Updated at 10.30 a.m. March 4
The Contra Costa county district attorney’s office has charged a Hayward man with three felonies and a hate crime enhancement for an incident in which he allegedly wrestled an Israeli flag from a woman’s hands and burned it in the street during a January protest in El Cerrito.
Christopher Husary, 36, was charged with second-degree robbery, grand theft and arson of another person’s property, according to a press release provided to J. by the district attorney’s office. The hate crime enhancement on the charges could mean higher penalties for a conviction.
Husary was arrested on Feb. 28 with a $115,000 bond, according to county records.
Part of the incident in El Cerrito was captured on video, which showed chaotic confrontations between about 100 pro-Palestinian protesters and a small group of pro-Israel counterprotesters at a Jan. 6 march calling for a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war.
Many people marched peacefully, according to a video published on social media. A number of families brought children. But some demonstrators shouted antisemitic slurs, kicked cars with people inside them and celebrated Hamas, the Islamist terrorist group responsible for the Oct. 7 massacre in southern Israel.
A man wearing a denim jacket and a backpack, whose face is wrapped in a kaffiyeh, can be seen on video holding an Israeli flag adorned with a gold tassel and affixed to a wooden pole, as he watches it burn.
“That’s my flag that he took out of my hands!” a woman shouts. The man yells in response: “And that’s our land that you stole!”
The flag’s owner spoke to J. in an emotional interview Thursday, explaining that the flag was not “just a piece of nylon” but an heirloom with intense personal meaning.
El Cerrito resident Faith Meltzer, 63, told J. that the flag belonged for decades to a well-known activist in the Jewish community named David Spieler, who died in 2019.
Spieler was a “Berkeley icon,” Meltzer said. An activist and an actor, he got involved in the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s. For years he would “carry this flag whenever he went to events — any political protest event, or any human rights event,” she said.
He marked on the flagpole the dates and descriptions of protests he attended. “There were dates going back decades,” she said. “It was a chronicle of local activism. It felt like a historical artifact.”
When Spieler died, his longtime partner gave the flag to Meltzer, who was overjoyed about the gift.
Asked why Spieler’s partner gave it to her, Meltzer replied, “Probably because she thought I would treasure it and take care of it. And I did. That’s why this is so painful to me.”
A fellow pro-Israel demonstrator was holding the flag that day when someone knocked her down, sending the flag to the pavement, Meltzer said.
“I stepped out to retrieve the flag and the man … wrestled me to get the flag back. People grabbed at me from the rear,” Meltzer said. “I’m an older woman. I’m not going to prevail against young men. He ended up taking the flag to the middle of the street and setting it on fire.”
A Facebook account linked to Husary shows photos taken at a number of pro-Palestinian demonstrations, as well as expressions of support for Palestinian militancy.
Meltzer said she hopes the district attorney’s office will charge this as a hate crime, which would take the form of an “enhancement” that could increase jail time if he is convicted.
“We were targeted because we were Jews,” Meltzer said, “and we were expressing solidarity with Israel.”