"It's outside agitators, white supremacists, racist, antisemitism. I've been targeted by that ... it kind of became unbearable. It became a burden and unsafe ... to the point where somebody called and said, 'We're going to come and shoot you all.'"
"After Oct. 7, we wanted to embrace our Jewishness, our proud heritage, and become fully kosher and vegan. The intention was that we are Jewish and we are here to celebrate our Jewishness. And that kind of amplified [the harassment] even more,"
"We wanted to bring the diverse flavors of the Africa diaspora and have a dialogue and understanding - but apparently people took it in a different reaction. In a wrong understanding. That's what happened, to the point where we said for the sake of safety and our mental health, I said, I cannot deal with this on a daily basis ... because of the affiliation of being Israeli Jewish, all of the sudden, you are portrayed in a different way."
Beejhy Barhany closed Tsion Cafe in Harlem on Feb. 12 after years of escalating antisemitic harassment, threats, and vandalism. The restaurant served Ethiopian-Israeli cuisine and converted to a fully kosher, vegan establishment after the Hamas-led attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, a change that intensified harassment. Harassment included repeated phone threats, vandalism with swastikas, and explicit death threats stating 'We're going to come and shoot you all.' Perpetrators were described as outside agitators, white supremacists, and racists. Barhany was born in an Ethiopian Jewish community, moved to Israel in 1983, later served in the IDF, emigrated to New York in the early 2000s, and opened Tsion Cafe in 2014.
Read at Algemeiner.com
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