The People Who Mobbed a Jewish-Owned Restaurant in Philly Are Total Psychopaths By Jim Geraghty
On the menu today: If you thought the angry mob that gathered outside a Jewish-owned restaurant in downtown Philadelphia Sunday night couldn’t get any more outrageous, wait until you hear how the organizers justified their decisions a day later. It’s rarely been clearer that those who are taking to the streets and chanting aren’t merely pro-peace, as they claim, they’re pro-the-other-side, even when the other side is Hamas and the stakes are therapy for traumatized children. There was a Kristallnacht vibe to the decision to harass a Jewish-owned restaurant and to treat it as an extension of the Israeli government. Meanwhile, the White House apparently believes that a one-paragraph statement of rebuke is all the moment needs. The president who said he chose to run for the Oval Office because “the soul of America is at stake” is strangely quiet at this moment.
I’m Sorry, but These People Are Psychopaths
On today’s Wall Street Journal op-ed page, under the headline, “Higher Ed has become a threat to America,” University of California Santa Cruz professor emeritus John Ellis concludes, “The biggest threat to our future isn’t climate change, China or the national debt. It is the tyrannical grip that a hopelessly corrupt higher education now has on our national life. If we don’t stop it now, it will eventually destroy the most successful society in world history.”
That’s an awfully big accusation. Hyperbolic, probably; let’s not hand-wave away the threats of our runaway $33.8 trillion national debt or Beijing’s aggressive buildup of the People’s Liberation Army. But it’s not completely inaccurate, either. Leftist professors and administrators have cultivated an environment where whoever can organize the biggest, angriest mob wins; left-wing violence is forgiven as de facto speech while right-of-center-speech is restricted for being de facto violence; and your constitutionally protected rights can be completely abrogated without warning or review. And that mentality has spilled out from campuses into our legislatures, courtrooms, newsrooms, and the public square. The politically motivated violence we see in our country today is not all driven by backwoods yokels marching through the streets of Charlottesville with Tiki torches.
I’m sorry, I can’t just drop the topic of that angry mob that gathered outside a Jewish-owned restaurant in downtown Philadelphia Sunday night. I know that a whole lot of people might think it was just an ugly, dumb thing that happened, but it’s over now, damage to the restaurant was minimal, and even the owner, renowned Israeli-born chef Michael Solomonov, doesn’t want to comment on Sunday’s incident. I can’t begrudge him the desire to move on and get back to business.
I have only the most tenuous connection to the city of Philadelphia, and yet hearing this story about the angry mob outside Goldie, accusing the owner of committing genocide, left me seething and spitting mad that these snot-nosed punks thought it was okay to harass a Jewish business because they deemed it a de facto extension of the Israeli government. I mean, just crack a history book. I’m begging you.
This is America. We’re not supposed to have angry mobs forcing Jewish students to hide in a college library. We’re not supposed to have people running around telling others to boycott a business just because the owner, manager, or staff is Jewish. And we’re not supposed to have people wondering if it’s safe to visit a falafel restaurant on a Sunday night, for fear that some angry mob might come along and accuse them of assisting genocide through their dining choices.
From this morning’s Philadelphia Inquirer:
The Philly Palestine Coalition refuted the allegations of antisemitism, defended the practice of boycotting businesses, and accused elected officials of ignoring the underlying demand of the protest: a cease-fire.
Did the organization “refute,” as in disprove the allegations of antisemitism, or did they “rebuke,” the allegations, as in reject? You’re a major newspaper staffed with professionals. Word choice matters. If the organization did refute that their choice to bring an angry mob outside the restaurant was antisemitic, how did they do this?
I suppose the argument is that that crowd wasn’t antisemitic because it made a similar chant outside a Starbucks:
Goldie is one of several eateries in the CookNSolo restaurant group, co-owned by renowned Israeli-born chef Michael Solomonov. Protesters contend that Goldie was not targeted for simply being a Jewish business, as some elected officials alleged, but rather because CookNSolo fundraised over $100,000 for the Friends of United Hatzalah, an Israeli nonprofit that describes itself as volunteer EMS organization. The organization provided emergency relief services to Israeli Defense Forces soldiers after the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks. Sunday’s demonstration included a near-identical chant outside a local Starbucks, due to what the coalition described as the corporate coffee giant’s support for Israel.
You see, this group couldn’t possibly be antisemitic because it also made a similar chant outside a giant coffee chain founded and built by Howard Schultz, Zev Siegl, Jack Benaroya, Herman Sarkowsky, Sam Stroum, Leonard Maltz, Jeff Brotman, Howard Behar, and Dan Levitan. It’s just entirely coincidental that every establishment they accuse of genocide was founded and built by Jews!
Except . . . the belief that Starbucks has some sort of ties to the Israeli government, or that it supports the Israeli government, is itself an antisemitic conspiracy theory: “Neither Starbucks nor the company’s former chairman, president and CEO Howard Schultz provide financial support to the Israeli government and/or the Israeli Army in any way.”
What the current management of Starbucks did do is sue the union Starbucks Workers United after the union posted “Solidarity with Palestine!” two days after the Hamas massacre. The argument from Starbucks management is that because Starbucks Workers United is using the Starbucks name, logo, and intellectual property, people think that Starbucks the company called for solidarity with Palestine two days after the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.
(If you’re a unionized Starbucks employee, how thrilled are you that your union is taking a public stance that is functionally pro-Hamas? Also notice that Starbucks Workers United is telling customers to not buy Starbucks gift cards this year.)
You can tell that the organizers of the Philly Palestine Coalition have the vaguest recognition that they did something they shouldn’t have, because they’re emphasizing how brief their harassment of Goldie was. Relax, everyone, it was just a little bit of Kristallnacht vibes, not a long stretch of it!
“We made a two-to-four-minute pit stop,” Natalie Abulhawa, a coalition organizer, said Monday. “We are marching to call for an end to a genocide to Palestinians. We’re calling on our reps to do something — to stand up for what’s happening.”
Take a good look at why the Philly Palestine Coalition considers these Philadelphia-area restaurants a legitimate target for boycotts and protests:
According to a Philly Palestine Coalition, [sandwich shop] Huda was “raising money for the Zionist State,” which owner [Yehuda] Sichel considers an unfair characterization of his fundraiser for the southern Israeli town of Sderot, which was severely affected by the October attacks. His business raised $3,000 to pay for children’s therapy there.
I’m sorry, these people are psychopaths. If you contend helping traumatized children is “raising money for the Zionist state,” you’re declaring those traumatized kids to be your enemy.
We live in a world with no shortage of things to be angry about. You can find injustices and misfortunes of every kind. You can find highly rated charities that tackle every imaginable social problem: hunger, homelessness, domestic abuse, paralyzed veterans, poverty, educational opportunity, the unemployed, animal rescue. We all need some sense of purpose, some cause to fight for, and some sense that we’re trying to make the world a slightly better place.
You have probably heard some version of that old quote, “You can judge a man by the quality of his enemies.”
And these folks in the Philly Palestine Coalition are really, really angry that a sandwich shop is raising money for children traumatized by the Hamas attack. That’s the enemy it has chosen to fight.
Finally, in a demonstration that some people will put out disinformation like chaff countermeasures from a fighter jet, by Monday morning, there was a new rumor that the protesters — who mentioned Goldie in their chant — weren’t really there to protest the restaurant, but “the Embassy for Israel is right above the restruant. [sic] idk why that information was withheld in the posts last night.” First, the Israeli embassy is in Washington, D.C.; what’s in Philadelphia is a consulate, and that consulate was three blocks away from the location of the restaurant. That information “was withheld in the posts last night” because it’s made-up horsepucky.
Following up on a point in yesterday’s newsletter, at around 10:15 a.m. Eastern Monday, White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates issued this statement:
It is Antisemitic and completely unjustifiable to target restaurants that serve Israeli food over disagreements with Israeli policy, as Governor Shapiro has underlined. This behavior reveals the kind of cruel and senseless double standard that is a calling card of Antisemitism. President Biden has fought against the evil of Antisemitism his entire life, including by launching the first national strategy to counter this hate in American history. He will always stand up firmly against these kinds of undignified actions.
Now, that’s a perfectly appropriate statement. But that is, apparently, all we will be getting from this White House with a semi-Philadelphia-based president and “proud Philly girl” first lady and the first Jewish Second Gentleman, and it just feels so pro forma and check-the-box.
By Monday afternoon, Axios was reporting, “1 big thing: Biden condemns Philly antisemitism.”
Except . . . there wasn’t any new statement from Biden, just the statement from Bates.
Is it too much to ask that a headline that includes the words “Biden condemns” be above a news story that includes a statement attributed to the president himself? Was it absolutely impossible for the president — with no public events on his Monday schedule — to make some on-camera statement about this?
Or was Monday one of those days where Biden just doesn’t feel up to making on-camera appearances? Is he still tired out from attending the Kennedy Center Honors Sunday night?
The president is fine, everyone. It’s entirely normal for a president to have one public appearance between Thursday night and 1:45 p.m. on a Tuesday afternoon at a reelection-campaign reception.
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