California Coffee House Intifada “Hamasnik” coffee shop owner in Oakland refuses to serve Jews. by Lloyd Billingsley
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm-plus/california-coffee-house-intifada/
“The Trump Justice Department,” the California Globe reports, “this week sued the Palestinian owner of an Oakland coffee shop for denying service to visibly Jewish customers in a panoply of crass anti-Semitism that shows Hamasniks use ‘Zionist’ as a code word for Jews.” The Jerusalem Coffee House owned by Fathi Abdulrahim Harara is now the target of a lawsuit by the U.S. Department of Justice.
“It is illegal, intolerable, and reprehensible for any American business open to the public to refuse to serve Jewish customers,” said Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division in a statement. “Through our vigorous enforcement of Title II of the Civil Rights Act and other laws prohibiting race and religious discrimination, the Justice Department is committed to combatting anti-Semitism and discrimination and protecting the civil rights of all Americans.”
On two occasions, the lawsuit alleges “Harara ordered Jewish customers — identified because they were wearing baseball caps with Stars of David on them — to leave the coffee house. During one incident, an employee told a Jewish customer who was trying to make a purchase, ‘You’re the guy with the hat. You’re the Jew. You’re the Zionist. We don’t want you in our coffee shop. Get out.’”
During another incident, “Harara accused another Jewish customer who was with his five-year-old son of wearing a ‘Jewish star,’ being a ‘Zionist,’ and supporting ‘genocide.’ Harara repeatedly demanded that the customer and his son leave and falsely accused them of ‘trespassing’ to the Oakland police. Neither customer stated anything about their political views to Harara or any other employees while at the coffee house.”
On the one-year anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel, “the Jerusalem Coffee House announced two new drinks: ‘Iced In Tea Fada,’ an apparent reference to “intifada,” and ‘Sweet Sinwar,’ an apparent reference to Yahya Sinwar, the former leader of Hamas who orchestrated the attacks on Israel.” The lawsuit also alleges that “the coffee house’s exterior side wall displays inverted red triangles, a symbol of violence against Jews that has been spray painted on Jewish homes and synagogues in anti-Semitic attacks.” This was predictable from the start.
When it opened two years ago at 5443 Telegraph Ave, Harara described the coffee house as a “vibrant cultural hub for Palestinian and Islamic thought,” but there’s more to it. In 15th century Yemen, Harara explains, rulers sought to shutter the coffee houses “not for brewing coffee but fomenting revolution.” Harara’s establishment aims “to bring the spirit and purpose of the traditional coffee house to Oakland, land of the Ohlone, birthplace of the Black Panthers and home to multigenerational communities that continue to seek autonomy and self-determination, directly linked in heart and faith to liberation struggles around the world.” And so on.
The DOJ’s Harmeet Dhillon is suing Harara’s coffee shop based on the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the complaint invites a look at those times. When restaurants refused to serve black Americans, civil rights leaders mounted sit-ins, demonstrations and boycotts. So far nothing like that from California Democrats about the refusal to serve Jews in Oakland.
On Thursday, the website of Gov. Gavin Newsom showcased six statements opposing President Trump’s deployment of the National Guard in Los Angeles, a statement on the death of Beach Boy Brian Wilson, and nothing on the lawsuit against the “vibrant cultural hub for Palestinian and Islamic thought.” Consider also the website of state attorney general Rob Bonta.
Multiple press releases challenge actions by President Trump, including “unlawful, undemocratic federalization of state National Guard” and a freeze on research funding for Harvard. The AG, a Yale law alum, targets Trump’s “unlawful attempt to ban transgender service members” and supports Michigan’s “conversion therapy ban for minors.” Nothing on the DOJ action against the Jerusalem Coffee House for refusing to serve Jews.
During the 1960s, Jews faced attacks from the Ku Klux Klan, which once claimed to have four million members, more than all the Jews in America. The Klan targeted Jews with anti-Semitic terrorism, but was not alone in that cause. As David Horowitz explained in Radical Son, the Black Panthers, whom he viewed as the rising vanguard of the left, had an anti-Semitic side. On the other hand, the Panthers “were not alone in their attacks on Jews.”
In 1966 Stokely Carmichael and the leaders of SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) “had expelled whites from the civil rights organization, accusing them of being a fifth column inside the movement. Since Jews were a near majority of the whites in these organizations and had played a strategic role in organizing and funding the struggle, it was clear to everyone that they the primary target of the assault.”
More than 50 years later, long after passage of the Civil Rights Act, Jews have become a primary target of the left. Whatever his pretensions, Fathi Abdulrahim Harara is essentially an Islamic Ku Klucker. State Democrats, whatever their self-image, are the counterparts of those who looked the other way at the Klan, resisted integration, and did nothing to improve the civil rights of minorities in general and Jews in particular.
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