The Portland Police Bureau is reportedly investigating three separate incidents of such restaurants being vandalized at around the same time. These include a vegan hummus restaurant from Israeli chef Tal Caspi called Aviv and two branches of Shalom Y'all, a restaurant that specializes in Mediterranean food, including shawarma and falafel.
Some of the graffiti spray-painted on a Shalom Y'all restaurant read: "Hummus not Israeli", "Falafel is from Palestine" and "murder", According to photos posted on social media. Kasey Mills, Jamal Hassan and Laura Amans, the restaurant's owners, described the assaults as antisemitic.
Shalom Ya'll [sic] Restaurant, a Jewish eatery In Portland Oregon, was horrifically vandalized - while I agree with the need for a free Palestine- this attack is hateful bigoted and... wrong. This is not antifascism it’s the... opposite this is disgusting pic.twitter.com/ZgVfI838aJ
— leftist (@luistheleftist) January 11, 2021
“We are committed to operating inclusive spaces, and do not tolerate messages of hate or racism in any form,” the owners wrote in their statement. “We are so thankful for the outpouring of support we have received from the community over the last 24 hours.”
Ironically, neither of the restaurants vandalized considers itself exclusively Israeli, with a daytime manager at Aviv telling local media that most employees are not even Israeli. Moreover, the restaurant had recently removed the word "Israeli" from its signs, trying to distance itself from any political issue.Vandalism and other acts of blind hatred toward Jewish and Israeli restaurants seem to be becoming more frequent. In October, a kosher restaurant in Paris was defaced and vandalized with Nazi slogans.And it seems that not being directly connected to Israeli politics is no longer enough to avoid being blindly accused of perpetuating the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.But what can one expect from people who don't even bother checking the origin of falafel?