The Daily Mail reports on Ayat, a new palestinian Arab restaurant in NYC that has the antisemitic, genocidal phrase “from the River to the Sea” plastered across its menu.
A new Palestinian restaurant in New York City has sparked backlash after opening its doors to customers with menus including the anti-Semitic phrase ‘from the river, to the sea.’
Ayat, a Brooklyn eatery with two other locations in the city, also opted to emblazon the front of its menus with the phrase ‘down with the occupation’, angering some patrons in the heavily-Jewish area.
When the restaurant opened a third location in Ditmas Park, Brooklyn, last week, a Facebook group for residents in the area grew hostile as customers slammed the menus as ‘openly genocidal’, reports the Daily Beast.
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In response to the Facebook group’s disapproval, the restaurant’s owners Ayat Masoud and her husband Abdul Elenani insisted the inclusion of the phrase in their menu’s was misunderstood.
Elenani said in his response on Facebook that they chose to include ‘from the river, to the sea’ in the menus because ‘our interpretation on it is just simply freedom and rights to the Palestinian people between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea.’
‘We’re just against the Zionist mentality of, like, eliminate or flatten now,’ he said, adding he meant no ill-will toward Jewish people.
‘Our neighbors are Jews, our friends are Jews, we work with Jewish people all day every day. We do not hate Jewish people. It’s the opposite,’ he continued. ‘Judaism and Islam, they are the two most similar religions.’
On their Facebook page, Ayat repeat the idea they are simply misunderstood:
I am so upset and really hate how the @dailymail just words things. It’s very upsetting to see the misinterpretation of “from the river to the sea.” This line was said way before the creation of hamas in the early 1950s late 40s when the Palestinians were being kicked out of their lands.
So, who better to ask for the meaning than the people who created it?
About “from the river to the sea”
#1: NOT ANTISEMITIC: In fact, the opposite, we get along with them very well, and we share 95% of our principles and values.
#2: It means nothing and has nothing to do with violence. It’s a simple call for an end to the occupation and freedom for Palestinians. Not to be treated like animals yet to be treated with human dignity and fairness.
I decided to look a bit deeper into Ayat and its owners Ayat Masoud and Abdul Elenani to see if they are indeed about peace, non-violence, and respect for Jews as they claim.
On Ayat’s Facebook page, we see this post glorifying female palestinian Arab terrorism as “resistance”:
Note the rifle.
Also here:
I am also not exactly feeling the peaceful vibes with this post, which implies all IDF soldiers are born to be murderers:
And just three days after October 7th, they posted the following, which seems to almost justify what we saw:
Meanwhile, Abdul Elenani once posted the following on his Facebook wall:
Note the tags I highlighted. He is dismissing the idea of palestinian Arab terrorism (calling it resistance), calling for there to be “no Israel”, and making the vile, antisemitic comparison of us to Nazis.
We see a similar comparison being made in this video, also shared by Elenani:
If the post is taken down, you can see the video here:
And naturally, he is willing to believe any lie about us:
These people are full of babaganoush. They know exactly for what they are truly advocating.
