coming in and trying to rip down his Israeli flag<\/a>.<\/p>\n\u201cBut then a few Jewish students from NYU came in, and they were crying on my shoulder. I decided that was worth any financial loss for me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Catering to the community instead of the bullies paid off, and today his establishment is back to business as usual \u2014 flag, Israeli salad and all.<\/p>\n
Of course, his place will occasionally face some harassment from \u201cpurple-haired, ignorant people,\u201d to use his words. \u00a0<\/p>\n
He finds that especially ironic since, as a young restauranter in Israel, he worked with many Muslims and Palestinians and never experienced any problems.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a very opinionated generation, and they don\u2019t do their research. But whoever wants to learn more is always welcome to stop by for coffee.\u201d<\/p>\n
As for Gazala, she is holding strong in the face of the threats, making grape leaves in her kitchen as she has done for the past 19 years.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is America, and I am free to be who I am. No one else will decide for me. I don\u2019t give in to bullies.\u201d<\/p>\n
Immigrants building successful businesses from nothing is as American as apple pie. There should be no exceptions for Israelis.<\/p>\n
Hopefully New Yorkers will continue to reward those who remain proud and unafraid \u2014 and not forget to order a round of falafel for the table.<\/p>\n
Yael Bar tur is the co-host of Chosen People Problems podcast on Ark Media<\/p>\n
X: @yaelbt<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New York City likes to take pride in how \u201cinclusive\u201d it is, particularly for immigrants, but when it…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":381425,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[827,2474,22958,9873,14670,60,61,78389,164,9,56,63,65,64,299,821,466,62,5614],"class_list":["post-381424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-china","tag-food-trends","tag-harassment","tag-immigrants","tag-iran","tag-israel","tag-israel-hamas-war","tag-israeli","tag-middle-east","tag-new-york","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news","tag-opinion","tag-restaurants","tag-upper-east-side","tag-upper-west-side","tag-vandalism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=381424"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381424\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/381425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=381424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=381424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=381424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}