As the sacred Jewish holiday of Shavuot came to a close early this week, shocking footage surfaced on social media of what appears to be an anti-Israel gang’s vicious attack on Jews having dinner outdoors in Los Angeles.
Israel’s fight against Hamas has again reached American shores. While cities all over Europe continue to report alarming spikes in physical attacks against Jews —citizen broadcasts via the Twitterverse show the same sort of assaults happening here.
Authorities are investigating whether an attack on diners that occurred outside a Beverly Grove restaurant late Tuesday night was a Jewish hate crime.The brawl occurred a little before 10 p.m. outside Sushi Fumi in the 300 block of North La Cienega Boulevard.Witnesses said a mob of pro-Palestinians attacked a group of Jewish men who were dining at the restaurant. Cell phone video showed a group of men get out of the car and start to attack them while yelling racial slurs.One of the diners, who is not Jewish, told CBSLA a caravan waving pro-Palestinian flags approached and then began throwing bottles at him and the group he was dining with. The man said he is a photographer and the group was meeting at the restaurant to plan a wedding.The man said he was physically attacked when he tried to defend the group. He said the men used anti-Jewish profanity. He said he was pepper sprayed during the attack and had to go to the hospital.
The Jewish victims of the attack are reportedly members of the robust Persian-Jewish community that calls Los Angeles home; witnesses say the attackers targeted them as they paraded through the heavily Jewish area (on foot and in cars), moving from group to group asking who was Jewish. Some clips show the caravan of anti-Israel protesters driving through the neighborhood screaming into megaphones at Jewish passersby.
The assault itself was captured from multiple angles.
As police arrived on the scene, one witness described the entire sequence for his live streamed audience:
We’re here outside Sushi Fumi in West Hollywood. A group of Palestinians—about 30 of them—jumped out of a car and asked who was Jewish. Two guys said they were, and they proceeded to beat them up. A couple people stepped in, even a Christian Arab jumped out to help the guy in the grey shirt right here. They’re apparently going around the city, and asking who’s Jewish, and beating them up. [Sighs heavily]This is America, guys. Things are not looking good.
Though the LAPD stated that it’s investigating the incident as a “possible” anti-Jewish hate-crime, the motive for the attack seems abundantly clear. Some footage of the assault shows attackers wearing keffiyehs wrapped around their heads in the style favored by mujahideen (jihadis), while other clips captured members of the caravan waving huge Palestinian flags. And it doesn’t seem to be a coincidence that there had been a large anti-Israel protest in the area that same day.
The previous day, Monday May 17, another group of Los Angeles agitators’ used social media to document its own attack on Zionists. One of them posted video (watermarked with his Instagram account name) of their own chase, in a car, of a lone clearly Jewish pedestrian; the video brags that “[they] went after” a Zionist they claimed had “flipped [them] off for supporting Palestine”. The caption on the video (complete with a Palestine flag emoji, a middle finger emoji, and laughing emojis) reads,
YALL SOME BIG ASS PUSSYS [sic] BITCHESYOU CAN RUN BUT CAN’T HIDE
But the man’s interview with Fox News tells an entirely different story:
Chilling surveillance footage obtained by Fox News shows the moment a Jewish man in Los Angeles was chased by two cars bearing Palestinian flags near his home earlier this week as they chanted “Allahu akbar” in an apparent attempt to run him over.
The man, who asked to remain anonymous, told Fox News he was walking from his home to synagogue on Monday night during the Jewish holiday of Shavuot when he noticed a car speeding toward him.
“I’ve taken this route a million times and I’ve never been afraid,” he said. “I was waiting by the light for it to change and suddenly I saw a bunch of cars coming and I see out of the corner of my eye they were waving the Palestinian flag. They started speeding up and I heard them chanting ‘Allahu akbar.’ That’s when I started running for my life.”Surveillance footage recorded from a nearby synagogue shows the man running into a Bank of America parking lot. He is being chased by two speeding cars with several Palestinian flags displayed.”I ran as fast as I could,” he said. “They were picking up speed and I really thought they were going to run me over, that it would all be over.”
American Jewish groups such as the Israeli American Council, have issued strong condemnations of the L.A. attacks.
But while such statements are crucial tools to raise awareness and show the Jewish community’s continued strength, they won’t help protect Jews at the moment of other physical attacks. It’s time that Jews proactively procure the tools and knowledge necessary to physically defend ourselves from violent Jew-hate—even in America.
Samantha Mandeles is Senior Researcher and Outreach Director at the Legal Insurrection Foundation. You can contact her on Twitter at @SRMandeles.</p
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