Legal troubles are multiplying for Oakland’s Jerusalem Coffee House. On Monday, the U.S. Justice Department filed a suit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, accusing the owner Abdulrahim Harara and Native Grounds LLC of violating Title II of the Civil Rights Act. Title II prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, and national origin and the lawsuit seeks to force compliance with federal anti-discrimination laws.
The lawsuit stems from two instances of alleged bias, one which went viral in October 2024. In that incident, Harara kicked out Johnathan Hirsch and his five-year-old son for wearing a violent hat with the Star of David. In the video recorded by Hirsch, Harara is seen saying “This is a violent hat & you need to leave.” Jewish Press reports:
Hirsch was wearing a blue baseball cap with a white Jewish Star on the front, a recreation of a 1938 cap linked to the Hebrew Orphan Asylum, a Jewish charitable organization in New York that hosted Negro League baseball games.
The viral video attracted attention to Harara and his project. It turned out, that the posh Rockridge neighborhood café served a terror-themed menu. If Islamists abroad pass around sweets on occasions of successful soft target hits like 9/11, for mere $10 the joint offered drinks called Sweet Sinwar, evidently named after the now eliminated mastermind of Simchat Torah massacre, and $8 Iced In-TEA-fada after the early 2000’s war in which Israel’s civilian population was targeted on buses and in pizzerias. The paper menu and the outer wall of the eatery are decorated with red triangles, the symbol used by online Antizionists to signify killings.
As it was happening, I dove into the outfit’s social media to discover:
Designed as a place to advance fringe ideas, the Jerusalem Coffee House’s Yelp reviews include one woman’s complaints of being ejected for bringing up Israeli cuisine and another one calling on patrons to “**** zios”—or kill Jews. Cultural programming includes events like the screening of presidential debate titled White on White Violence: Collapse of The Great Settler State, advertised with a flyer showing Donald Trump with swastikas in place of eyes and Joe Biden with stars of David.The venue’s owner Abdulrahim “Raheem” Harara, a San Francisco-raised Gazan, built his nest egg working in the local tech sector. In a photo posted by a patron on Yelp, Harara is seen displaying the one-finger ISIS salute.
The owner explains that the idea behind the shop is to share with the locals what it means to be a Palestinian. He puts up a display of Palestinianism — a concocted narrative designed to negate the Jewish claim to the Holy Land.
Pictures from the cafe show a Palestinian flag bearing Arabic lettering I asked Grok to translate it and it came up with the Shahida, or the Islamic statement of faith typically written on Hamas flag. On their Instagram account, the word Israel is written in scare quotes and blood libels fly. Harara promoted a fundraiser for Palestinian Children’s Relief, a charity compromised by terror links, including those to Hamas.
There is no sense of a broad significance of Jerusalem Coffee House project — no cultural singularity. Aside from hating Israel, Palestinian guests speakers ingest nourishment — that’s it. The cafe, for instance, advertised for a $50 cooking workshop with a lady who rants about “Israeli occupation in its relentless pursuit of colonial death”. But what’s a colonial death?
Jerusalem Coffee House is a good fit for Oakland’s generic hate whitie radicalism. One of its Instagram posts advertises for people’s iftar with iftar being a Ramadan dinner and people’s a common Marxoid adjective for things that lefties do. Under pictures of two black women with covered heads, the post promised:
Our limited collab merch will be for sale — and all proceeds go to programs for decolonization in Oakland as well as to support people in Gaza — Free the land!
In one of the pictures the two women are shown holding an oversized T-shirt reading “The [new] Afrikan [sic] struggle and the Palestinian struggle are for liberation of humanity”. Presumably, that’s the limited addition merchandise they were selling at the function.
The coffee shop’s interior features a map of Africa with a fist superimposed against it. I’m not sure who are the blacks in Oakland that are being decolonized considering that the black community here did not exist in significant numbers prior to the Second World War. It’s another word local radicals mindlessly toss around, together with genocide, apartheid and a handful of others — typically signifying general disapproval, sometimes used against Israel, sometimes against Western civilization and always against success and excellence.
The violent hat incident put the establishment in the spotlight, but it turned out that another Jew is alleging bias there. In March 2025, Michael Radice brought up a lawsuit with support of the ADL. Turns out, on July 10 last year Radice walked into the Jerusalem Coffee Shop wearing a necklace with the Star of David and the words Am Yisrael Chi. An employee asked him if he’s a Jew and a Zionist and proceeded to make accusations against him relating to the war in Gaza — probably something similar to their social media vitriol.
Concerned for his physical safety, Radice left but as he was exiting the store he saw Harara talk to the employee. Believing that the latter was there to diffuse the situation, Radice returned to thank him a few weeks later. He was recognized and, according to the complaint, three men, including Harara, chased him out of the café. In addition to the DOJ lawsuit, both Hirsch and Radice is now seeking compensatory damages.
Harara lawyered up and denies any wrongdoing, claiming to be misunderstood. He, for instance, previously asserted that his Sweet Sinwar drink is simply given a common Palestinian name. The San Francisco Standard investigated the claim and found that Sinwar is not among the 1,000 most common Palestinian surnames. The coffee shop owner also claims that he denied service to Hirsch and his five-year-old because they were disruptive and accused the Trump Administration of playing politics.
Assistant U.S. attorney general Harmeet Dhillon called the coffee house unamerican. She added that as a former Bay Area resident she is ashamed of this kind of discrimination taking place here and disappointed in the local government’s inaction.
The Oakland Jewish community dates back to the city’s incorporation in the 19th century. It has been large and prominent. Among its most high profile members are the writer Gertrude Stein who gave the city its motto there is no there there and the rabbi, pacifist and an advocate for Arab-Jewish reconciliation Judah Magnes.
Since the High Holidays attack on Israel in October 2023 attack, Oakland has been hit by antisemitic hate crimes. For instance, in December 2023 an unknown individual upturned the Chabad menorah and threw it into nearby Lake Merritt. Corrupt and incompetent Oakland leadership has no interest in addressing antisemitic crimes — and wouldn’t know how anyway. In the aftermath of BLM, the police department is severely understaffed. No wonder that hate finds a home here.
The Palestinian/Hamas flag combo is new to America, but bigots serving overpriced syrupy drinks is a very Oakland kind of thing. I am curious, however — does Mr. Harara know who destroyed that Chabad menorah back in 2023?
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