to Lebanon.”
A spokesperson for Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry, Tahir Andrabi, referred Reuters to an April 16 statement in which he said peace in Lebanon was essential to the talks it is mediating between the U.S. and Iran.
A Western official said they saw a possibility the US and Iran might eventually reach a settlement that does not address the war in Lebanon.
Asked about this, the US State Department, Iran’s mission to the United Nations in Geneva and Lebanon’s government did not immediately comment.
Hezbollah’s Moussawi said a ceasefire in Lebanon continues to be a top priority for Iran, adding Tehran shares Lebanon’s objectives, including that Israel halt attacks and withdraw from Lebanon. Hezbollah has “full trust in Iran – that the Iranians will not sell their own friends”, he said.
The State Department referred Reuters to an April 27 interview Secretary of State Marco Rubio did with Fox News, in which he said Israel had a right to defend itself against Hezbollah’s attacks, and that he didn’t think Israel wanted to maintain its buffer zone in Lebanon indefinitely.
The United States has urged Israel “to make sure their responses are proportional and targeted,” he said.
When the April 16 ceasefire was announced, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Hezbollah’s disarmament would be a fundamental demand in peace talks with Lebanon.
Hezbollah has ruled out disarmament, saying the matter of its weapons is a topic for a national dialogue. Any move by Lebanon to disarm the group by force would risk igniting conflict in a country shattered by civil war from 1975 to 1990.
Lebanon’s President Joseph Aoun and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam have sought Hezbollah’s peaceful disarmament since last year. On March 2, the government banned the group’s military activities.
Hezbollah has demanded the government cancel that decision and end its direct talks with Israel.
Lebanese officials have told Reuters they believe direct talks with Israel under the auspices of the US are the best way to secure a lasting ceasefire and the withdrawal of Israeli troops, as only Washington has enough leverage with Israel to achieve those aims.
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US President Trump Tells Israeli Media: ‘I Studied Iran’s New Proposal, It Is Not Acceptable to Me’
US President Donald Trump arrives to award the medal of honor to Master Sgt. Roderick ‘Roddie’ W. Edmonds, Staff Sgt. Michael H. Ollis, and retired Command Sgt. Maj. Terry P. Richardson during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC, USA, 02 March 2026.
US President Donald Trump said he has reviewed Iran’s latest proposal and described it as “unacceptable” in an interview with Israeli broadcaster Kan News on Sunday. Trump added that ongoing efforts related to the conflict are “progressing very well,” without providing further details. He also renewed his call for clemency for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, arguing that Israel needs a leader focused on wartime priorities rather than legal matters.
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Israel Court Extends Detention of Gaza Flotilla Activists
Activist Saif Abu Keshek, a member of the Global Sumud Flotilla detained by Israel, sits at a magistrate’s court for a detention extension hearing in Ashkelon, southern Israel, May 3, 2026. REUTERS/Amir Cohen
An Israeli court has extended by two days the detention of two activists arrested aboard a Gaza-bound flotilla that was intercepted by Israeli forces in international waters near Greece, their lawyer said on Sunday.
Saif Abu Keshek, a Spanish national, and Brazilian Thiago Avila were detained by Israeli authorities late on Wednesday and brought to Israel, while more than 100 other pro-Palestinian activists aboard the boats were taken to the Greek island of Crete.
A court spokesperson confirmed that their remand had been extended until May 5.
The governments of Spain and Brazil issued a joint statement on Friday calling their detention illegal.
The activists were part of a second Global Sumud flotilla, launched in an attempt to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza by delivering humanitarian assistance. The ships had set sail from Barcelona on April 12.
Israeli authorities requested a four-day extension of their arrest on suspicion of offenses that include assisting the enemy during wartime, contact with a foreign agent, membership in and providing services to a terrorist organization, and the transfer of property for a terrorist organization, said rights group Adalah, which is assisting in the activists’ defense.
Hadeel Abu Salih, the men’s attorney, said that the two deny the allegations. Their arrest was unlawful due to a lack of jurisdiction, she told Reuters at the Ashkelon Magistrate’s Court after the hearing, adding that the mission was meant to provide aid to civilians in Gaza, not to any militant group.
Abu Salih said that Abu Keshek and Avila were subjected to violence en route to Israel and kept handcuffed and blindfolded until Thursday morning.
Asked for comment, the Israeli military referred Reuters to the Israeli foreign ministry, which said that staff were compelled to act to stop what it described as violent physical obstruction by Abu Keshek and Avila. All measures taken were lawful, it said.