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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.”
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The post A new Israeli restaurant in Brooklyn confidently opens in a NYC transformed by Oct. 7 appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Jewish Woman Wearing Israeli Flag Attacked in Copenhagen
Copenhagen, Denmark. Photo: Furya via Wikimedia Commons.
A Jewish woman wearing an Israeli flag was almost “lynched” in an antisemitic attack in Copenhagen, Denmark, last week.
According to the Danish newspaper BT, the 39-year-old woman was riding her scooter through the Christiania neighborhood in the Danish capital on Friday night, wearing an Israeli flag, when a man dressed in black approached her and asked her if she was Jewish.
After the victim said yes, the assailant reportedly asked, “Are you proud of that?” and then called her a “child murderer,” she told BT.
While she was calling the police, another man appeared and told her to throw away her Israeli flag.
“Before I could even get answers from the police, things escalated further,” the woman said. “Suddenly, a group of men rushed towards me.”
“A strong man with a Middle Eastern appearance shouted at me to take off the flag immediately,” she recalled.
When she refused to throw away her flag, the group of men started tearing it apart. According to her testimony, there were at least 50 bystanders who watched the attack without intervening.
“When I screamed for help, one of the men smiled mockingly and said, ‘Nobody will help you here.’ Then he grabbed me by the throat and started choking me with his hands,” the woman recounted.
“One of them pulled the flag over my head so I couldn’t see what was happening. I kept shouting for help, but no one intervened,” she continued. “Then they started dragging me off the asphalt.”
The woman also said one of the assailants cut off her jacket with a knife. When she tried to call the police again, the group of men allegedly began taunting her and calling her a “Jewish whore.”
“When I finally got through to the police, the policeman didn’t ask if I was OK,” she said. “Instead, he asked me why I was carrying an Israeli flag in an area like Christiania. I felt completely abandoned.”
“I had to beg and convince him that I was in extreme danger,” she continued. “Finally, he agreed to send two female officers.”
Local police confirmed they have opened an investigation into the antisemitic attack after receiving a report about the incident.
According to BT, the victim was left with scratches and bruises on her body after being discharged from the hospital.
In an interview with Israel Hayom, the woman said she usually displays her Jewishness, hanging an Israeli flag on her balcony and wearing her Star of David at work as a nurse.
“The patients notice it immediately; sometimes I see their faces contort. But this is my identity, and I don’t intend to hide it,” she said.
However, the woman recently noticed a much more hostile reaction to her displays of Jewishness in her daily routine.
“People look at me differently,” she told Israel Hayom. “A week ago, someone called me a ‘Zionist s–t.’ Others refused to talk to me because I’m Jewish. I could live with that — as long as it didn’t turn into physical violence.”
She said this was her first experience of such violence.
“They broke my phone and tried to tear up the flag. I almost got lynched,” she recalled. “I was afraid they would burn it, so I held on to it with all my strength.”
“They shouted ‘Free Palestine’ at me … It was so humiliating.”
Mikkel Bjørn, a member of the Danish Parliament for the Danish People’s Party, condemned the attack in a post on X.
“A Jewish woman is brutally attacked in Christiania by a group of men with a Middle Eastern background. Spit on, called a ‘child murderer,’ choked and dragged along the ground while 50 people watched and laughed. No one helps. Is this the import of hatred we want to accept in Denmark?” Bjorn wrote.
En jødisk kvinde overfaldes brutalt på Christiania af en gruppe mænd med mellemøstlig baggrund. Spyttet på, kaldt “barnemorder”, kvæles og slæbes hen ad jorden, mens 50 ser på og griner. Ingen hjælper. Er det denne import af had, vi vil acceptere i Danmark? #dkpol #dkmedier pic.twitter.com/d12ekbyGiJ
— Mikkel Bjørn (@Mikkel_Bjorn) March 11, 2025
The post Jewish Woman Wearing Israeli Flag Attacked in Copenhagen first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Iran, China, Russia Call for End to ‘Unlawful Sanctions’ Amid Tensions With US Over Tehran’s Nuclear Program
From left to right: Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Ma Zhaoxu, and Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi pose for a photo as they meet with reporters after their meeting at Diaoyutai State Guest House on March 14, 2025, in Beijing, China. Photo: Lintao Zhang/Pool via REUTERS
China and Russia have called for an end to the “unlawful sanctions” imposed on Iran, as the three nations expand their cooperation amid growing Western pressure over Tehran’s nuclear program.
During a meeting in Beijing on Friday, China’s Vice Foreign Minister Ma Zhaoxu, Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi, and Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov discussed areas of cooperation and the Iranian nuclear program, expressing solidarity over a range of issues.
In a joint statement, the three countries emphasized the “necessity of terminating all unlawful unilateral sanctions,” seemingly referring to US and other Western economic penalties imposed on Iran’s imports and exports as an attempt to prevent the country from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
They called on all “relevant parties to refrain from taking any action that would escalate the situation” and undermine diplomatic efforts, stating that dialogue based on “mutual respect” is the only viable option.
The countries also “emphasized that the relevant parties should be committed to addressing the root causes of the current situation and abandoning sanction, pressure, or threat of force,” calling such actions “unacceptable” and highlighting the risks of regional escalation and environmental disaster.
In their statement, Russia and China praised Iran’s purported commitment to comply with its obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the Safeguards Agreement to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons.
After their meeting, Beijing and Moscow emphasized that Tehran’s right to the peaceful use of nuclear energy should be “fully” respected.
“The Iranian side has never said a single word about intending to obtain nuclear weapons,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in a separate statement. “In this respect, of course, all sanctions and restrictions are, in our view, illegal.”
“We believe that our Iranian friends have the right to develop a peaceful nuclear energy industry in their country,” he continued. “Russia is actively involved in this and is assisting our Iranian friends in this regard.”
On Thursday, Iran’s Ambassador to the UN, Amir Saeid Iravani, accused Western countries of spreading false information about Tehran’s nuclear program to impose “illegal sanctions” that have deprived Iran of essential medical supplies and restricted its exports.
“Despite these facts, certain Western countries, particularly the United States, Britain, France, and Germany, have persistently sought to create a false narrative about Iran’s nuclear activities, alleging non-cooperation [with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN’s nuclear watchdog] and military ambitions,” Iravani said.
In their joint statement, Iranian, Chinese, and Russian officials also announced they achieved “very important and valuable agreements regarding the development of trilateral cooperation on significant international issues, including the necessity for the three countries to work together to counter US unilateral and bullying sanctions.”
Friday’s meeting came after Iran, China, and Russia on Wednesday concluded three days of joint naval drills in Iranian territorial waters in the Gulf of Oman, bolstering defense cooperation. Experts told The Algemeiner this week that expanding military cooperation between the three countries presents a rising threat to the US and its allies in the Middle East, especially Israel.
Both Beijing and Moscow have had deep interests in Tehran as a partner in the Middle East. China has continued to purchase Iranian crude oil despite Western sanctions and remains one of the top markets for Iranian imports. Meanwhile, Russia has relied on Iran for the supply of bomb-carrying drones used in its war on Ukraine.
Iran’s growing ties with China and Russia come at a time when Tehran is facing increasing sanctions by the United States, particularly on its oil industry, as part of the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign aimed at cutting the country’s crude exports to zero and preventing it from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
Even though Tehran has denied wanting to develop a nuclear weapon, the IAEA has warned that Iran is “dramatically” accelerating uranium enrichment to up to 60 percent purity, close to the roughly 90 percent weapons-grade level.
Tehran has repeatedly claimed that its nuclear program is for civilian purposes rather than weapon development.
However, Western states have said there is no “credible civilian justification” for the country’s recent nuclear activity, arguing it “gives Iran the capability to rapidly produce sufficient fissile material for multiple nuclear weapons.”
Last week, Iran’s so-called “supreme leader,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said Tehran will not be bullied into negotiations after US President Donald Trump revealed he had sent a letter to the country’s top authority to negotiate a nuclear deal.
Last month, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi rejected the possibility of nuclear talks with Washington.
“There will be no possibility of direct talks between us and the United States on the nuclear issue as long as the maximum pressure is applied in this way,” Araghchi said during a joint press conference with his visiting Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov.
Iran and Russia, which recently signed a pact to deepen their defense ties, have been working on an initiative to form an international alliance against US sanctions.
The post Iran, China, Russia Call for End to ‘Unlawful Sanctions’ Amid Tensions With US Over Tehran’s Nuclear Program first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Elise Stefanik Blasts UN for ‘Antisemitic’ Report Accusing Israel of Sexual Violence in Gaza
United Nations Ambassador-designate Elise Stefanik spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on Feb. 22, 2025. Photo: Zach D Roberts/NurPhoto via Reuters Connect
US President Donald Trump’s nominee to serve as the next American ambassador to the United Nations has repudiated a new UN-backed report accusing the Israel Defense Force (IDF) of perpetrating sexual violence against Palestinians in Gaza, lambasting its claims as “antisemitic” and baseless.
“The corrupt UN Human Rights Council’s new baseless report is antisemitic and anti-Israel slander,” US Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) posted on social media on Thursday, when the report was published. “The so-called ‘Human Rights Council’ [UNHRC] has failed to condemn the barbaric atrocities committed by Hamas terrorists against Israel including the brutal slaughter, torture, kidnapping of thousands of innocent civilians, and Hamas’s horrific use of rape and sexual violence against Israeli women and girls, yet disgracefully attacks Israel with unfounded smears.”
Stefanik continued, “This report exposes the disgraceful and obsessive antisemitism of UNHRC and reaffirms why President Trump took the strong, correct decisive executive action to withdraw from it.”
The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Thursday published a report, commissioned by the Human Rights Council, that accused Israel of committing “genocidal acts” and employing sexual violence in Gaza. The report alleged that Israeli military forces have used sexual abuse and forcible stripping as weapons of war against Palestinian civilians.
“Israeli authorities have destroyed in part the reproductive capacity of the Palestinians in Gaza as a group, including by imposing measures intended to prevent births, one of the categories of genocidal acts in the Rome Statute and the Genocide Convention,” the report said.
Upon the report’s release, Israel’s permanent mission to the UN released a statement rejecting the allegations, arguing that they lacked substantiation and were based on uncorroborated sources.
“In a shameless attempt to incriminate the IDF and manufacture the illusion of ‘systematic’ use of [sexual and gender-based violence], the [Commission of Inquiry] deliberately adopts a lower level of corroboration in its report, which allowed it to include information from second-hand single uncorroborated sources,” the mission said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also repudiated the UNHRC, arguing that the “antisemitic” council has launched unsubstantiated allegations against the Jewish state with the goal of tarnishing its reputation.
“Instead of focusing on the crimes against humanity and war crimes committed by the Hamas terrorist organization in the worst massacre committed against the Jewish people since the Holocaust, the UN is once again choosing to attack Israel with false accusations, including unfounded accusations of sexual violence,” Netanyahu wrote.
In contrast, Hamas, the terrorist group that runs Gaza, said that the report confirmed Israel’s “genocidal” actions within the enclave.
“The UN’s investigation report on Israel’s genocidal acts against the Palestinian people confirms what has happened on the ground: genocide and violations of all humanitarian and legal standards,” Hamas spokesperson Hazem Qassem told AFP.
Several investigations have revealed that Hamas-led Palestinians perpetrated widespread sexual violence against Israeli women and girls not only during their Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of southern Israel but also later against Israeli hostages kidnapped during the onslaught.
Anne Herzberg, legal adviser and UN representative for NGO Monitor, told The Algemeiner that the International Criminal Court and International Court of Justice will likely use the report to bolster their genocide cases against Israel. Other anti-Israel initiatives such as the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement (BDS) will also likely reference the report in future activities.
Stefanik was tapped by Trump to serve as the ambassador to the United Nations for the current administration. However, Stefanik has not yet been confirmed by the US Senate to serve in the post. Senate Republicans are reportedly slowing her confirmation process due to concerns over the narrow Republican majority in the House of Representatives, where her vote is seen as necessary to pass key legislation.
The post Elise Stefanik Blasts UN for ‘Antisemitic’ Report Accusing Israel of Sexual Violence in Gaza first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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