An Oakland café debuted a new menu last week that appears to feature Hamas-themed items.
The Jerusalem Coffee House posted its all-new menu on Instagram; it includes an $8 “Iced In Tea Fada” alongside “Sweet Sinwar” juice for another $10. Red, upside-down triangles — a common Palestinian symbol used to denote an Israeli target — dot the menu. The post was uploaded on October 7, marking one year since the Hamas massacre.
Intifada can be translated from Arabic as “uprising” or “shaking off.” The Second Intifada of the early 2000s lasted over four years and resulted in the deaths of over 1,000 Israelis while Yahya Sinwar was the most high-profile Hamas leader. His death at the hands of the Israel Defense Forces was confirmed on Thursday.
The establishment’s co-founder, Abdulrahim Harara, claimed the menu’s release date merely represented the café’s anniversary despite the San Francisco Standard identifying two different past soft- and grand-opening dates. He also said that “Sinwar” had no relation to the now-dead terrorist leader but simply refers to a common Palestinian surname.
Harara’s family is from the Gaza Strip and hopes the café can bring attention to the “genocide,” as he described Israel’s war with Hamas.
“Our commemoration of Palestinian resistance is part of a larger struggle against both zionism and the global systems of imperialism that sustain it,” the Jerusalem Coffee House’s Substack newsletter read. “Despite the sensationalism surrounding our choices, the core of our work is focused on nourishing our community.”
“By continuing this work, even when critics try to discredit it, we create a space for Palestinians and comrades to struggle, gather, reflect, and strengthen their shared identity and resistance.”
Local Jewish leaders expressed their disgust with the coffeehouse’s menu choices.
“Praising the terrorist mastermind of the October 7th attack on Israel with the title ‘Sweet Sinwar’ and decorating a menu with inverted red triangles used by Hamas as a marketing symbol to glorify horrific atrocities is despicable and distasteful to everyone,” said Marc Levine, regional director of the Anti-Defamation League’s central-Pacific chapter, in a written statement.
“Celebrating murder, sexual assault and terror is abhorrent and has no place in Oakland and should be condemned by all.”
Tyler Gregory, CEO of the Jewish Community Relations Council of the Bay Area, also shared his disappointment in a statement to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
“It is no coincidence, given the City of Oakland’s many governmental failures to stand up for the Jewish community this past year, that Hamas mastermind Yahya Sinwar would be glorified in this sick way for the massacre of thousands of Jews.”