A 28-year-old Jewish woman and her non-Jewish friend were attacked in San Francisco’s Marina District early Saturday by people shouting “free Palestine” and “f*** the Jews,” the woman told J.
The San Francisco Police Department is investigating the incident as a hate crime, a public information officer wrote in an email to J. on Monday.
Police said two suspects were located in the area shortly after Saturday’s incident. Juan Diazrivas, 36, was arrested and booked into jail for alleged assault “likely to produce great bodily injury,” police said. A second male was cited for alleged battery before he was released, police said.
Alana Gans, a student at UC Law San Francisco, told J. she was advised not to speak in detail about the incident after giving a brief interview to the San Francisco Chronicle. However, she confirmed with J. the information in the Chronicle article and told J. that the attack was the “scariest moment of my life.”
The incident occurred after 2 a.m. Saturday on Fillmore Street in the Marina District, police said in a statement. Gans and her 27-year-old friend were sitting on a curb waiting for an Uber after a night out, she told the Chronicle, when a man starting screaming “f*** the Jews” and “free Palestine.”
Gans told the man that she is Jewish and asked him to stop, she told the Chronicle. He then walked over and said “f*** you,” she said. She and her friend stood up and tried to walk away. Other people who were nearby started to record video on their phones and shouted “f*** Jews,” Gans told the paper.
Someone then sucker-punched her friend, who fell to the ground, Gans said. She was also knocked down. People then kicked her friend on the ground, she said. An employee from nearby Balboa Cafe tried to intervene, but people pushed him down and started kicking him, Gans told the Chronicle. Both Gans and her friend were taken to the hospital for treatment of non-life-threatening injuries.
Anti-Jewish hate crimes spiked in San Francisco following the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attack on Israel and the start of the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, according to SFPD figures.
In October 2023, an Israeli man was punched at San Francisco International Airport by a Lyft driver who said “I don’t want Israelis in my car,” the victim summarized in a phone call with J. at the time. The driver was charged with a federal hate crime but was later acquitted.
Recent antisemitic, politically motivated violence in Washington, D.C., and Boulder, Colorado — as well as the start of a war between Israel and Iran — have complicated the security picture for Jews across the country, according to security experts.
“We remain in a period of heightened national vigilance,” the S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation and Endowment Fund wrote in an email to community organizations and donors on Friday, prior to the Marina incident. The Federation encouraged “all Jewish organizations to maintain rigorous security protocols and stay in close coordination with law enforcement.”