When hate masquerades as protest, we all lose
June 27, 2025
Note: This article was originally published in the SF Chronicle and is reposted here with permission of the author. I think it expresses ideas that are very relevant for Davis, yet have been missing (as far as I know). -RM
The attack on my cafe is an inexcusable act of violence. But even in the middle of this ugliness, there are many points of light
By Manny Yekutiel
The windows at Manny’s in San Francisco are boarded up on Thursday. In an act of violence, people vandalized the Mission District cafe on Monday night during protests against ICE actions.
Earlier this week, protesters broke into Manny’s, my cafe and civic space in San Francisco’s Mission District, smashed the windows and spray-painted messages like “Intifada,” “Death 2 Israel is a Promise” and “Die Zionist” on my walls.
It was violent. It was antisemitic. And it was heartbreaking.
This kind of hatred has no place in San Francisco, the city that’s given me everything. And it has no place within the progressive movement — a movement I am a part of.
I created Manny’s as a space for dialogue, for civic engagement and for tough conversations. I’ve seen what’s possible when people sit down with those they don’t agree with. I still believe in that work. But what happened on Monday night wasn’t dialogue. It was destruction intended to cause fear, and it crossed a line.
Sadly, this isn’t the first time I’ve been targeted. Since before I even opened Manny’s, my business and beliefs have been attacked and misrepresented. There have been protests, boycotts and death threats. I’ve withstood all of it because I believe in creating space for hard conversations. But this was something else.
In recent months, Jewish-owned businesses and spaces in San Francisco and throughout the country have faced targeted attacks. Windows have been smashed, flyers posted and shots have been fired into the backs of unsuspecting Jews.
A disturbing pattern is emerging — one that even here in San Francisco is endangering the core values this city is meant to uphold: tolerance, inclusion, civic engagement and common humanity.
The act of hate at Manny’s is part of a larger danger facing the progressive movement and the country. We are living in a moment where real and painful disagreements are being used as an excuse to turn people against one another. Instead of standing together to fight injustice, some are choosing to let hate and bigotry divide us. We cannot allow that. If we lose the ability to sit across from people we disagree with and have hard conversations, we lose the very foundation of this movement.
We cannot let antisemitism or any form of hate disguise itself as activism. Because when we do, we don’t just hurt one group — we fracture the coalitions we need to take on the real fights ahead: for immigrants, for LGBTQ+ rights, for racial justice, for reproductive freedom and for our democracy itself. We are stronger when we stay in relationship with one another, even when it’s hard. We are stronger when we refuse to let hate define us.
We can — and must — protest injustice. That includes the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and the suffering of Palestinians at the hands of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s extreme right-wing government. It includes condemning Hamas, a terrorist organization that has caused immense suffering — suffering I’ve seen with my own eyes and that cannot be normalized or justified. I, too, pray for the immediate return of Israeli hostages, for a ceasefire and an end to the killing of innocent people caught in the crossfire in the region.
But we have to draw a firm line. Protest must never become persecution. Activism must never become hate.
Because while we are being pulled apart like this, the far right is gaining power. They are rolling back immigrant protections. Attacking trans kids. Banning books. Restricting reproductive care. Criminalizing protest itself. Even handcuffing a U.S. senator from California. They want us distracted and divided. They want us too busy fighting each other to fight them. We cannot give them that win.
But even in the middle of this ugliness, there were many points of light. Since the news broke that Manny’s was vandalized, I received hundreds of messages of love and support from all corners of the city. Mayor Daniel Lurie, without even asking, showed up to my space to hold my hand, to console and to cry with me. Before I could even start cleaning up the damage, strangers from the neighborhood stopped what they were doing to help. A kind man named Jesus grabbed my paint bucket and started covering the first layer of graffiti without a word. The outpouring has been overwhelming.
And then, the next day, something beautiful happened.
A group of 40 or so members of the Jewish community in Noe Valley organized a simple gathering. They came to buy coffee and tea, to support the cafe financially and to create a space for support. We sat together for nearly two hours, sharing stories, crying and discussing how the current situation had affected us. It was a raw, vulnerable, sad and powerful experience.
In the middle of that beautiful gathering, Maria Christina walked in wearing her keffiyeh. She had led protests outside Manny’s for nearly a year when I first opened. But over time, we got to know each other. We realized we had much more in common than we first thought. We stopped being opponents and started being collaborators.
She came in that afternoon simply to tell me how upset she was by what had happened and to give me a hug. She said clearly: The people who did this do not represent her, do not represent the fight for justice.
It was one of the most moving moments I’ve experienced since opening my small business.
That moment also represents what’s possible when we stay in relationship and conversation with each other and refuse to let hate win.
San Francisco needs to be the city that demonstrates how we can come together in difficult moments, how we can give people — especially our neighbors — the benefit of the doubt, how we can ask questions first and judge second, how we can be willing and able, and even excited, to sit down with people we don’t know and understand them.
I read about this awhile ago in The Chronicle.
Honestly, it doesn't surprise me that such attacks primarily come primarily from the fringes of those who claim to support "inclusion". Those people have picked a side, and it's the side that supports "from the river to the sea".
These are not white supremacists engaging in these attacks.
But it is odd that those two groups have a "common enemy" (for reasons I've never understood), especially since they're the exact opposite regarding every other issue.
Posted by: Ron O | June 27, 2025 at 07:04 PM
Yesterday (Monday), Manny’s Café, a Jewish-owned eatery in San Francisco’s Mission District, was vandalized with antisemitic graffiti during an anti-ICE protest. According to posts on X, including one from the antisemitism watchdog StopAntisemitism, the vandals spray-painted threats such as “Death 2 Israel is a promise” on the café’s exterior.
The tags include "Die Zio," "F--k Manny's," and "The Only Good Settler Is A Dead Settler" - https://www.jfeed.com/antisemitism/jewish-eatery-vandalized-san-francisco
None of these tags are necessarily Antisemitic.
Hate speech?
"Zio[nist]": refers to a philosophy and political practice etc. that has adherents amongst atheist and predominantly two religions, though most of them not Jewish (Christian Zionists).
"Death 2[sic] Israel..." Refers to a country and it is clearly and legally hate speech. There's no automatic tie-in if the laws of that country declare that it is a Jewish state.
"Settlers..." are illegal under international law, and It's not clear to me if this is legal hate.
Graffiti and some serious property damage are clearly illegal.
Hate, in and of itself, is not illegal. There's two to three things here which are illegal and and the people that did these things should be brought to Justice. How many people actually did the tags and the damage to the property? 20? 10? 5? Out of how many people protesting? Do we know who they are?
Is it hate simply because Manny is Jewish? I'm not going to argue against how a reasonable court rules on this. I'm more concerned about the whole perverted universe of conflation of Jews with a nation-state. The strongest supporters of the country of Israel like to conflate Jews with their country, but then when people conflate Jews with this country, it's automatically hate?
Is this a good example of having one's cake and eating it too, or am I confused?
It's great that the cafe owner supported a ceasefire and made friends with that protester.
I find the views that he expressed earlier like 7 years ago quite disgusting. For me, recent actions are much more important than ones that happened even a couple of years ago.
The whole thing was bad and shouldn't have happened, the small number of perpetrators was dwarfed by all the people who came quickly afterwards to show support.
Let's be clear, for all practical purposes, the United States is co-perpetrating the massacre of Gazans... There's going to be a lot of peaceful protests in response, which is quite admirable, and there's going to be a lot of messy things.
Posted by: Tuvia, etc. | June 27, 2025 at 08:48 PM
Sadly, neither of you heard what Manny had to say.
Posted by: Roberta L. Millstein | June 27, 2025 at 10:05 PM
I was mainly focusing on the media reaction.
Posted by: Tuvia, etc. | June 27, 2025 at 11:57 PM
I wish the government would forget about trying to tack on extra crimes for "hate" and just punish objective crimes. I want the punishment for breaking a store window and spray painting "Death 2 Israel" the same as breaking a store window and spray painting "I love 2 eat pizza". I don't want to make this change since ~90% of the people charged with "hate" crimes are white it is because it is painful for me to hear my left of center friends explain over and over again how "I hate Obama" is hate speech but "I hate Trump" is NOT hate speech and how spray painting "End illegal immigration" is a hate crime but spray painting "I hate Jews" is NOT a hate crime...
Posted by: South of Davis | June 28, 2025 at 08:19 AM
I heard what Manny had to say. But the fact that one of the protestors reached out to him doesn't change anything. She didn't vandalize the business in the first place, though the protests likely drew negative attention toward that business.
Manny is naive, if he thinks that all is well after that.
Left unsaid is exactly what type of activities Manny was hosting which brought on such wrath. But whatever they were, it sounds like it was within his right to do so.
In general, I'd suggest that businesses would be wise to avoid any display of political view/affiliation, lest you end up like "Mr. Pickles" did in Davis (or Manny did in San Francisco).
There are a group of people (anti-Fa types) who are intent on destruction and harm - regardless of the particular issue. We've seen that locally in regard to the attacks on Beth Bourne. You can see it whenever freeways are shut down (holding people hostage), near-riots occur when a conservative speaker is invited to a campus, etc. (God forbid anyone "disobeys" protestors who shut down freeways.)
In other words, "say his name" (or there will be consequences).
And those people have taken a stand against Jewish and white people (in general). Even worse if you're male, and espouse anything other than what they allow you to say. (Even though most of them are white, themselves.) Their political views are entirely-predictable, and they're solidly on the extreme "left". To deny that is to deny reality itself. They're essentially the same group who took over a police station (and entire block) in Seattle, continuously cause problems in Portland, San Francisco, Berkeley, etc.
I'm not sure how these people even survive in expensive areas like San Francisco, as they don't strike me as the type that can hold a job. They're definitely not "tech bros".
Then again, you never know. I saw a video in which a UCD professor (whom I casually know and like) screaming at Beth, telling her to kill herself (something like that). In other words, it wasn't Anoosh that time.
Posted by: Ron O | June 28, 2025 at 09:34 AM
Nope, you didn't get his message at all.
Posted by: Roberta L. Millstein | June 28, 2025 at 10:10 AM
I guess I'm more cynical than Manny is. Partly because I've seen this type of thing over and over, and over-again.
Then again, I probably wouldn't have been hosting (whatever he was hosting) in the first place, if I could see that it was angering some in the community.
It's best to stay out of such things if you're running a business. (At least, don't involve the business itself.)
Posted by: Ron O | June 28, 2025 at 10:20 AM
"It's best to stay out of such things if you're running a business. (At least, don't involve the business itself.)"
Just ask Bud Light...
Posted by: Keith | June 29, 2025 at 08:02 AM
Manny [the person] basically says this in his article, but just in case it wasn't clear, this is the description of Manny's [the business] from the website:
"Manny’s is a community focused meeting and learning place in the heart of San Francisco
civic events and gathering space
restaurant / political bookshop"
So staying out of difficult topics isn't really an option -- arguably, it would be against the main reason for the business in the first place.
https://welcometomannys.com/
Posted by: Roberta L. Millstein | June 29, 2025 at 01:10 PM
Roberto says: "So staying out of difficult topics isn't really an option -- arguably, it would be against the main reason for the business in the first place."
I thought it was "Manny's Cafe", per the article. But your link does seem to indicate something else.
In any case, it appears that some don't like the (perceived bias?) that Manny (and/or his cafe) put forth. If it was "neutral", it's less-likely that it would be attacked.
Posted by: Ron O | June 29, 2025 at 01:26 PM