On Nov 4, 2020, during the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War, two Armenian
men attacked a Turkish restaurant in Beverly Hills, California. Federal
hate crimes charges were brought against them. One of the men in the
‘Islamophobic’ attack was sentenced to 5 years in prison while the other
was thrown in jail for 15 months.
On May 18, 2021, during fighting between Israel and Hamas, a
pro-terrorist convoy passed Sushi Fumi, a restaurant 10 minutes away
from the Turkish place. Members of the convoy assaulted Jewish diners,
waved a terror flag, demanded to know who at the restaurant was Jewish,
and witnesses said chanted, “Death to Jews” and “Free Palestine”.
(Among the Jewish men, an Armenian Christian man dining with them also faced violence.) There were no federal charges. The Muslims faced two two felony
counts of assault. A judge let them off with probation and ordered them
to visit a Holocaust museum.
The difference between 5 years in prison and an order to visit a
Holocaust museum is the vast gulf between how attacks on Muslims and
Muslim attacks on Jews are treated. While it can be hard to measure and
compare the treatment of different groups, the attacks on two
restaurants within walking distance of each other a year apart is
revealing of the very different treatments.
Both of the attacks happened within the context of fighting abroad.
Both involved convoys of protesters. In both cases, a vehicle diverted
to a restaurant where its members expected to find members of a group
they opposed. In both cases they demanded to know whether the people
there were members of that group: Turkish in the former case and Jewish
in the latter.
But the same basic behaviors led to very different consequences in a biased system. An Armenian man got 5 years in prison because, in the words of the
Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office, he
“likely caused lasting psychological pain” to Muslims at a restaurant.
Muslim thugs got a pass after kicking a Jewish man in the head.
The Department of Justice and the FBI got involved in the Muslim case. Not the Jewish case. “The defendants violently attacked people inside a family-owned
restaurant because of their perceived nationality,” Assistant Attorney
General Kristen Clarke claimed of the Turkish case. “Such violence based
on national origin has no place in our society. The Justice Department
will continue to vigorously prosecute bias-motivated crimes in an effort
to secure justice for the victims and the communities they are meant to
target and intimidate.”
But it turns out that “such violence” does have a “place in our
society” when directed at Jews, just not at Muslims. Attack a Turkish
restaurant and you’ll spend half a decade in prison, but attack Jews at a
restaurant in support of Islamic terrorists and you won’t even spend 24
hours in jail. Even when you’re booked for “assault with a deadly
weapon” as part of a hate crime.
“Our police department together with our sheriff’s department, our
FBI, and other partners is rightly investigating this assault as a hate
crime,” Former Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti had said of the attack on
Jews at the sushi place. The FBI apparently chose to do nothing about
it. The promised “full force” of the law was condensed down to some bias training.
