Connect with us

RSS

A new Israeli restaurant in Brooklyn confidently opens in a NYC transformed by Oct. 7

(New York Jewish Week) — At first glance, it may not seem like the wisest or safest decision to open an Israeli restaurant in a New York City that’s been thrown into turmoil since the Israel-Hamas war began.

Yet Nina, a 162-seat Mediterranean restaurant helmed by Israeli chef Sagi Azrouel, opened on Nov. 30 in Dumbo, just blocks from the iconic Brooklyn intersection where tourists flock to snap pictures of the Manhattan Bridge against the city’s skyline.

Despite a rash of antisemitic incidents targeting Israeli restaurants in the city, business at Nina has been good, Azrouel insists. That’s especially true on weekends, when the chef, 31, said the line stretches out the door with patrons waiting to enjoy a dinner accompanied by a DJ and a party atmosphere. During Hanukkah, a menorah was prominently displayed inside next to a Christmas tree, and the restaurant served sfinge, Moroccan fried yeast donuts made from Azrouel’s grandmother’s recipe.

Azrouel and Anna Castellani, a partner in the restaurant, say they are unconcerned about Nina experiencing wrath from anti-Israel protesters. “Not at all,” Azrouel told the New York Jewish Week. “I feel sad for the people who are trying to ruin someone else’s business because of their political agendas.”

He said he thought protesters who have targeted Israeli restaurants do not understand Israeli food.

“When I see those people, the way they behave, I see it comes from missing knowledge,” he added. “They don’t know enough, they’re not educated enough. When we say ‘Israeli food,’ for me, Israeli food is built out of hundreds of different cuisines — that doesn’t mean it’s Jewish food. It means Israel is built out of hundreds of different cultures.”

Azrouel noted that Israeli families can have roots in dozens of countries around the world, and how the food found in Israel can be Arabic, Eastern European, American or even Palestinian in origin. “Israel is the one place in the world where you can find every kind of food,” he said.

Chef Sagi Azrouel came to NYC in 2013, directly after his army service in Israel ended. (Delaine Dacko for In Haus)

At Nina — named for Castellani’s eldest daughter — these cross-cultural influences are found across the menu. Among the starters, for example, is a selection of dips that include a Moroccan matbucha made of tomatoes, pepper and garlic ($18), as well as an albacore tuna ceviche ($17) and french fries with chimichurri sauce ($12). Main dishes include a vegetarian schnitzel made with eggplant ($20) and fettuccini with kebob-style meatballs ($24). Unlike most Israeli and Middle Eastern restaurants, Nina doesn’t serve pita bread as an accompaniment — rather, there is vegan challah, made at the restaurant without eggs.

“I did not try to create fine dining — I just wanted to create good quality food where everyone feels at home,” Azrouel said.

The preparations to open Nina began in May 2023, well before the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7. “No one foresaw the drama unfolding,” said Castellani, who is also the force behind nearby DeKalb Market Hall, which has some 40 food vendors including a Brooklyn offshoot of Katz’s Deli. “I’m not Israeli, I’m not Jewish, I come at this purely from a culinary point of view.”

A lifelong New Yorker, Castellani’s aim for the 3,200-square-foot space, previously a gourmet grocery, was to create a local staple for Dumbo residents like herself. “We have a burgeoning, very young population,” she said of the neighborhood, explaining the increased need for restaurants. “In fact, we are underserved.”

Castellani said she was considering opening an American restaurant, or possibly a bistro, but had difficulty finding the right chef. As providence would have it, Castellani and her business partner Moshe Ziv happened to drop into 260s New York, a Garment District coffee shop that Azrouel opened last spring. Ziv knew Azrouel through a mutual friend — “he’s like a second father to me,” Azrouel said — and, as the trio talked, Castellani started to think that maybe he’d be a good fit for the new restaurant. When she asked if he thought he could handle the kitchen, he assured her could, compiled a sample menu and tasting, and was quickly hired.

Castellani was convinced Azrouel was “the right spirit fit,” despite his lack of formal training.

“It’s my confidence,” Azrouel quipped.

Azrouel, whose family hails from Morocco, grew up in the southern Israeli port city of Ashdod. Three days after he completed his army service in 2013, he decamped for New York City. “I came with $400, but huge faith,” he said. “And I never stopped believing, even during dark days, and I’m sure whoever lived in New York experienced that. I think New York is the city for creatives and believers, as long as you believe in yourself, you can make it.”

It doesn’t hurt to have a high-end fashion designer as your uncle. Upon his arrival in the city, Sagi Azrouel started as the chief of operations for Yigal Azrouël’s fashion line, handling production, studio operations, finances and procurement. Fashion is in the family blood — Azrouel said his father’s family had owned a large textile business back in Morocco. And in early 2023, Azrouel opened his own apparel manufacturing company on West 39th Street, Lab 26, which provides fashion development and production services.

At the same time, Azrouel loved to host parties and also occasionally worked as a private chef, eventually opening 260s New York on the same block as his apparel business last spring. The Garment District, he said, lacked “something a bit more stylish and cozy where people can step in and disconnect from the craziness of the city for a few minutes.”

Azrouel said he was always interested in cooking; growing up he loved to help his mother chop vegetables. He became a dishwasher at a restaurant in Ashdod at 13, and started assisting the chef whenever he had an opportunity. According to Azrouel, the chef eventually asked him to officially join the team and by 18, he said, he was running the kitchen.

With the opening of Nina, Azrouel realized a lifelong dream. “If you ask my mom, I’ve always said that I’ll have my own restaurant, since  a very young age.”

Nina is kosher-style: It does not serve dishes mixing dairy and meat, nor does it serve the meat of non-kosher animals, such as pork or shellfish, but it does not have kosher certification and serves meat from kosher animals that was not slaughtered in accordance with Jewish law.  That means Azrouel, who himself observes the laws of kashrut, does not taste the meat at the restaurant. He claims he can judge the quality and doneness of those dishes by looking and smelling.

Though Azrouel is proud of his Israeli identity, he and Castellani are marketing Nina as a Mediterranean — and not necessarily Israeli — restaurant. “Sagi’s Israeli, but he has a very unique take and you really can’t call the menu classic Israeli,” Castellani said.

“Some restaurants are afraid of the protesting and you don’t want to get into a situation where people get violent and use their hands,” Azrouel said. “But at the same time, it’s our part to stay strong and be proud. If there’s any place in the world we can be proud as Jews it’s New York.”


The post A new Israeli restaurant in Brooklyn confidently opens in a NYC transformed by Oct. 7 appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

Continue Reading
Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

RSS

Journalist at US-Based Nonprofit Promoted Stabbing Israelis, Depicted Rescued Hostage as Pig Drinking Blood: Report

Palestinian terrorists ride an Israeli military vehicle that was seized by gunmen who infiltrated areas of southern Israel, in the northern Gaza Strip, Oct. 7, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Ahmed Zakot

A journalist at a US-based nonprofit posted tutorials on how to commit stabbing attacks and depicted a rescued Israeli hostage as a pig drinking blood, according to newly surfaced social media posts.

Eitan Fischberger, a communications analyst and former Israel Defense Forces (IDF) staff sergeant who first broke the story on X/Twitter, alleged that Mahmoud Ajjour, a correspondent for The Palestine Chronicle, posted disturbing images and videos to his Instagram page. 

Fischberger posted screenshots and screen recordings of the posts.

According to The Chronicles website, Ajjour is a photojournalist and correspondent for the outlet, which is a US-based 501c3, or nonprofit organization.

One of the posted images depicted Noa Argamani — an Israeli who was kidnapped from the Nova music festival during Hamas’ Oct. 7 terrorist attacks in southern Israel, and then rescued in an IDF special operation last month — as a pig drinking blood from a Coca-Cola bottle.

Here, for example, Ajjour posted a picture of Israeli hostage Noa Argamani, portrayed as a pig drinking the blood of Palestinians.

Noa, as you recall, was freed by Israeli forces in the same rescue operation in which Ajjour’s terrorist colleague was killed pic.twitter.com/oiLCqekxbl

— Eitan Fischberger (@EFischberger) June 30, 2024

In Oct. 2015, Ajjour posted a picture of a masked Palestinian holding up a knife, with the caption, “I declare it a revolution.”

That time — from approximately Sept. 2015 to June 2016 — was referred to as the “knife intifada,” as there was an uptick in Palestinian terrorist attacks, particularly using knives, against Israelis in Jerusalem, along with other parts of Israel and the West Bank.

Ajjour also seems mighty fine endorsing stabbing attacks pic.twitter.com/xi2MnZVddl

— Eitan Fischberger (@EFischberger) June 30, 2024

During that same month, Ajjour also reportedly posted a two-part tutorial on how to carry out stabbings with the caption, “May Allah protect them,” likely referring to those who were engaging in such attacks.

So much, in fact, that he uploaded a two-part instruction video showing off some best practices for stabbing Israelis pic.twitter.com/Z12rVo4Enx

— Eitan Fischberger (@EFischberger) June 30, 2024

Then, in 2023, after the son of a Hamas preacher was killed when a device he was trying to launch at Israel exploded, Ajjour mourned his death on Instagram. “Your father’s legacy is proud of you,” he wrote alongside a picture that included what appeared to be a Hamas flag.

And here, Ajjour mourns the death of Bara’a al-Zard, son of Hamas preacher Wael al-Zard.

Silly Bara’a died in an explosion caused by a device he was trying to launch at Israeli forces near the Gaza security fencehttps://t.co/vZR6IW0shF pic.twitter.com/ipQw55BYd7

— Eitan Fischberger (@EFischberger) June 30, 2024

This is not the first time a journalist from The Palestine Chronicle was alleged to have either supported or partaken in terrorism.

Abdallah Aljamal, who was a correspondent for The Chronicle, allegedly held three Israeli hostages in his home, according to the Israeli government. He was killed during a raid that rescued four hostages, including Argamani. After the allegations came to light, The Chronicle changed Aljamal’s status on its website from a correspondent to a contributor.

The Palestine Chronicle did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

Fichberger wrote that he wants the US House Ways and Means Committee to investigate The Chronicle for what seems to have become a pattern.

“If The Chronicle is let off the hook for employing an actual terrorist hostage-taker, it would prove that the American counter-terror legal apparatus really is irreparably broken,” he wrote.

The post Journalist at US-Based Nonprofit Promoted Stabbing Israelis, Depicted Rescued Hostage as Pig Drinking Blood: Report first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Continue Reading

RSS

Weak National Canadian Identity Is Leading to Democratic Values Backsliding

Hundreds of anti-Israel protesters, primarily university students, rally at Toronto’s Nathan Phillips Square on Oct. 28, 2023. Photo by Sayed Najafizada/NurPhoto

As I sat in an anthropology lecture at the University of British Columbia, we debated the question: What is a unifying national identity for Canadians? In response, I said, “Our national identity is that we aren’t Americans; our identity is contrasted against American identities, for good or for bad.”

Some students laughed, and my professor nodded approvingly. How I wish we could laugh about our lack of Canadian identity today, as we watch university student encampments support the repressive tyrannical terrorist regime Hamas, the antithesis of democracy.

I am not Jewish, but I have watched in awe as the Israel Defense Forces fights to defend the Jewish nation from Hamas, and free the remaining hostages. The parliamentary democracy that governs Israel acts as a beacon of light in the Middle East. The strong national identity that interlocks the state and the people propels the continued hostage rescue operations.

It is my greatest hope that Canada, my country, would feel as strongly in their national responsibility to rescue me, my family, or fellow Canadians if we were ever taken hostage, or if Canada was invaded by a terrorist group. However, I fear that the national Canadian identity would not be strong enough to withstand the international pressure that Israel has withstood to continue the hostage rescue missions.

Across Canada, university students are assuming pro-Hamas identities — many after reading ill-informed or false Instagram posts. In the name of social justice, they are aligning with a cause that approves the intentional targeting of Jewish civilians, calls for the eradication of the world’s only Jewish state, and ignores the fact that Israel is waging one of the lowest civilian-to-combatant casualty wars in the history of armed conflict.

Here in Canada we, as the Gen Z’ers, don’t have a strong national identity. We haven’t grown up with a strong appreciation for our democracy, military, or a high respect for our veterans. Many of us under the age of 30 do not know the words to “O’Canada.” We have taken for granted the freedom that is our democratic right in Canada. I hypothesize that so many of our younger generations have fallen for terrorist propaganda because we lack rootedness in a national backbone.

There is nothing wrong with advocating for civilians in war zones. It’s exactly because of our democratic freedoms that we can have differing dialogues around war. But what is taking place on campuses is not pro-peace, pro-innocent civilians, pro-hostage release, or pro-democratic values.

These university encampments are anti-peace and they promote hate, propaganda, and terrorism. Before our eyes, since the Oct. 7th massacre carried out by Hamas, many university students have sided with the terrorist organization.

I am nearly infuriated to the point of tears most days, in what feels like a never-ending battle of terrorist propaganda being shared by my leftist friends. I have always been a politically center-left person, but as the left moves further to the extremist side, I feel the need to call this extremism out.

As a non-Jewish Canadian university student, I have had enough of this childish behavior. If we want to be treated like adults, we need to act like them. As silly as that sounds, my peers are using their democratic rights to advocate for a terrorist group. A terrorist group who would kill us if given the chance.

Without a strong national backbone, we have lost ourselves to incompetent “social justice” causes that cease to make rational or logical sense. Canadian democratic values are about peace, respect, and diversity. Hamas is a radical Islamist military movement that does not believe in equal rights for men and women, let alone LGBTQ+ individuals. It does not make democratic sense to advocate for a terrorist group who are fanatical Islamic extremists.

Intense false realities have been created by the extreme left that fantasize and romanticize terrorists as resistance fighters — a desperate attempt to create a false narrative that implicates Israel as the terrorist organization. Instead of calling for accountability and disbandment of Hamas, the blame has been unfairly placed on Israel. These dangerous terrorist-sympathizing ideologies need to be met with harsh repercussions, as the democratic values of future adult Canadians rest in the balance.

Many of us on the left have lived in fear of falling victim to cancel culture, and have instead allowed the extremism on the left to grow. The hypocrisy and privilege of these protestors have stripped them of their credibility for a social justice movement.

Putting up signs stating “F*** KKKANANDA” at the University of British Columbia, painting “F*** Quebec” in Montreal on the face of a new Holocaust museum poster, and chanting “Death to America” on campuses, is life or death for Western democratic values.

The (false) colonial narrative about Israel has become dizzyingly amplified on campuses, commonly stating that Israel is a colonizer of the land and the Palestinians are the oppressed. Instead, the ancestral and Indigenous right of Jewish return is the ultimate act of decolonization.

The intense leftist approach to teaching makes race the center of every issue, causing students to view indigeneity and colonization in simplified forms without historical context. I am an Arts student who has always been politically and socially left, and an active feminist.

However, I have been inundated with intense frameworks of colonialism, racism, and intersectionality since beginning my undergraduate studies — and these claims are not always based in historical reality.

I never thought I would write these words, but I am dismayed by how my leftist peers are acting, and it is becoming more extreme every day. They are acting like puppets for terrorism, amplifying propaganda and disinformation about what occurred on Oct 7th.

I do not want to live in a society that denies rape, denies accountability, and denies basic human rights to Israelis and Jewish people. I love that my friends in the LGBTQIA2S+ community get to live freely here in Canada and that my friends who choose to receive an abortion for personal or life-saving reasons, can do so. Also, as a woman, I can live equally in a society that promotes my human rights. None of these rights are awarded by Hamas in the society they govern. With the privileged position of having access to basic human rights, I am thankful to call myself a Canadian citizen.

If we don’t fight for our Canadian democratic values, we will be flattened by external forces. It is time to build and cultivate a strong national backbone that holds us accountable for upholding our country. Maybe we will one day be able to look back with humor on this dark period in academic spaces that have allowed this ideology to foster. Until then, we must fight for our country to remain the “True North, strong and free.” If we stand for nothing, we will fall for everything.

As a Gen-Z Canadian, I refuse to allow my peers to degrade our freedoms by romanticizing terrorism.

Zara Nybo is a student at the University of British Columbia, and a Campus Media Fellow with HonestReporting Canada and Allied Voices for Israel.

The post Weak National Canadian Identity Is Leading to Democratic Values Backsliding first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Continue Reading

RSS

University of Pennsylvania Suspends Pro-Hamas Rioters for Full Semester, Activist Group Says

Pro-Hamas encampment at University of Pennsylvania on May 5, 2024. Photo: Robyn Stevens Brody via Reuters Connect

The University of Pennsylvania has suspended four pro-Hamas protesters who participated in illegally occupying the campus, according to an activist group that helped organize the demonstration.

“The [university’s] administration has continued to endorse Zionist ideology and bent to the will of their donors in order to prioritize their profit and image. In their most recent attempt to stifle pro-Palestinian speech, they have suspended four of their own students,” a Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) splinter group — Freedom School for Palestine — wrote on Instagram.

“It is clear that Penn is not an institution of education but a corporate power which serves to oil the gears of the global war machine (and then beat, jail, and suspend those who protest this) [sic],” the post continued, adding that the students were “placed on semester-long or year-long suspensions.”

Freedom School for Palestine — which helped organize a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” in which pro-Hamas students lived for weeks and refused to leave unless administrators agreed to boycott and divest from Israel — also implored the public to flood the administration’s office with messages demanding revocations of the suspensions, claiming that the students have been “robbed of their income, health insurance, and access to education.”

The University of Pennsylvania (Penn) commented on the report on Wednesday.

“Penn continues to review student conduct cases in connection with campus demonstrations this spring,” it said in a statement shared with The Algemeiner. “The university affords due process to all students in accordance with our policies and recommends sanctions as appropriate on a case-by-case basis.”

Penn’s handing down disciplinary sanctions came nearly two months after it finally cleared protesters from school property with the help of the Philadelphia Police Department. The university had attempted to negotiate with the protesters, but its patience wore thin amid their escalating conduct. After hours of discussions failed to yield a settlement acceptable to both sides, interim president Larry Jameson publicly called the protesters a safety hazard while noting that they had committed acts of vandalism, including defacing a statute of Benjamin Franklin, one of the United States’ Founding Fathers, and “The Button,” a sculpture built in the early 1980s.

In addition to divestment from Israel, the demonstration’s leaders demanded that the university vacate a suspension of Penn Students Against the Occupation of Palestine, which the school shut down after multiple rules violations. Frustrated with the university’s refusing to grant them any concessions, masses of new people joined the encampment, expanding it over a larger area of school property and forcing the university to request additional security on campus.

“The protesters refused repeatedly to disband the encampment, to produce identification, to stop threatening, loud, and discriminatory speech and behavior, and to comply with instructions from Penn administrators and Public Safety,” Jameson said after the tents were dismantled. “Instead, they called for others to join them in escalating their disruptions and expanding their encampment, necessitating that we take action to protect the safety and rights of everyone in our community.”

Antisemitism fueled by anti-Zionism exploded at the university long before the “encampment” was set up, an action which was precipitated by Israel’s military response to Hamas’ massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7. In September, it hosted “The Palestine Writes Literature Festival,” which included speakers such as Palestinian researcher Salman Abu Sitta, who once promoted antisemitic tropes, saying in an interview, “Jews were hated in Europe because they played a role in the destruction of the economy in some of the countries, so they would hate them.” Another controversial figure invited to the event was former Pink Floyd vocalist Roger Waters, whose long record of anti-Jewish snipes was the subject of a documentary released last year.

One day before the event took place, an unidentified male walked into the university’s Hillel building behind a staffer and shouted “F—k the Jews” and “Jesus Christ is king!” before overturning tables, podium stands, and chairs, according to students and school officials who spoke with The Algemeiner. Days earlier, just before the Jewish New Year of Rosh Hashanah, a swastika was graffitied in the basement of the university’s Stuart Weitzman School of Design.

Former Penn president Elizabeth Magill, who refused to stop the university from hosting the festival, resigned from her post in December, ending a 17-month tenure marked by controversy over what critics described as an insufficient response to surging antisemitism on campus.

The University of Pennsylvania will continue to deal with the events of this academic year for some time. Last month, a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit challenging a US congressional investigation of antisemitism there, which the House Committee on Education and the Workforce launched after Magill failed to provide acceptable answers about her handling of the problem during a hearing in December. The ruling cleared the way for Congress to continue an inquiry that could complicate Penn’s attempts to repair a perception that it coddled antisemites because they claimed to be partisans of the progressive left.

As part of its inquiry, the committee, led by US Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), subpoenaed the university for a trove of documents, including reports and correspondence, which would provide a window into how administrators discussed antisemitism on campus.

Such documents have already proved injurious to Columbia University, which according to reports by The Washington Free Beacon, derided Jewish students’ concerns about rising antisemitism, calling them “privileged” and “wealthy.”

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

The post University of Pennsylvania Suspends Pro-Hamas Rioters for Full Semester, Activist Group Says first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Continue Reading

Copyright © 2017 - 2023 Jewish Post & News