A group of people, which was purportedly involved in protests against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids, vandalized a Jewish-owned cafe in San Francisco on Monday night.
The Jewish Community Relations Council Bay Area posted photos and video of a broken window and graffiti stating “death to Israel is a promise,” “free Gaza,” “die Zio” and “the only good settler is a dead one,” and directing a cuss word at Manny Yekutiel, who owns the restaurant.
“This wasn’t an isolated incident. Manny Yekutiel and his establishment have been subjected to a years-long campaign of relentless antisemitic vandalism, which has increased in intensity since Oct. 7,” the JCRC said. “Broken windows, death threats and slurs like ‘Zio,’ ‘settler’ and ‘murderer’ scrawled on his business’s walls are some of the most recent examples.”
The cafe, Manny’s, is “a beloved, Jewish-owned civic engagement hub and community space,” the JCRC said.
Yekutiel told the San Francisco Chronicle that Monday night’s vandalism was the “most extreme” that his cafe had endured.
“It was like a crime scene,” he told the paper. “Glass everywhere, shattered on the floor, and then I came back here in the back in the dark and was just sobbing.”
Yekutiel, who the Chronicle said has “been vocal about his ‘complicated’ feelings about Israel and clear about his wish for a ceasefire in Gaza,” told the paper that he wished he “could sit down with these people and say, ‘You got the wrong guy.’”
“But just choosing to attack my business and my windows and say that I should die only affirms the claim, which is true in many ways, that part of this is just a hatred of Jews,” he told the Chronicle.
“Another major example of antisemitism targeting a Jewish-owned business in the Mission,” stated Scott Wiener, a California state senator who is Jewish. “Manny’s has been targeted for years, because the owner is Jewish. This vandalism calls for the death of Jews. Antisemitism is toxic and leads to violence against Jews. It must never be tolerated.”
One of the photos that Wiener posted appeared to show the word “intifada” spray painted on the outside of the cafe.
A fundraiser for Yekutiel had raised nearly $73,000 at press time.
