Thousands of pro-Palestine protesters gathered at 16th and Valencia streets on Sunday to march through the neighborhood, commemorating one year since the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks, and Israel’s bombardment and the invasion of Gaza that followed.
The protest, titled “One year of genocide, one year of resistance,” began at 1 p.m. and snaked through the Mission with demonstrators chanting “Free, free Palestine!” and “Long live the intifada” before ending up at Dolores Park.
At Dolores Park, several speakers took the mic and, in a particularly poignant moment, a young woman gave an account from her cousin, who survived an Israeli airstrike.
“Without any warning or expectation, I woke up to find myself under the rubble,” said Rawan Eldadah, reading testimony from her cousin Abd AlRahman Rafat Lubbad. Eldadah’s cousin, who lives in Sheikh Radwan in northern Gaza, lost two sisters in the bombing.
“I’m not able to breathe, I’m not able to move. I can barely see around me,” Eldadah read. Her cousin’s two sisters, six and eight years old, had their heads and bodies smashed in, she said.
“I wasn’t able to do anything. I could not save my two sisters,” Eldadah read through tears, before admonishing the crowd: “Don’t forget about us. Please don’t forget about us.”
The protest was heavy on themes of resistance, and honoring Palestinians and Lebanese killed in the last year. “We are here today to honor one year of genocide, to honor our martyrs, and to honor one year of resistance,” said Violet, a member of the Palestinian Youth Movement, speaking from the back of a rented pickup truck near the beginning of the protest.
“We are here because we know that, though their bodies fall, their ideas do not, and for every martyr that falls, another will rise and our struggle will continue.”
There were no counter-protesters.
At 16th and Valencia streets, at least one protester vandalized the cafe Manny’s on the corner. Manny Yekutiel, the owner of his namesake spot, is Jewish and has been a frequent target of pro-Palestine protests and vandalism since 2018, when he opened on the corner. Those protesting Yekutiel say it stems from his celebration of Israel’s independence day in 1948, which Palestinians consider the “Nakba,” or “catastrophe.”
Yekutiel and others say that singling out a Jewish American-owned business is textbook antisemitism. On Sunday, the graffiti on Manny’s cafe read, “Zionists out of Frisco,” and “Dems fund murder,” among other tags. Several bus stops and other businesses were also graffitied, and posters were plastered across the neighborhood reading, “Israel is the terrorist state.”
The march was called by a coalition of groups, including the Palestinian Youth Movement, the U.S. Palestinian Community Network, the Party of Socialism and Liberation Bay Area, Arab Resource and Organizing Center, Jewish Voice for Peace Bay Area, and the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network.
Those marching chanted, “Resistance is justified,” and “Not another nickel, not another dime, to Israel for their crimes,” calling for an end to the American arms supply to Israel. Others held up large signs in the shape of white kites, a Palestinian symbol of freedom and liberation associated with the poem “If I Must Die” by Refaat Alareer, the prominent Palestinian writer who was killed when Israel bombed his house in December.
“If I must die, you must live to sell my things, to buy a piece of cloth and some strings (make it white with a long tail),” read one of the kites, an excerpt from Alareer’s famous poem.
The faces, names and ages of Palestinians killed since the war began were held aloft on signs in the shapes of red poppy flowers soaring above the crowd.
Since Oct. 7, when some 1,200 people were killed in the attack by Hamas and other militias, Israel has retaliated in force. More than 41,000 people have been killed in Gaza, according to the Gaza health ministry, and another 700 in the West Bank, according to the United Nations.
In late September, Israel escalated a bombing campaign against Lebanon to the north, and health authorities there say more than 2,000 people have been killed since last October.
Protesters replaced a bus stop ad on Valencia street with another that read, “Stop Bombing Lebanon, Stop Arming Israel.” Another held a sign: “Hands off Lebanon and Palestine, Arms Embargo on Israel NOW.”
The protest ended by late afternoon. The crowd went through cases and cases of water bottles, while others distributed popsicles. The few hundred left at Dolores Park by the end dispersed without incident while police opened the streets back up to traffic.
I’m fed up with what Manny has had to deal with, and I am disgusted by the progressive industrial complex that has enabled this anti-Semitic violence.
The fringe-left/anarchists have singled Manny out as a Jewish man, and terrorized both him and his staff for far too long. We all saw it coming. The anti-Semitism has been brazen. Not just against Manny but also against other Jewish businesses like Smitten (whose owner had never even taken a position on Israel).
We know exactly what they mean when they say “Zionists out of the Mission.” They mean Jews. They want us out of the Mission. We are here, and we are not going anywhere.
The anti-Jewish vandals targeted a politically engaged gay Afghani Jewish man with their hate and destructiveness. Meanwhile, Muslim-owned businesses proliferate in the Mission, often masquerading as latinx, and no one seems to question whether THAT flavor of “settler colonialism” might be negatively affecting the character of the neighborhood. If there’s room for the Yemeni owners of Evergreen Market, then there is room for Manny’s and Smitten. San Francisco needs to do better!
It’s unfortunate that one individual detracted from the pro-peace message of the protest through this vandalism.
If you choose to judge the entire protest by the worst actions of any individual there, I hope you’ll judge the IDF’s generals and the Netanyahu government by that same standard. They have made their genocidal intentions clear for the past year, and continue to act them out with our tax dollars funding the bombs. Estimates of the numbers of civilians, in no way responsible for Hamas’s attacks, who have already been murdered by Israel range from 40,000 to over 200,000.
As the article notes, the protest organizers – who did not condone vandalism – included multiple Jewish-led groups. Israel’s genocidal campaigns against the civilian populations of Palestine and Lebanon have not made Israelis or Jews safer but exactly the opposite.
Defacing Manny’s is indeed thoughtless vandalism. But wanting Zionists out of San Francisco is a legitimate rallying cry, as is protesting the genocide and atrocities that Israel has been committing for a year and since 1948. There are more white right-wing Christian Zionist nuts than there are Jewish Zionists. Zionism has always been a hateful race-based movement, effectively a white European colonial settlement planted in the homeland of others as an outpost initially of British and French imperialism, and since 1945, western imperialism generally. Israel acts as the United States’ attack dog in the region. Manny’s is targeted because it cozies up to the Democrat party who are fully enabling Israel’s vile genocidal behavior. Most of my Jewish friends absolutely agree with me.
In regards to what “zionism has always been,” Noam Chomsky has said that in the 1940s he was considered a zionist activist. He says that part of the movement was focused on securing self-determination for Jews and Palestinians, and that there was no commitment to a “Jewish supremacist, Jewish state” at that time.
Minute 3:18
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=89GVWT-Dbys&pp=ygUZQm9hbSBjaG9tc2t5IHJ1ZHkgcm9jaG1hbg%3D%3D
Couldn’t have said it better:
“I’m deeply troubled and saddened to have our community attacked like this,” Yekutiel told The Standard. “Vandalizing a Jewish-owned business on the eve of the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust is disgusting and has no place in the city of Saint Francis.”
Can you publish an article on how we can support our Jewish neighbors/businesses in this time? I’ll be going to Manny’s later this week!
Speaking of unreported and unprosecuted crimes, I wonder if Manny’s will report the illegal defacement of their property.
Why is mission local bothering to give exposure to these idiotic antisemites? They are so pathetic. Gaza was free from 2005 until October 7, 2023. They could have used the $billion Qatari money to build a state. But of course hamas is only for the destruction of Israel. Same with hiz-ball-less, who basically hijacked Lebanon (with Iranian support) to terrorize Israel. They aren’t even Palestinians, just sick Jew haters supported by Iran. I’m glad they literally got their balls blow off by next level Israeli warfare. At the end Israel will prevail against these hateful proxies, Iran’s twisted regime will get toppled, and then maybe we can work towards a peaceful settlement. But in the meantime I’m tired of these morally repulsive anti zionists walking around the mission spewing their filth. Anti zionism = antisemitism. Straight up.
If you are marching to celebrate an act of terrorism, there is something morally wrong with you.
Good news, the vandalism is officially being investigated as a hate crime.
Reasonable people can disagree about the current Israeli government’s policies, but I consider it terrorism to march in the streets on the one-year anniversary of the attack, where 1200 Jews were murdered and 300 were taken into captivity, many raped by their captors. The brutal violence of Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran, has brought military retaliation on the people of Palestine.
These pro-terror marches with hateful anti-Jewish chants make it very hard for me to sympathize with the victims in Gaza.
Reporter: Could Palestinians make peace with Israel?
Sinwar: Yes. many pieces.
Reasonable people can disagree about the current Israeli government’s policies, but I consider it terrorism to march in the streets…”
Holy shit.
Lacy, did you really think it was sufficient to write “…“Zionists out of Frisco,” and “Dems fund murder,” among other tags” when among other tags included “death 2 the enemy”?!
Despite some of the predictable and foolish comments responding to the article, ML readers are aware by now that “anti zionism” is not “anti-semitism.” The graffiti said “zionists out of Frisco”. For the uninformed, the primary message of Jewish Voice for Peace and other massively popular Jewish groups is that zionism must be deconstructed and resisted. Manny is a zionist. Biden is a zionist. That Manny is Jewish is irrelevant. Too bad this really thorough and beautiful article was tarnished by this sideshow.
Ok genius, explain how anti Zionism is not anti semitism? Jews are okay as long as they don’t have their homeland? As long as they are weak minorities in the diaspora? Sure, history has shown us how well that has worked for Jews over the last millennia.
Jews, and non-Jews, are okay as long as they are not settler colonialists (zionists), who become genocidal when resisted. Signed, “Informed.”
Dear Gloria—it may surprise you there’s plenty of Israeli supporters who aren’t in line with Netenyahu (unless you conveniently didn’t notice all the protests against him in the news even before last Oct 7th.). And I wouldn’t describe Jewish Voice for Peace a “massively popular” unless you only move in very small circles. Manny’s family in Israel (he was there as the article mentions last October, podcasting from a bunker no less, looking horribly frightened) isn’t remotely “irrelevant”. He knows more than you & I combined I bet. I do feel for many I know with families suffering in Palestine due to hard line idiocy on both sides
Minimum 40 times and up to 400 times the deaths of Palestinians versus deaths of Israelis, the occupiers of that land and its indigenous peoples. I didnt realize there were two sides?
Sad that Manny’s vacation was disturbed.
Funny how everyone can point out the atrocities of Boko Haram without being called “anti-African” or the oppression of the Chinese gov’t without being called “anti-Chinese”. Yet, calling out the apartheid and ethnic cleansing of the Israeli gov’t is somehow “anti-Semitic”? 🤔
Oh, the hilarious hypocrisy. At least, it would be hilarious, were it used to kill nearly 600,000 Palestinians since last year – to say nothing of Israel’s unprovoked attacks on Iran, Lebanon, and throughout the Middle East.
“From the river to the sea…” 🇵🇸✊🏿
1. 600,000? So you’re just making up numbers now? The Palestinian Health Ministry says 41,000
2. The graffiti “death 2 the enemy” goes a bit further than “pointing out atrocities”
3. Holding the rally on the eve of the mass rape and murder of 1200 Jews? Real classy
4. “From the river to the sea” is a thinly veiled threat to wipe out Israel and all Jews. Who’s the ethnic cleanser now? (And yes, you can make up some BS that it means something slightly different, but you’re not fooling anybody. If you cared about peace you wouldn’t use a phrase that can easily be interpreted to mean genocide)
Funny how close to a million Muslims were killed by other Muslims in Syria, Sudan and Yemen and the world hardly blinks an eye. Yet when Israel fights hamas, who keeps their warfare inside civilian structures biased knobs like you go ape shit about civilian deaths that are 1- a fraction of these other much greater wars and 2- squarely the fault of hamas for using human shields. And daring to call them “unprovoked attacks” speaks volumes that you are either stupid beyond belief, or a straight up antisemite. Enjoy your predicament…along with your lame mask.
Israel played it off as if the Iranian ballistic missiles were successfully intercepted. The NYTimes has reported at least 36 (20% of the 180 fired) penetrated Israeli and US missile defense systems, likely more. Iran has faster, maneuverable missiles. These were warning shots.
So all the more reason to take Iran out now? Is that your point?
Iranian air defences are primitive. Israel can bomb at will there. But with US B-2 stealth bombers, it would be carnage.
The point is that the calculus requires adjustment. Israel cannot kill in Iran with the same impunity they’ve grown accustomed to. Both Israel and the US deployed interceptor missiles, and it was not enough.
The US also has to be careful. Iran is allied with Russia, China, and North Korea. If you think that alliance can’t wreak global havoc, you’d be mistaken.
Israel is evil by control of free information. Happy to lie and gaslight when caught.