A protester captured on video holding a smoldering Israeli flag during an anti-Israel demonstration in El Cerrito in January was convicted Oct. 9 of second-degree robbery with a hate crime enhancement, according to the Contra Costa County District Attorney.
The flag was an heirloom that once belonged to a well-known Berkeley Jewish activist.
The culprit, 36-year-old Christopher Husary of Hayward, pleaded guilty to the crime, according to an Oct. 15 release from the district attorney. Initial charges also included arson and grand theft, but those charges were dropped per the plea agreement.
Husary was sentenced to 364 days in county jail and two years of probation. His sentence is scheduled to begin on Jan. 2, 2025, but because he will remain in custody he could receive credit for time already served.
Aron DeFerrari, the deputy district attorney who prosecuted the case, said in an email to J. that El Cerrito police were able to identify Husary through video posted to social media and help from witnesses who were present at the Jan. 6 protest where the flag was taken and lit on fire. About 100 pro-Palestinian protesters who showed up to call for a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war were met by a small group of pro-Israel counterprotesters before the event devolved into violence.
“During the protest and counter-protest, Husary used force and intimidation to unlawfully take a national flag of Israel from a woman (Jane Doe) and proceeded to burn it,” the press release said.
Police withheld the identity of the victim, who was pushed to the ground, according to witnesses and video footage from the scene.
In the months following his Feb. 28 arrest and subsequent release on $250,000 bail, Husary continued to gain notoriety as a provocative anti-Israel activist on both coasts, in public protests and on college campuses.
In May, a video on Husary’s Instagram showed him confronting members of the Jewish fraternity Alpha Epsilon Pi about an Israeli flag hanging outside the Berkeley fraternity house. The video has since been deleted from Husary’s account, but can be seen in a May 15 X post by Visegrád 24, a news aggregator, that shows the encounter on the front deck of the house.
“That’s a genocidal Nazi flag,” the man recording the video shouts. Fraternity members ask the man what he is doing, tell him he is on private property and threaten to call the police.
The perpetrator calls one of them a “f*cking genocidal maniac” and “baby killer” before leaving the property, failing in his attempt to remove the flag.
In June, the New York Post featured a cover photo of a man wearing a Hezbollah T-shirt on a New York City subway car, where masked protesters taunted “Zionists,” with one man telling them to exit the train. The Post later linked the photo to Husary, though J. has not independently verified that linkage.
The same day, June 10, Husary allegedly harassed and threatened a Jewish subway passenger who spotted him spraying graffiti. A spokesperson for the NYPD deputy commissioner of public information told J. the incident was under investigation as a hate crime.
On Oct. 9, as Husary was exiting the courthouse in Martinez following his sentencing hearing, two NYPD officers put him in handcuffs for alleged crimes in New York City and led him away from the scene, according to Deputy District Attorney DeFerrari.
“After Husary left the courthouse in Martinez,” the DA’s Oct. 15 release read, “New York City police officers were waiting to arrest him for allegedly harassing a Jewish subway passenger on June 10 while out on bail for the El Cerrito case.”
He was returned to California and is in custody at the West County Detention Facility in Richmond, according to Contra Costa County Sheriff records.