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(JNS) – The Atlanta-area father of an Israeli soldier who was killed in a stabbing attack in Jerusalem in November is running for Georgia state senate after the Democratic incumbent in his district did not back a bill aimed at combating antisemitism.
David Lubin, a general contractor, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution he is challenging Sen. Sally Harrell in the Democratic Party’s May primary because of her stance on H.B. 30, which made the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism the official one in use by the state.
After criticizing it on the statehouse floor, Harrell abstained from voting on the bill, which passed in the Senate on Jan. 25 and was signed into law the following week.
“To walk off and just walk out of the room, but also not to come and talk to the Jewish community who is the most heavily invested group in this? What is she doing with other communities?” Lubin told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “What is she doing with other minorities? What is she doing just in general, if she’s this far disconnected with her constituents?”
Lubin became involved in lobbying lawmakers to pass H.B. 30 after his 20-year-old daughter, Rose Lubin, was stabbed to death in a terror attack in Jerusalem, as violence escalated amid Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza. Rose had moved to Israel and joined the army as a “lone soldier” after graduating from high school in Georgia.
“Rose’s life was really centered around not allowing things like this to occur and not stepping up,” Lubin said. “And that’s really what motivates my life now. When something like this occurs, I know that I have to [step up]. I’m obligated to.”
In December, Harrell sponsored a bill honoring Rose Lubin’s memory. The daughter of Harrell’s chief of staff was acquainted with Rose and made the connection, David Lubin told JTA.
In the process of working on that bill, Lubin said he and Harrell discussed H.B. 30.
“Never once did she express to me that she had any concerns, any doubts, any confusion, any misunderstanding,” he said.
The following month, Harrell, a progressive Democrat whose district includes a heavily Jewish neighborhood in Dunwoody, announced on the day of the vote that she felt uncomfortable supporting the bill because no anti-discriminatory measures for other marginalized groups were being brought to the legislature.
“If we had two bills today — if we had this bill, H.B. 30, that defines antisemitism, and we also had a bill that defines Islamophobia, I would feel so much more at peace,” Harrell said.
“Definitely, we should have what the senator referred to as a roadmap for Islamophobia,” she added. “We should have definitions for people in the LGBT community, we should have definitions for our Indigenous people.”
Critics of the IHRA definition of antisemitism say its approach to anti-Zionist speech can limit free speech. The local chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace, an anti-Zionist group, opposed the bill.
In her remarks, Harrell referenced both Rose Lubin and antisemitic flyers that had been distributed around Atlanta suburbs. (The white supremacist group Goyim Defense League, which is based in Florida but has members across the United States, is often responsible for such pamphlets.)
“This partial action that we’re taking isn’t going to eliminate hate, which I think all of us in this chamber — that’s what we want,” she said. “We will not eliminate hate until we learn to listen to one another.”
Lubin told JTA he feels that Harrell brought up his daughter’s story in her floor remarks to disparage the antisemitism bill.
“She explained to me that Rose and the bill were never connected, that they were two separate things,” Lubin said. “When I walked away from meeting with her, I realized that she was disconnected from her constituents, that she just didn’t understand the people in her community.”
