American Jews, along with Israel and Israelis, are now involved in fighting the war of social media platform hate messaging, hate branding and propaganda. Antisemitic hate rhetoric on such platforms can change lives in seconds. And unfortunately, on July 21, hate messages did just that for the Settenbrino family of Passaic County, New Jersey.

Bram Settenbrino is a lone soldier in the IDF. He has been in Israel for six years, one year in yeshiva, one in mechina, and two years volunteering with the Israel Dog Unit, doing search and rescue. Bram has now been an Israeli citizen for more than two and a half years, serving four months on reserve duty and eight months in Gaza. Bram recently received the “Outstanding Soldier of the Year” award from his IDF division. “Bram put his life on hold to fight a battle everyone is going to have to face,” his mother, Shaina Settenbrino, said.

“Bram is a gem. He was also of tremendous assistance to my parents in their last days and months of their lives,” Shaina told The Jewish Link. “He lived with my father in Jerusalem for a year before my father passed away and was of invaluable assistance to him. During the times he came back to the U.S., he was of invaluable assistance to us in our business [at the Historic Blue Moon Hotel and Sweet Dreams Cafe] as chief operations officer.”

On July 21, 2024, a friend of Bram’s posted a video on Instagram of Bram detonating explosives in Gaza. Shaina said, “Note, this is a building with weapons and no humans located in it.”

Regarding the video, Bram said, “The machine gun fire video in question was suppressive fire in an area cleared of civilians after my team was attacked by Hamas terrorists from that area. The mosque that was blown up was being used to house armed terrorists and weapons stockpiles and used as a base to attack IDF soldiers.”

Shaina said, “That very day our business started getting comments on our social media posts to the effect, “The son of the owner is an Israeli terrorist blowing up buildings in residential areas.’ They have posted similar verbiage on review sites such as Yelp, Google and Trip Advisor. Additionally, these Palestinian groups and their supporters are posting our son’s Instagram profile photo, threats and the location of our personal home. Our hotel front desk has also been bombarded with hateful phone calls and emails. We are getting dozens of these every day. It’s obvious that the Palestinians and their supporters have some kind of action alert out because our hotel is being bombarded with harassing phone calls and emails, dozens every day. Bram is getting personal death threats on social media.”

To address the hateful and antisemitic messages aimed at his family and business, Yisroel Settenbrino, Bram’s father, has placed a comment on his social media, which reads, “There is a concerted effort to harass our staff to bring our art, history project and community service to a halt in an act of revenge against our COO Bram Settenbrino. Ironically, Bram’s most distinguished feature is his kindness. Prior to his service he was a full-time search and rescue volunteer, where he saved lives regardless of religion, color or orientation. Bram is also a descendant of Rabbi Pesach Turkenich, an artist and author of spiritual works, who was buried alive with his wife and four sons in a massacre akin to October 7. It is this kind of acute personal knowledge of the fragility of Jewish life that has encouraged his service to protect Jewish continuity, by serving in the IDF.

“Unfortunately, a great hue and cry of antisemitic, hateful and inciting rhetoric has been raised against the Settenbrino family and business due to his deployment overseas in the great global war on terror, where he served in the Israeli army as an engineering officer, to destroy terrorist infrastructure, places where weapons were stored or with subterranean tunnels. Engineering corps do not engage in battle unless confronted by terrorists.”

Yisroel’s social media post goes on to say, “Hamas is on the United States’ terrorist list and a deadly organization that terrorizes its own people. As such, Israel is a country which is keeping the world safe for democracy, which includes the rights of women, children and gays. We, here at the Historic Blue Moon Hotel, despise war and all horrors. But slandering and orchestrating a concerted attack against a family business and an organization dedicated to the preservation of art, history, design and New York culture, due to one of its employees having physically endangered his life in order to save life and banish terror is in the very least a sick joke and at worst an open expression of support for terror.

“The Historic Blue Moon is a sanctuary that desires to host guests, ready to delight with the healing, comfort and joy that being enveloped in art and history brings to lives nobly spent. We apologize for any inconvenience it does cause. With our utmost sincerity, The Historic Blue Moon Hotel Team.”

Yisroel’s post also cites noteworthy information by John Spencer, West Point expert on urban warfare, about IDF practices. “IDF practices include calling everyone in a building to alert them of a pending air strike and giving them time to evacuate, a tactic that I’ve never seen elsewhere in my decades of experience, as it also notifies the enemy of the attack and sometimes even dropping small munitions on top of the building to provide additional warning. They have been conducting multiple weeks of requests that civilians evacuate certain parts of Gaza, using multi-media broadcasts, texts and flier drops.”

Bram said, “It’s crazy how far antisemites will go to take things out of context to make it fit their agenda no matter the consequences. It’s even more mind-boggling how many people blindly accept that twisted narrative without doing any due diligence or even simple logical thinking on their own.”

In addition to working inordinate hours to overcome the almost insurmountable debt the family has incurred from the 18-month pandemic shutdown, a burden that they simply cannot carry, the Settenbrino family, business and staff are now targets of hateful antisemitic rants such as, according to the family, “Zionist filth, baby killers and genociders.” And the Settenbrinos say they have also received Holocaust-era hate messages alluding to gas chambers and lampshades. All of this because their son, Bram, is defending Israel as well as American and Western democracy.

The Settenbrino’s 22-room family-run Historic Blue Moon Hotel and their Sweet Dreams Cafe, vegetarian and kosher, are both located at 100 Orchard Street in New York City. The family has done much to help preserve the Jewish Lower East Side. They housed the displaced Eldridge Street Congregation for more than seven years, gratis. Sweet Dreams Cafe provides a restaurant for the community, which had not had one for five years. The Settenbrinos have provided food distribution for the homeless and workforce training for inner city youth and the formerly incarcerated, also gratis. The Historic Blue Moon Hotel memorializes the age of mass Jewish immigration and houses a gallery which encapsulates personal effects detailing the lives of the Jewish tenement dwellers and merchants that inhabited the building.

The Settenbrinos new “meet and greet” program presents their visitors with a tour that tells the authentic story of the Jewish experience with personal effects and artifacts curated in 14 collages. These 14 collages detail daily activities of the original tenement dwellers and merchants and highlights the vast Jewish infrastructure of the Jewish Lower East Side.

The Settenbrino family is asking any and all organizations and people capable of doing so to help raise funds to secure their family and business. Donations are tax deductible and should be made out to:The Lower East Side Renaissance Corp. c/o The Historic Blue Moon Hotel, 100 Orchard Street, New York, New York 10002.

Susan R. Eisenstein is a longtime Jewish educator, passionate about creating special, innovative activities for her students. She is also passionate about writing about Jewish topics and about Israel. She has two master’s degrees and a doctorate in education from Columbia University.