Over the past six months, the owners of Lombard Cafe in Center City have reported eight incidents of harassment and physical violence to the Philadelphia Police Department.
The latest occurred last week, on Wednesday morning, when owner Jasmine Taibi-Bennoui says vandals broke through the back of the cafe and destroyed cameras, took nothing, but left Pro-Israel stickers throughout the establishment.
“I feel unsafe,” she told Metro. “Nothing was taken, so the intent was to intimidate and to silence me.”
Lombard Cafe is a woman and Arab-owned small business serving Philly’s Society Hill neighborhood. Taibi-Bennoui believes the harassment has been in response to Lombard Cafe’s Instagram account—postings include a death toll graph about both sides of the Gaza conflict, as well as a Desmond Tutu quote about silence and oppression.
“I’ve been fighting for Palestine since I was a small child, my parents were very forward,” she said. “When I see it in real time I’m going to call it out.
“You can call this a war between two religious groups, but I am a Muslim woman,” she added. “I have Jewish staff members who have been thrown the most obscene hate slurs at them by these same Jewish people. It’s one thing to say it’s Islamophobic behavior, but my staff is dealing with antisemitism assaults as well… They are just trying to intimidate and silence us and push us out of the neighborhood that we’ve been a part of for over a decade.”
On Friday morning, Council for American Islamic Relations (CAIR) Philadelphia held a press conference outside Lombard Cafe in an effort to hold local law enforcement accountable and condemn the ongoing vandalism and harassment targeted at the cafe.
In addition, community members from allied organizations have formed rotating schedules to be present at the shop, showing solidarity.
“As shocked as I am by the angry response, it is difficult to pay attention to that because of the support from our friends and community,” said Taibi-Bennoui. “It feels like isolation when you’re quietly dealing with this stuff, but now that we’ve been more public about what we’ve been dealing with, the support has been unreal and it has really carried us.”
