Leftists Cannibalize Their Own for the Crime of Daring To Support Israel
Manny’s should be the kind of establishment that the left simply loves. It’s a “community space” in San Francisco which, according to The Forward, “is part cafe, part bookstore, part political event hall.” It’s owned by Manny Yekutiel, a former LGBT Obama intern who’s described as a “rising star in the world of liberal political organizing.”
But here’s a problem: Yekutiel isn’t just Jewish, he’s an unapologetic supporter of Israel. In 2018, when abolishment of the Jewish state has become a major tenet of the far left, that’s simply unacceptable to one leftist group — and they’re protesting the establishment until it closes down.
Manny’s Sees Protests Because Owner Is ‘Zionist’ – Forwardhttps://t.co/8Cc7XrpTJF
— EnrichHER (@iEnrichHER) December 28, 2018
The protests seem to be led by a group called the Lucy Parsons Project, which wants “Zionists out of Palestine and Zionists out of the Mission!”
Join our boycott and picket line every Wednesday at 6:30pm, Zionists out of Palestine and Zionists out of the Mission!!! pic.twitter.com/8XUFVlYbkF
— LucyParsonsProject (@LucyParsonsProj) December 27, 2018
— LucyParsonsProject (@LucyParsonsProj) December 27, 2018
The group, named after a radical anarcho-socialist whose husband was convicted and executed for his part in the bombing at the infamous Haymarket Riot in 1887, has decided that Zionists have no place gentrifying the mission. This is actually a little less anti-Semitic than it sounds, but not a whole lot.
As The Forward notes, “the Mission District, with its burrito shops and local Latino landmarks abutting pricey townhouses, is Ground Zero for various San Francisco-specific tensions, like gentrification fueled by the region’s tech boom.”
All of this obviously raises gentrification concerns, but we don’t see the Lucy Parsons Project protesting outside of “pricey townhouses” to extirpate gentrifiers from involvement in “San Francisco-specific tensions.”
Instead, they seem to be concerned with Yekutiel’s opinions on Israel.
“The Lucy Parsons Project claims that Yekutiel is furthering gentrification in their neighborhood and criticized him for posting things like ‘Happy 70th Birthday Israel!” and “I am so proud of Israel and its people’ on his personal Facebook page. They also wrote that he is ‘pinkwashing and blackfacing his gentrification and Zionism’ by bringing in minority and LGBT guest speakers. (Yekutiel is also gay.)”
That “blackfacing,” by the way, involved inviting Black Lives Matter members to speak. This isn’t just, say, Van Jones we’re talking about here. Yekutiel’s devotion to causes in line with the goals of the Lucy Parsons Project seems to be impeccable.
“Five hundred people came on opening night to experience the mid-term elections at Manny’s,” The Forward reported. “Events now take place on most nights. The next scheduled event, on Jan. 3 — touching on black trans women’s experiences in the criminal justice system and the creation of a transgender cultural district in Compton — has more than 600 people expressing interest in attending on Facebook. ‘The History of Prisons in California,’ later that month, has 6,000 interested.”
The Lucy Parsons Project, meanwhile, seems somewhat smaller; as of this writing, they have a grand total of 337 followers on Twitter. However, they also have the support of Bay Area rapper Equipto, who has 14,500 followers and the all-coveted Twitter imprimatur of the blue checkmark.
Tonite & every Wednesday at 6:30pm. 3092 16th st & Valencia.
The people are boycotting Manny’s cafe. A proud zionist & gentrifier has come into the Mission district. Please read the literature to fully understand why folks have organized. #BoycottMannys #SaveFrisco #FreePalestine pic.twitter.com/rXjBHy5WsJ— Equipto (@EQUIPTO) December 13, 2018
Equipto, not surprisingly, is one of those, “I’m not anti-Semitic, but…” types — at least if his Twitter account is any evidence.
“Simply a belief”..
This is how they justify murder & settler colonialism y’all. https://t.co/UqOsdDaJLk— Equipto (@EQUIPTO) December 23, 2018
We don’t hate Jews, We just don’t want Zionist in our community. There’s a difference. You know that right? https://t.co/7FOUzZDZ0d
— Equipto (@EQUIPTO) December 21, 2018
Right, because hating Jews who believe they have a right to self-determination in their historical homeland isn’t anti-Semitism. You know that, right?
The Forward, a left-leaning Jewish publication, reached out to the Lucy Parsons Project for comment. Their response: a block. Sadly, they shouldn’t have been surprised:
We Proudly Block all Zionists 🚫🙅🏿♀️🙅🏿♀️🙅🏿♀️💋
— LucyParsonsProject (@LucyParsonsProj) December 21, 2018
But they’re not anti-Semitic. Right.
“We are seeing greater and greater ant-Semitism not just in this country but globally,” Yekutiel told the publication. “I do think it’s important for me to be visibly Jewish.”
And that’s kind of the takeaway here. Yes, I understand that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict tends to elicit stronger emotions in the Bay Area due to the high concentration of leftist activist there, but that activism has also come with concomitant anti-Semitism.
It may hide behind anti-Zionism or BDS, but make no mistake: When you’re chasing a business out of a neighborhood because the owner — one of the left’s own — supports the state of Israel, that’s little more than crypto-anti-Semitism.
If the left isn’t willing to stand up to bigotry in its own ranks, I don’t want to hear anything about the chimerical hatred they always seem able to find on the right in places it doesn’t even exist.
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