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Hate or just a crime? Either way, Jewish restaurants are finding support after vandalism
(JTA) — On a Saturday in late November, vandals smashed the front entrance of Pita Grill, a kosher restaurant in New York’s Upper East Side, and stole e-bikes in front of the restaurant.
Law enforcement quickly concluded that it was not a hate crime, but a standard robbery. The restaurant was closed for Shabbat at the time of the break-in. But rumors quickly swirled that the Middle Eastern eatery was the target of an antisemitic attack. Prominent Jewish influencers shared videos of the attack on social media and asked followers to support the restaurant. Many showed up.
“We never know people’s motives and if their intention was, ‘Oh, this is a kosher restaurant, there’s a scooter there, I’m gonna take advantage and hurt them and this is a good target,’” Elan Kornblum, creator of the 98,000-member Facebook group Great Kosher Restaurant Foodies, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
“We’re kind of walking around thinking that people are out to get us and if there’s a crime that it must be antisemitic,” he added. “We’re all on edge.”
Pita Grill, which did not respond to JTA requests for comment, is one of a series of kosher restaurants nationwide that have seen outpourings of public support in the wake of vandalism or break-ins since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel, which triggered a spike in antisemitic incidents around the world. Law enforcement has concluded that some of these incidents were hate crimes, while others were not. Still others are under investigation.
Some of the incidents are clearly antisemitic in nature. A string of restaurant attacks has drawn widespread attention over the past two months. 2nd Avenue Deli, a kosher restaurant on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, was vandalized with a swastika in late October. Canter’s Deli in Los Angeles was also vandalized with a swastika, launching a hate crime investigation by the Los Angeles Police Department. Earlier this week, pro-Palestinian protesters in Philadelphia accused a falafel restaurant of “genocide.”
Other attacks have fallen in a vast gray area where the question of antisemitism may be in the eye of the beholder. Caffe Aronne, also on the Upper East Side, saw a bump in business after reports that baristas quit en masse over the war — though what actually took place appears to be murkier.
And a kosher pizza restaurant in Skokie, Illinois was tagged with a symbol that included a swastika in it; law enforcement later contended that it was not a hate crime because it was a gang symbol belonging to the Maniac Latin Disciples, a street gang from Chicago founded in the 1960s by someone named Albert “King Hitler” Hernandez. The restaurant did not return JTA calls for comment.
At Sushi Tokyo, a kosher eatery in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood, a vandal threw a chair past a waiter wearing a kippah and smashed a window of an outdoor dining shed. The incident is still under investigation, but one patron of the restaurant said she felt a climate of fear there.
“I noticed everyone is in caps, hiding their yarmulkes, which people would not normally do,” said Adie Horowitz, who went to Sushi Tokyo with a friend following the vandalism in order to show support.
Rachel Sass, an analyst at the ADL Center on Extremism, explained that Jews’ personal experience of antisemitism doesn’t always match up with what law enforcement concludes. Even if an incident isn’t a hate crime, she suggested, it may feel like a hate crime.
“We’re trying to see and hear and represent the feelings of our constituency, which we consider to be the entire Jewish community in the United States,” she said. “We try to really hear and reflect and validate these feelings that people have, even if that sometimes is a different conclusion than law enforcement comes to.”
Customers pack into Caffe Aronne in the Upper East Side after staff members quit due to the store’s pro-Israel activities, Nov. 7, 2023. (Luke Tress)
In some cases, restaurateurs say police have prematurely dismissed evidence of antisemitism. In early November, Taste of Tel Aviv in Houston was hit by what police called a burglary that did not look like a hate crime.
“Based on the preliminary investigation and evidence review, it appears that this incident was not motivated by hate,” said a Nov. 7 statement by Houston Police. “It is believed to be the work of a lone individual who was burglarizing the business and trying to steal anything of value before fleeing the scene.”
But the owners do believe hate was at play. During the weeks leading up to the break-in, the restaurant had prominently displayed an Israeli flag, and owner Pamela Baylis told local press that she had also received a bomb threat.
Baylis, who is not Jewish and co-owns the restaurant with Gabi Algrably, who is, told JTA she does not believe the incident was solely a burglary. She said the perpetrator destroyed prayer books and stole kippahs, tefillin and ceramics made by local children featuring Stars of David. He also urinated in the restaurant, she said.
“The man threw $578 on the floor. He took no money with him. He left all the cash behind. All he did was destroy religious items,” she said. “He took the stuff that the guys wrap around their arms and put on their head.”
The burglary investigation is ongoing and the local Jewish federation told JTA it is in communication with the Houston Police Department and is advocating for the police to continue investigating all options — including hate crimes. The Houston Police Department did not respond to JTA’s requests for updates on the case.
“We have no criticism of HPD, we just want to make sure that they are doing all that they can to investigate possible hateful incidents,” a spokesperson for the federation said.
Taste of Tel Aviv has also had a slew of negative reviews on its Facebook page, a tactic several Jewish and Israeli restaurants have been facing since Oct. 7. On Google Maps, all three Falafel Yoni locations across the border in Montréal have close to a five-star average rating. But starting about five weeks ago, they began receiving an onslaught of one-star reviews — about 20 of them within one or two days — co-owner Yoni Amir said.
At least one of those reviews — which have since been deleted by Google after they were reported — combined a critique of the “tasteless” food with an accusation that the restaurant was passing off Palestinian cuisine as Israeli. “Did you know it’s a palestinian dish or you are going to appropriate it just like everything else?” the review said.
The falafel restaurant — along with a pizza restaurant Amir owns — has also been put on multiple online boycott lists together with other Jewish- and Israeli-owned restaurants in the area. (A similar list exists of “Zionist restaurants” in New York City that was compiled into a Google Map, which was then removed from the app.) Vandals have also placed stickers and posters on Falafel Yoni, charging its owners with genocide.
“The only reason my restaurants are being targeted are because A, I was born in Israel and because B I’m Jewish,” Amir told JTA. “There’s no other reason — there’s nothing from a political stance or anything like that — that separates my restaurants from a neighboring restaurant who isn’t being targeted for the posters.”
Sass said that when looking at the landscape of attacks on restaurants, she tries to be “fact-based” in her assessment. But she added that sifting through which attacks are clear-cut antisemitism and which are not can be challenging when people’s emotions and perceptions are at play.
“People’s experience of antisemitism can be very subjective,” she said. “It’s important for people to feel validated when they’re experiencing this harm.”
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The post Hate or just a crime? Either way, Jewish restaurants are finding support after vandalism appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Trump Proposes Resettlement of Gazans as Netanyahu Visits White House
US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meet at the White House in Washington, DC, US, Feb. 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz
US President Donald Trump on Tuesday proposed the resettlement of Palestinians from Gaza to neighboring countries, calling the enclave a “demolition site” and saying residents have “no alternative” as he held critical talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House.
“[The Palestinians] have no alternative right now” but to leave Gaza, Trump told reporters before Netanyahu arrived. “I mean, they’re there because they have no alternative. What do they have? It is a big pile of rubble right now.”
Trump repeated his call for Egypt, Jordan, and other Arab states in the region to take in Palestinians from Gaza after nearly 16 months of war there between Israel and the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, which ruled the enclave before the war and remains the dominant faction.
Arab leaders have adamantly rejected Trump’s proposal. However, Trump argued on Tuesday that Palestinians would benefit from leaving Gaza and expressed astonishment at the notion that they would want to remain.
“Look, the Gaza thing has not worked. It’s never worked. And I feel very differently about Gaza than a lot of people. I think they should get a good, fresh, beautiful piece of land. We’ll get some people to put up the money to build it and make it nice and make it habitable and enjoyable,” Trump said.
Referring to Gaza as a “pure demolition site,” the president said he doesn’t “know how they [Palestinians] could want to stay” when asked about the reaction of Palestinian and Arab leaders to his proposal.
“If we could find the right piece of land, or numerous pieces of land, and build them some really nice places, there’s plenty of money in the area, that’s for sure,” Trump continued. “I think that would be a lot better than going back to Gaza, which has had decades and decades of death.”
However, Trump clarified that he does “not necessarily” support Israel permanently annexing and resettling Gaza.
Trump later made similar remarks with Netanyahu at his side in the Oval Office, suggesting that Palestinians should leave Gaza for good “in nice homes and where they can be happy and not be shot, not be killed.”
“They are not going to want to go back to Gaza,” he said.
Trump did not offer any specifics about how a resettlement process could be implemented.
The post-war future of Palestinians in Gaza has loomed as a major point of contention within both the United States and Israel. The former Biden administration emphatically rejected the notion of relocating Gaza civilians, demanding a humanitarian aid “surge” into the beleaguered enclave.
Trump has previously hinted at support for relocating Gaza civilians. Last month, the president said he would like to “just clean out” Gaza and resettle residents in Jordan or Egypt.
Steve Witkoff, the US special envoy to the Middle East, defended Trump’s comments in a Tuesday press conference, arguing that Gaza will remain uninhabitable for the foreseeable future.
“When the president talks about ‘cleaning it out,’ he talks about making it habitable,” Witkoff said. “It is unfair to have explained to Palestinians that they might be back in five years. That’s just preposterous.
Trump’s comments were immediately met with backlash, with some observers accusing him of supporting an ethnic cleansing plan. However, proponents of the proposal argue that it could offer Palestinians a better future and would mitigate the threat posed by Hamas.
Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists started the Gaza war on Oct. 7, 2023, when they invaded southern Israel, murdered 1,200 people, and kidnapped 251 hostages back to Gaza while perpetrating widespread sexual violence in what was the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust.
Israel responded with a military campaign aimed at freeing the hostages and dismantling Hamas’s military and governing capabilities in neighboring Gaza.
Last month, both sides reached a Gaza ceasefire and hostage-release deal brokered by the US, Egypt, and Qatar.
Under phase one of the agreement, Hamas will, over six weeks, free a total of 33 Israeli hostages, eight of whom are deceased, and in exchange, Israel will release over 1,900 Palestinian prisoners, many of whom are serving multiple life sentences for terrorist activity. Meanwhile, fighting in Gaza will stop as negotiators work on agreeing to a second phase of the agreement, which is expected to include Hamas releasing all remaining hostages held in Gaza and the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from the enclave.
The ceasefire and the future of Gaza were expected to be key topics of conversation between Trump and Netanyahu, along with the possibility of Israel and Saudi Arabia normalizing relations and Iran’s nuclear program.
Riyadh has indicated that any normalization agreement with Israel would need to include an end to the Gaza war and the pathway to the formation of a Palestinian state.
However, perhaps the most strategically important subject will be Iran, particularly how to contain its nuclear program and combat its support for terrorist proxies across the Middle East. In recent weeks, many analysts have raised questions over whether Trump would support an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, which both Washington and Jerusalem fear are meant to ultimately develop nuclear weapons.
Netanyahu on Tuesday was the first foreign leader to visit the White House since Trump’s inauguration last month.
The post Trump Proposes Resettlement of Gazans as Netanyahu Visits White House first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Trump Reimposes ‘Maximum Pressure’ on Iran, Aims to Drive Oil Exports to Zero
US President Donald Trump speaks at the White House, in Washington, DC, Feb. 3, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz
US President Donald Trump on Tuesday restored his “maximum pressure” campaign on Iran that includes efforts to drive its oil exports down to zero in order to stop Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
Ahead of his meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump signed the presidential memorandum reimposing Washington’s tough policy on Iran that was practiced throughout his first term.
As he signed the memo, Trump described it as very tough and said he was torn on whether to make the move. He said he was open to a deal with Iran and expressed a willingness to talk to the Iranian leader.
“With me, it’s very simple: Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon,” Trump said. Asked how close Tehran is to a weapon, Trump said: “They’re too close.”
Iran‘s mission to the United Nations in New York did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump has accused former President Joe Biden of failing to rigorously enforce oil-export sanctions, which Trump says emboldened Tehran by allowing it to sell oil to fund a nuclear weapons program and armed militias in the Middle East.
Iran is “dramatically” accelerating enrichment of uranium to up to 60 percent purity, close to the roughly 90 percent weapons-grade level, the UN nuclear watchdog chief told Reuters in December. Iran has denied wanting to develop a nuclear weapon.
Trump‘s memo, among other things, orders the US Treasury secretary to impose “maximum economic pressure” on Iran, including sanctions and enforcement mechanisms on those violating existing sanctions.
It also directs the Treasury and State Department to implement a campaign aimed at “driving Iran‘s oil exports to zero.” US oil prices pared losses on Tuesday on the news that Trump planned to sign the memo, which offset some weakness from the tariff drama between Washington and Beijing.
Tehran’s oil exports brought in $53 billion in 2023 and $54 billion a year earlier, according to US Energy Information Administration estimates. Output during 2024 was running at its highest level since 2018, based on OPEC data.
Trump had driven Iran‘s oil exports to near-zero during part of his first term after re-imposing sanctions. They rose under Biden’s tenure as Iran succeeded in evading sanctions.
The Paris-based International Energy Agency believes Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and other OPEC members have spare capacity to make up for any lost exports from Iran, also an OPEC member.
PUSH FOR SANCTIONS SNAPBACK
China does not recognize US sanctions and Chinese firms buy the most Iranian oil. China and Iran have also built a trading system that uses mostly Chinese yuan and a network of middlemen, avoiding the dollar and exposure to US regulators.
Kevin Book, an analyst at ClearView Energy, said the Trump administration could enforce the 2024 Stop Harboring Iranian Petroleum (SHIP) law to curtail some Iranian barrels.
SHIP, which the Biden administration did not enforce strictly, allows measures on foreign ports and refineries that process petroleum exported from Iran in violation of sanctions. Book said a move last month by the Shandong Port Group to ban US-sanctioned tankers from calling into its ports in the eastern Chinese province signals the impact SHIP could have.
Trump also directed his UN ambassador to work with allies to “complete the snapback of international sanctions and restrictions on Iran,” under a 2015 deal between Iran and key world powers that lifted sanctions on Tehran in return for restrictions on its nuclear program.
The US quit the agreement in 2018, during Trump‘s first term, and Iran began moving away from its nuclear-related commitments under the deal. The Trump administration had also tried to trigger a snapback of sanctions under the deal in 2020, but the move was dismissed by the UN Security Council.
Britain, France, and Germany told the United Nations Security Council in December that they are ready — if necessary — to trigger a snapback of all international sanctions on Iran to prevent the country from acquiring a nuclear weapon.
They will lose the ability to take such action on Oct. 18 when a 2015 UN resolution expires. The resolution enshrines Iran‘s deal with Britain, Germany, France, the United States, Russia, and China that lifted sanctions on Tehran in exchange for restrictions on its nuclear program.
Iran‘s UN ambassador, Amir Saeid Iravani, has said that invoking the “snap-back” of sanctions on Tehran would be “unlawful and counterproductive.”
European and Iranian diplomats met in November and January to discuss if they could work to defuse regional tensions, including over Tehran’s nuclear program, before Trump returned.
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Trump Stops US Involvement With UN Rights Body, Extends UNRWA Funding Halt
An UNRWA aid truck at the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip. Photo: Reuters/Amr Abdallah Dalsh
US President Donald Trump on Tuesday ordered an end to US engagement with the United Nations Human Rights Council and continued a halt to funding for the UN Palestinian relief agency UNRWA.
The move coincides with a visit to Washington by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has long been critical of UNRWA, accusing it of anti-Israel incitement and its staff of being “involved in terrorist activities against Israel.”
During Trump‘s first term in office, from 2017-2021, he also cut off funding for UNRWA, questioning its value, saying that Palestinians needed to agree to renew peace talks with Israel, and calling for unspecified reforms.
The first Trump administration also quit the 47-member Human Rights Council halfway through a three-year term over what it called chronic bias against Israel and a lack of reform. The US is not currently a member of the Geneva-based body. Under former President Joe Biden, the US served a 2022-2024 term.
A council working group is due to review the US human rights record later this year, a process all countries undergo every few years. While the council has no legally binding power, its debates carry political weight and criticism can raise global pressure on governments to change course.
Since taking office for a second term on Jan. 20, Trump has ordered that the US withdraw from the World Health Organization and from the Paris climate agreement — also steps he took during his first term in office.
The US was UNRWA’s biggest donor — providing $300 million-$400 million a year — but Biden paused funding in January 2024 after Israel accused about a dozen UNRWA staff of taking part in the deadly Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel by Palestinian terrorist group Hamas that triggered the war in Gaza.
The US Congress then formally suspended contributions to UNRWA until at least March 2025.
The United Nations has said that nine UNRWA staff may have been involved in the Oct. 7, 2023, attack and were fired. A Hamas commander in Lebanon — killed in September by Israel — was also found to have had a UNRWA job.
An Israeli ban went into effect on Jan. 30 that prohibits UNRWA from operating on its territory or communicating with Israeli authorities. UNRWA has said operations in Gaza and West Bank will also suffer.
The post Trump Stops US Involvement With UN Rights Body, Extends UNRWA Funding Halt first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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