NOVANEWS
Restaurant in capital systematically suffers attacks by teens vowing revenge for business’s employment of Arabs; graffiti found Sunday by employees
ynet
The caption “Death to Arabs” was spray painted on the door of a Jerusalem restaurant Sunday, apparently due to the fact that the restaurant hires Arab employees.
Maor Ventura, a manger at the restaurant, said that on Saturday night, “at 1 am I closed the place. As the cameras show, 10 minutes later someone came in and sprayed the door. In the morning we realized it said ‘Death to Arabs.’ Police came by… and we went to file a complaint.’”
A cleaning crew from the municipality had cleaned the graffiti before police had arrived.
On Friday, a group of assailants made it to the area and threw stones at customers. “Within a minute, some 60 clients asked for their bill wanting to leave,” Ventura said, “and it was all based on racism, because we hire Arabs.”
He added that “approximately two months ago, on a Friday evening, a group of about eight to 10 religious guys came to the area, as our cook, mostly Arabs, were sitting outside. One of the teens realized the cook was an Arab and started to curse at him. The cook asked them to leave and then they started to beat him as they were crying out ‘Death to Arabs.’
“When we tried to break the fight, but they attacked us too, and vowed to take revenge on us for hiring Arabs,” Ventura noted, adding that the teens said that as long they continued to hire Arabs they will come back for revenge.
Muhamad, who works as a cook at the restaurant, told Ynet: “There is no explanation for this except racism, and that’s unfortunate. I’ve been working with Jews for years, and this is not the first time I’ve come across racism. I don’t think police are helping.”
The restaurant’s employees said that police were called in at every incident but that each time officers arrived after the assailants had left the scene. Police have yet to comment.
The Jerusalem municipality reported that the issue is under investigation and will be looked into in coordination with the police.
