The FBI has arrested a 34-year-old Arizona resident on suspicion that he sent more than 1,000 antisemitic messages and death threats to a Jewish family that owns the Blue Moon Hotel in Manhattan. The American family became the target of threats since the start of the Gaza war after photos and videos of their son, Bram, who served as a lone soldier in the IDF, were posted on social media.
According to the indictment, Donovan Hall threatened to harm the family and hotel staff. He made threatening phone calls and sent text messages and pictures that included a loaded gun and a machete. One message read: “This knife is for child molesters like your son,” and another showed pictures of guns with the message: “For the Zionist cowards.”
The arrest followed a five-month investigation that revealed Hall had sent more than 1,000 explicit threats to the family. A search of his home turned up the weapons documented in the threatening messages and another loaded handgun. Hall was charged with two counts of making interstate threats and one count of interstate stalking, offenses that could carry a total sentence of up to 15 years in prison.
The hotel's owners, the Settenbrino family, described months of "personal and business terrorism" that began after a social media storm. Photos and videos posted by Bram, in which he was filmed boasting about bombing a mosque in Gaza and tearing through the rubble, sparked outrage among pro-Palestinian activists, leading to calls for a boycott of the hotel, daily protests and further threats online. The family claims that the footage was taken out of context and that Bram had made "a congratulatory video in which he dedicated the bombing to a friend's new marriage."
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Threatening message sent to US family of IDF lone soldier
(Photo: US Department of Justice)
At the same time, the family received support from pro-Israel audiences, including support rallies and a particularly viral post by Yedioth Ahronoth journalist Hanoch Daum.
“It felt like we were living through the first stages of antisemitic persecution with impunity – a painful historical issue,” the family said. “We were getting calls at 3 a.m. and 4 a.m. with horrific threats. It never stopped. All because of pictures of our son that unfortunately went viral.”
They say the number of messages from Hall was closer to 1,500, and they still fear he will be released on bail pending sentencing. The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York has made it clear, however, that it is determined to bring him to justice. "There is no tolerance for antisemitic threats and hateful acts," according to a statement from the office.
The family-run Blue Moon Hotel, located on the Lower East Side, offers 22 rooms in a restored historic building that tells the story of the mass Jewish immigration to the area in the late 19th century. Although the experience of the poor immigrants who arrived from Europe at that time was far from pleasant and exclusive, the meticulous restoration work and the hotel's gallery, which includes personal items that tell about the lives of the Jewish tenants and merchants who lived in the building, are among the reasons that in 2008 it was named "one of the 150 best hotels in the Western Hemisphere" by National Geographic Magazine.
The family, originally from New Jersey, also operates a cafe and a kosher restaurant on site that combines pasta recipes from Grandma Settenbrino's classic Italian cuisine with klezmer music in the background. The hotel also serves as a kind of Jewish lecture and cultural center, with the family's father, Randy Settenbrino, giving a regular lecture every week under the title "Uncomfortable Questions for Comfortable Jews" - a name borrowed from a book by the founder of the Kach movement, Rabbi Meir Kahane, in which he argued that a Jewish state cannot also be democratic. Kahane was also convicted of terrorist activity when he lived in the area.
The family says that since Donovan's arrest they have for the first time managed to return to a partial routine. They hope that now they can focus again on their main vision: "To preserve Jewish life in the neighborhood and tell our history through food, music and art."