Updated June 11: This article has been updated to add details about the June 10 gathering of supporters.
The windows of Manny’s Cafe were smashed and vandalized with antisemitic graffiti during an evening protest that erupted in San Francisco’s Mission District on Monday against a wave of migrant detentions by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
“Death to Israel is a promise,” “Fuck Zionism,” “Fuck Manny” and “The only good settler is a dead 1” were discovered scrawled on the windows and exterior walls of the cafe.
Since 2018 when Jewish owner Manny Yekutiel opened his business, which serves as both a cafe and a hub for civic engagement, it has been targeted in multiple antisemitic vandalism sprees. This one, however, seemed to include a more direct threat with “die Zio” (which can be reference to “Zionist” or “Jew”).
The more violent tone of the vandalism conjured memories of the Kristallnacht for Yekutiel. In November 1938, Nazis smashed German synagogues and Jewish businesses on what is known as the Night of Broken Glass.
“It’s just a weird awakening to come into your business and it’s, like, glass everywhere,” he told J. “And the combination of the breaking of the windows, and all the violent language outside — it does feel more violent.”
Some of the vandalism happened at night while a private event was being held inside. Yekutiel was alerted and showed up around 7:30 p.m. to cover up graffiti and one broken window. The next morning, more damage was discovered.
Earlier on Monday, Yekutiel had participated in an ICE protest and rally at City Hall. The connection between that action and the targeting of a Jewish-owned business seems incongruous to him.
“We have real enemies attacking the bedrock of our country’s democracy, and it feels very counterproductive in the midst of that to attack each other,” he told J. “This is not the time for people to be writing antisemitic hatred on progressive, social justice-loving, democratic Jewish cafe owners.”
The last time that J. reported on antisemitic targeting of Manny’s was Oct. 6, 2024, a day before the year anniversary of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel. Vandals were seen on camera outside the cafe in broad daylight spray-painting “Zionists out of Frisco,” “Death to the enemy” and “Manny is a Zio murderer.” In 2019, protesters picketed the cafe on a weekly basis, calling Yekutiel a “Zionist gentrifier,” and in 2021, someone scrawled “Zionist pigz” and “racist pigz” on the cafe’s exterior.
“We get vandalized pretty often. It happens relatively frequently,” Yekutiel said. “This is another level.”
He said the business would repair the damage and move forward, as it has in the past.
“They’ve broken my windows before, they’ve graffitied my walls before,” he told J. “We’ve replaced them, and we’ve painted over the graffiti, and we’ve kept moving.”
As word of the vandalism reached the Jewish community, local leaders and neighborhood groups immediately began to mobilize their support.
A GoFundMe campaign was started with a goal of $100,000 to help the cafe cover urgent repairs and strengthen security measures. It exceeded its goal within the same day. As of early Wednesday, it had raised $115,000 and was still going.
Mayor Daniel Lurie came by to show his support on Tuesday before the cafe opened, Yekutiel told J.
“I feel hated and I feel loved,” he said. “I feel like people want to kill me and people want to support me. It’s a very strange combination.”
Later that afternoon, Jewish supporters gathered in the cafe’s event space to provide moral support for Yekutiel, as well as financial support for his business by buying drinks. The 20 or so people who stopped by came from San Francisco and from across the bay; a few were visiting from out of state.
The mood was intimate, with some sitting in silence and others quietly weeping as they talked about their fear and isolation. Yekutiel was with them, at times crying as he shared his feelings.
“My first instinct is, how can we wrap our arms around him?” said Mission District resident Robin Stone, who has been coming to Manny’s since it opened. “I’ll be damned if he gets bullied out of being the amazing civic community leader that he is in San Francisco.”
Stone, who has lived in the Mission for about five years, told J. that although she’s been aware of antisemitic and anti-Israel sentiment in the neighborhood, she has always appreciated the area’s vibrant and lively atmosphere.
After Oct. 7, 2023, however, paranoia began to set in.
When Stone and her husband heard the news of the attack, she told J. they were “afraid of what we were coming back to in San Francisco, because we know where we lived in particular, it was going to be scary.”
When Stone found out about the latest incident at Manny’s from a local group chat, she remembered thinking “not again.”
“At a certain point, it’s just unacceptable,” Stone told J. “It’s not just a pattern, it’s intentional.”