A Father’s Grief Met With Hatred: The Harassment of David Lubin After His Daughter’s Death in Israel

By:  Chaya Abecassis

The cruelest pain a parent can endure is the loss of a child. For David Lubin of Atlanta, that tragedy was compounded not only by grief but also by the unrelenting hostility of neighbors who mocked his daughter’s death and hurled antisemitic slurs at him in his time of mourning. His ordeal, documented in testimony, local coverage, and video evidence, has drawn national attention to the disturbing persistence of antisemitism in American neighborhoods — even in the aftermath of personal tragedy.

 

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As The New York Post has frequently reported in recent years, antisemitism has surged in multiple forms across the United States, from university campuses to public protests and, as the Lubin case illustrates, within private residential communities. What makes David Lubin’s story so chilling is not only the viciousness of the attacks but the grotesque fact that they were directed at a bereaved father who had already lost everything.

Lubin’s daughter, Sgt. Elisheva Rose Ida Lubin — affectionately called Rose — was just 20 years old when she was stabbed to death in Jerusalem’s Old City in November 2023. Rose was a “lone soldier,” one of the many young Jews from the diaspora who immigrate to Israel without immediate family to serve in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). According to a report that appeared on Tuesday in The New York Post, she had moved to Israel in August 2021 and began her mandated army duty in March 2022.

Rose served with Israel’s Border Police, patrolling volatile sectors that often place soldiers in immediate danger. On that fateful day in November, she was attacked by a teenage assailant identified by Israeli authorities as a “terrorist.” The fatal stabbing occurred amid a climate of escalating tensions, several weeks after Iranian-backed Hamas terrorists had unleashed their October 7 massacre inside Israel. Rose’s death became one of the early markers of a new phase of violent confrontations in the Old City, symbolizing both the dangers borne by Israeli soldiers and the global stakes of a conflict that reverberates well beyond the Middle East.

As The New York Post stressed in its reporting, Rose’s murder captured headlines not only in Israel but in the United States, where her story resonated with Jewish communities deeply concerned about both homeland security and rising antisemitism abroad.

For David Lubin, the grief of burying his daughter was soon compounded by an ordeal few could imagine. In his Atlanta neighborhood, he said, several of his own neighbors began a campaign of verbal abuse and mockery directed squarely at him.

According to accounts relayed to Atlanta News First and later amplified by The New York Post, tensions began when David placed signage honoring his daughter’s service and sacrifice. Across the street, his neighbors — Anna and Mark Bouyzk — displayed placards declaring support for Palestinians, some of which, according to David, were adorned with derogatory slurs about Jews.

Initially, David says he attempted to dismiss their commentary, recognizing their right to display signs reflecting their political opinions. But the hostility escalated. Soon, the neighbors began to direct antisemitic vitriol toward him personally.

One day, David said he heard Anna Bouyzk call him a “k—e” — the slur long considered one of the most detestable markers of antisemitic hatred — and then shout that “your daughter deserved to die.”

Confronting the neighbors face-to-face, David recorded part of the exchange. In the footage, Anna can be heard saying: “You are calling yourself a k—e, you know what you are. You are a corrupt politician with a daughter in the IDF that went there to kill, and has killed maybe in friendly fire because the Israeli soldiers kill each other all the time, and you know very well.”

For David, who had lost his only daughter to a brutal terrorist assault, the remarks were almost unbearable. “Do you realize when you say that how disgusting you are? You are disgusting. You are the most disgusting person I’ve ever met,” he responded angrily in the video, his voice straining with fury and sorrow.

The Bouyzks, undeterred, doubled down. Anna insisted that Rose’s death was “okay because she was fighting,” in words that struck observers as chillingly dehumanizing.

As The New York Post report highlighted, Anna and her husband Mark are not obscure figures. Mark Bouyzk is a co-founder of the genetics company AKESOgen, which was bought out by Q² Solutions several years ago. Their affluence and social standing made their open expressions of antisemitism all the more jarring.

When contacted by Atlanta News First, Anna showed no remorse. She admitted, almost proudly, to using the slur and vowed to repeat it “a million times again.” In a common but deeply hollow defense, she insisted she was not antisemitic because she had “Jew friends.”

Equally disturbing was her admission that she had called David directly and told him he bore responsibility for his daughter’s death — a claim both factually baseless and morally outrageous.

For David, who has endured ongoing harassment since Rose’s death, the toll has been devastating. He told reporters he was considering filing harassment charges with local police, though the process of turning grief into legal complaints weighs heavily on a man already carrying immense sorrow.

“It’s like living through a second kind of violence,” he confided. “First I lost Rose, and now I lose peace every day in my own neighborhood.”

As The New York Post report emphasized, his plight encapsulates the dilemma many Jewish Americans now face: not only grieving attacks abroad but confronting antisemitism at home, often in intimate, everyday settings where legal remedies are uncertain and social accountability is elusive.

The Lubin case is not isolated. The New York Post has chronicled numerous incidents of antisemitic harassment across the country, from college campuses to residential communities. The Anti-Defamation League reported a staggering increase in antisemitic incidents in 2023, particularly following the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas War.

The ferocity of the harassment directed at David Lubin echoes a wider climate in which Jews are being vilified for their connection to Israel, even when they are victims themselves. That a bereaved father could be taunted for his daughter’s murder speaks to the depths of polarization and prejudice in the current American landscape.

For those who knew Rose, the attacks on her memory are intolerable distortions of who she was. Friends described her as vibrant, committed, and deeply motivated by a desire to protect others. Her choice to serve as a lone soldier was, in their telling, an act of courage and conviction.

As The New York Post report recounted in its profiles, Rose embodied the spirit of young diaspora Jews determined to contribute to Israel’s security. That her father must now defend her honor on American soil, in the face of venomous rhetoric from his own neighbors, adds insult to unimaginable injury.

The case has provoked outcry from Jewish organizations and local leaders. Many argue that antisemitic harassment of this kind, particularly when it targets grieving families, cannot be dismissed as mere free speech.

Legal experts note, however, that the line between protected expression and prosecutable harassment can be difficult to establish. If David moves forward with a complaint, authorities will have to weigh whether the sustained campaign of abuse rises to the level of criminal conduct.

But as The New York Post has long argued, silence in the face of antisemitism is not an option. Allowing neighbors to defame, harass, and insult the bereaved without consequence risks normalizing hatred at a moment when Jewish communities are already under siege.

David Lubin’s story is one of grief compounded by cruelty, but also of resilience. Though targeted with slurs and slander, he has chosen to speak out, forcing the public to confront an ugly truth: antisemitism is not confined to extremist rallies or anonymous online forums. It exists in leafy suburbs, across fences, and between neighbors.

For him, the memory of Rose is paramount. “She died protecting others,” he has said, “and I will protect her honor, no matter what it costs me.”

As The New York Post report observed, his ordeal is both personal and emblematic: a father fighting for his daughter’s dignity, and a society forced to reckon with the persistence of antisemitic hatred, even in the most intimate corners of American life.