A Palestinian waiter was brutally assaulted by Jewish customers at a Tel Aviv fast food restaurant within the past week. The video shows the waiter retrieving a mayonnaise packet from the table and almost immediately someone from the table rises and confronts him. He looks like he is screaming at the waiter and then pushes and hits him. When the waiter defends himself, the entire table of hooligans rises as one and commences the assault. At first they merely use fists but eventually they crash chairs and tables down on his head.
Not a single bystander intervenes in any way to stop the mayhem. The police have conveniently been unable to identify or locate the assailants. This typifies the “professionalism” of the Israeli police force.
He was taken to the hospital with multiple broken bones and fractures. In the bed next to him was an Israeli Jew, Ohad Aviv, who’d just sustained terrible injuries in a hit and run accident. Ohad wrote on his Facebook page that after hearing the pitiful cries of the waiter, he felt like he was being run over once again.
Due to a misunderstood Facebook caption, I mistakenly identified a picture of Ohad as the injured waiter. No less than four commenters here felt it their duty to inform me of my error. When I told Ohad that commenters were attempting to use this error to minimize the severity of what happened to the waiter (or simply to smear me), he responded:
…Those people…don’t have a clue how bad they make us appear. They don’t have an idea how bad a name they give to Israelis and to Jewish people. I can’t understand why they choose to act so blind to our history. They are just a small extreme minority. Most Israelis are disgusted by such behaviour. We have demonstrations against it. I am honored to help out in this and I try my best.
I’m pleased to say that the waiter’s Israeli employer said that it would cover all of his medical costs and finance any legal proceedings against the attackers. Bless him for doing the right thing. Now if only we can get the Israeli police off their asses.
How much ya wanna bet Ohad just graduated from miskenchik to “self hating jew arab lover”.
Since when has the Israeli police ever knocked themselves out to look for assailants against Palestinians?
Police policy reflects public policy. As you said a whole restaurant full of Israeli Jews sat by doing nothing while that man was viciously attacked. I would say it’s not a police problem, but an Israeli problem.
Richard,
I am deeply horrified by the incident, as well as others that I have been hearing about. I cannot simply begin to imagine how the waiter felt and how he continues to feel or how other Arab-Israelis or Palestinians may feel after hearing about an incident such as this.
Having said that I (as Ayam Su) was one of those that corrected you and while I cannot speak for the others who did so, I did so simply to correct inaccuracy. It was not intended for my words to make light of the incident and I am sorry if it was construed as such.
Let me simply conclude by saying that I have gained much insight from your posts, regardless of subject matter, and do appreciate what you do.
Sumaya
I apologize if I was overhasty. Some commenters here sometimes have ulterior motives in their criticism of what they perceive as my mistakes. If I erred in lumping you & others in that category, I apologize.
The emergence of the Jew Klux Klan (JKK) is evidenced here.
They’re no different to their Klu Klux Klan confreres in Alabama in the US in the 1950’s.
Pointing out your mistake in no way was an attempt to minimize this crime. Not by me anyway, and going over the comments on the other thread I don’t see anyone else doing that either. Good day.
” They are just a small extreme minority. Most Israelis are disgusted by such behaviour.” Hahahahahahahahah, yeah right!
I don’t understand the video: How was it made? It appears to follow the action so it is not a passive security camera. Where does this video come from?
Taking it at face value, sure it’s as mean-spirited as any racist assault anywhere. Anybody know what (if anything) precipitated the violence?
The news crew filmed a monitor that is displaying the video from what I would guess is a security camera. You can see the monitor frame and some of the GUI for the video player program.
They probably couldn’t get it any other way, so they did that.
So that’s where the motion is coming from.
The waiter took a mayonnaise canister from their table for whatever reason. Seeing as there was a slight pause between him taking the canister and one of the offenders reacting to it, there was possibly some exchange of words.
“Keep on the sunny side, always on the sunny side, keep on the sunny side” of hasbara! What nonsense. You mean when the waiter took the mayonnaise container he cursed the mothers of the four hulking Israeli thugs sitting at the table, daring them to fight him??
No. This is not what I mean. I mean it seems that there was an exchange of words, because there is a pause of a few seconds between the taking of the container and the thug’s physical reaction, during which the thug is facing the waiter, and around 16 seconds, the waiter turns to face the thug before the thug even gets up. Seeing as the waiter is not a mind reader, and could not have heard the thug get up before he did so, there must have been an exchange of words. For instance, the thug swears at the waiter while telling him to return the container, and the waiter, reasonably, does not respond politely, which prompts the thugs, even if they were rude first. Stop demonizing and misconstruing me.
You can fill in the dialogue any way you like. But nothing will justify this disgusting display for which no one has been apprehended or charged. You might want to worry a bit more about that aspect of he case than what the waiter that might’ve merited his punishment.
This outburst of “natural evil” behavior of the human being can only happen if there are no strong restraints to control or tame it. The strong restraints are usually ethics, proper religion teachings (Judaism does not allow such behavior neither does Islam or Christianity) or of course, the law. The last does not care in these circumstances against Arabs and obviously, none of the formers are present to begin with.
Richard- a commenter asked a question about the event, because he apparently does not understand Hebrew and therefore could not understand the reporters’ commentary regarding the canister. I commented a reply, rather than a standalone comment, in order to answer him (objectively, I might add), and not in order to justify any sort of racist hooligan behavior. In my second comment I also made clear that the waiter did not “merit his punishment”. Explaining what is going on in the video, and offering a possible analysis, to a curious commenter has nothing to do with justifying anything.
If the police can’t locate or identify these thugs, how do we know that they were Jewish customers?
Fair question?
@Joel: Why certainly a bunch of Israeli Palestinians or tourists beat up a Palestinian waiter because he took the mayonnaise bottle from their table without asking. You’re so full of horse manure…
The question is about as fair as: When did you stop beating your wife?
The fact remains, the waiter is Palestinian, which means it’s highly unlikely the police will knock themselves out finding the perpetrators, whether they were Jewish or not.
I don’t really doubt that the thugs were Jewish. I’m asking how that’s been determined. You haven’t shown us.
BTW. I’ve been living here for awhile now and I have difficulty sorting out Mizrahi Jews from Arabs.
@Joel: Israeli Palestinians have no trouble sorting out who you are since you call them “Arabs.” They know you’re an ignorant, disrespecting, racist, Jewish settlerist messianist.
‘Israeli Palestinians have no trouble sorting out who you are since you call them “Arabs.” ‘
Neither Bedouin nor Druzim consider themselves to be ‘Israeli Palestinians’.
“They know you’re an ignorant, disrespecting, racist, Jewish settlerist messianist”
I’m none of the above. Richard is ‘projecting’.
@Joel: You have no idea what an Israeli Bedouin or Druze call themselves.
As for what you are or aren’t. You most certainly are a racist since you’ve shown that in what you’ve written about Israeli Palestinians. You’re also a messianist since you tried to proselytize on that score in a comment I refused to publish. You disrespect Israeli Palestinians since use a term for them they don’t use themselves. As for “ignorant” & “settlerist.” I’ll let others be the judge of that.
He has also made this comment thread all about him instead of the incident, which is another not-so-nice hasbara trick. This is incredibly narcissistic, but so typically settler-Israeli. It’s always about them, and their pathetic attempts to justify their reprehensible and disgusting racism and exceptionalism.
While I agree that the thugs are most likely jewish, I must add that Israeli Palestinians aren’t necessarily friendly to each other, just as Israeli Jews aren’t necessarily friendly to each other (and it isn’t at all difficult to find reports of people killing or harming people of the same ethnicity anywhere, and in Israel specifically). The kind of people who would beat up a waiter for taking their mayonnaise probably aren’t concerned about the victim’s race for any reason other than to know what obscenities to shout during their assault. Several cases of Jews stabbing each other in parking space debacles, and Israeli Palestinians stabbing each other over other minor incidents come to mind.
If you are missing examples of Israeli Palestinians hurting other Israeli Palestinians for close to nothing, just look at any news report coming out of Tira or Lod.
Update- the reporter says the thugs were Israeli. This almost certainly means Jewish. Even knowing this, my comment still stands as a retort to Richard’s, which basically says “Palestinians never attack other Palestinians for next to nothing (unlike every other people on earth)”.
Michael — why on earth are you quibbling here? What’s your point? You say: “The kind of people who would beat up a waiter for taking their mayonnaise probably aren’t concerned about the victim’s race for any reason other than to know what obscenities to shout during their assault. ” This is a quibble, a little nervous escape. And it has little validity, just as an extra! Such “kind of people” strongly includes “racists” and the odds are good that these guys were ready to pick on some easy target and then the hapless waiter moves into their field of abuse, and…bang. It is the savagery of the attack that is so startling, as though these men were just coiled springs ready to take on an opponent.
@Davey, it’s a way for Michael to deny this was a racist attack, obviously. First, it “looked like” the waiter possibly said something to provoke the attack; next, it was, “how do you know they were Jews?” and now, it’s “well, maybe they were Jews but they were thugs and would attack anyone who took their mayonnaise because that’s what thugs do.” I’m waiting for the next excuse.