Four prominent Oakland rabbis are imploring city officials to speak out after a cafe owner praised the Oct. 7 Hamas attack in a social media post that used antisemitic tropes.
An open letter signed by rabbis at three of Oakland’s largest synagogues and a Chabad center said an Oct. 6 Instagram post from the account of a local cafe represents an “open call to violence against our community.”
The Oct. 22 letter to Mayor Barbara Lee and the Oakland City Council is signed by Rabbis Jacqueline Mates-Muchin of Temple Sinai, Mark Bloom of Temple Beth Abraham, Gershon Albert of Beth Jacob Congregation and Dovid Labkowski of Chabad Oakland, representing Reform, Conservative and Orthodox congregations. The Oakland Jewish Alliance, a grassroots activist organization, also signed.
Their concern stems from a social media post the rabbis attribute to Fathi Abdulrahim Harara, co-owner of Jerusalem Coffee House, a Palestinian-themed cafe, community space and informal center for anti-Zionist activism in North Oakland.
Harara is an outspoken anti-Zionist of Palestinian heritage who has gained notoriety in Oakland and beyond for his unapologetic political radicalism and for tongue-in-cheek support for violence against Israel. Meanwhile, anti-Zionist activists, including Jewish Voice for Peace, have rallied around Harara, claiming he has become a target due to his political speech opposing Israel.
The social media post was published on the Jerusalem Coffee House Instagram account on Oct. 6, soon after the Telegraph Avenue shop was vandalized by an unknown suspect or suspects. The post, which has received 9,700 likes, shows a photo of jagged broken glass in the cafe’s street-facing window.
“zionists can break every window, vandalize our business as many times as they like,” the post said, “but they’ll never have the courage to confront us head on.”
The post continued, using macabre language echoing antisemitic imagery similar to that used by the Nazis.
“Like rats they lurk in the shadows of filth, searching for what they think is a cunning opportunity to disrupt our lives and sustenance,” it said.
As a coda, the post concluded with the words “Tufan Al Aqsa 4L,” or “Al-Aqsa Flood,” the name Hamas used to describe the Oct. 7 massacre of 1,200 people in Israel and the taking of 251 hostages into Gaza.
The post included a selfie of Harara near the broken window.
It was the latest in a series of anti-Zionist messages shared by the cafe. The coffee house first drew media attention and a wave of negative Yelp reviews last year after publishing a menu one year after the Oct. 7, 2023, attack that featured drinks called “Sweet Sinwar” and “Iced-in-tea-fada.” Many understood “Sweet Sinwar” to be an homage to Yahya Sinwar, the architect of the Oct. 7 attack who was killed in Gaza on Oct. 16, 2024. Harara denied the drink was named after the Hamas leader in an interview with the SF Standard.
The cafe uses inverted red triangles, a symbol originally used to identify targets in Hamas military videos that has since become an internet meme, to decorate its menu and a mural outside.
Harara has said in social media posts and elsewhere that his anger is directed at Zionists, not Jews.
But he has made use of antisemitic rhetoric before. During a protest at UC Berkeley in spring 2024, Harara was captured on video referring to pro-Israel counterprotesters as “Talmudic devils” and as “satanic.” The video shows Harara repeatedly shouting “Zionists go back to Europe!” He is later seen wrestling an Israeli flag out of the hands of one of the people in a pro-Israel group.
Jerusalem Coffee House did not respond to a request for comment for this article sent via Instagram.
The rabbis’ letter calls on local officials to speak out against what it described as Harara’s “bigoted, hateful threats.”
“Please stand with the local Jewish community in rejecting this Jew Hatred,” the letter said. “We call on Mayor Lee, and all Oakland City Councilmembers to publicly denounce this post.”
The mayor’s office and members of the city council did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Mates-Muchin, senior rabbi at the Reform congregation Temple Sinai, spoke with J. on Friday about the strain that the past two years have put on the Jewish community in Oakland, a center of anti-Israel activism. Whether someone uses the word “Zionists” or “Jews” doesn’t matter in this instance, she said.
“Everything he is saying is classic antisemitic tropes. You know, lurking in the darkness. Rats. Tell me how that’s different, just because you’re saying ‘Zionists?’” she said. “Tell me how that is different from any of the ways Jews have been classified, the way we’ve been talked about, so that violence is justified against us?”
She said a statement from government officials would serve an important purpose.
“It just has to be recognized. We can’t just keep going on like this is fine, like this is nothing,” she said.
The controversy surrounding Jerusalem Coffee House extends beyond strongly worded letters. The cafe is a defendant in three separate lawsuits alleging it has discriminated against Jewish customers, including a federal suit filed by the U.S. Department of Justice. Last month, a judge ruled the allegations in the federal suit, if true, would constitute illegal discrimination.
Harara has on many occasions stated that he is not antisemitic. Last year, the cafe organized a “tikkun olam gathering” with Jewish Voice for Peace. In a press conference and in public statements, Harara has argued that he is being targeted for legitimate political speech and opposition to Israel. During a press conference for local media at the cafe earlier this year, two people sat behind him wearing Jewish prayer shawls.
“The cafe has faced unprecedented harassment and unprecedented oppression,” Harara said during the press conference. The cafe has raised close to $40,000, according to a GoFundMe page set up to help the cafe fight what it describes as a “crusade against Palestinian identity and dissent against the genocide in Palestine.” Jewish Voice for Peace, which did not respond to J.’s request for comment, and a group called the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network spearheaded a petition to urge the Justice Department to drop its lawsuit against the cafe, citing “false accusations of antisemitism.”