ON THE MENU
B’klyn Palestinian eatery’s ‘River to the Sea’ entrees
A Palestinian restaurant chain in New York City featuring a menu section titled “From the river to the sea” is receiving death threats for being “openly genocidal,” but its owner insists the controversial messaging is not a call to eradicate Israel.
Abdul Elenani and Ayat Masoud opened the newest location of their restaurant, Ayat, earlier this month in Ditmas Park, Brooklyn, where menus feature the phrase to label its seafood section as well as a crying Palestinian woman with the words “Down with the occupation.”
“From the river to the sea” — deemed an antisemitic call for the destruction of Israel by the AntiDefamation League — has been chanted worldwide by protesters since Israel waged war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip after the terror group’s Oct. 7 attack that killed some 1,200 people.
“That slogan has been on my menu for the past year, way before Oct. 7, and that slogan within our communities has always been defined as a calling for peace and equality for Palestinian people in their country,” Elenani told The Post on Thursday.
“And after Oct. 7, it was interpreted to be a way to kill, exile, murder, do whatever to all the Jewish people, which is totally nowhere near our definition. It’s been driving me crazy.”
The restauranteur has received vile messages on his Instagram page as a result of the blowback, including ones that referred to the death toll in Gaza, claiming “20,000 [is] not nearly enough” and “21,423 subhuman palestines [sic] killed in Gaza!!! Hopefully every corpse is s--t on before being shoveled into the ground.”
“We’re getting bomb threats, threats to bomb our locations,” Elenani said.
Ayat has two other Brooklyn locations, in Bay Ridge and Industry City, and three more locations in the East Village, Staten Island and Allentown, Pa.
Elenani said he does not condone any violence in Gaza and isn’t aligned with the “evil” mentalities behind the conflict.
“We believe they’ll continue to exist,’ he said. “The name ‘Israel’ needs to be there. ‘Palestine’ also needs to be there. It’s a peaceful two-state solution.”
Ditmas Park manager Hania Khattab, 19, who is of Egyptian-Moroccan descent, said Elenani put the slogan on the menu as a seafood pun.
“He wasn’t doing it with harm,” he said. The slogan’s detractors, he explained, are assuming that it is a call for genocide, “but that’s not what we mean at all.”
“When you say ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,’ it’s a call for freedom for all,” Khattab said.
A Brooklyn lawmaker from the heavily Jewish areas of Borough Park and Midwood took issue with that interpretation.
“These restaurateurs may think they are being cute or funny, but that phrase is universally recognized as a call for the annihilation of the Jewish people,” said Democratic Councilman Kalman Yeger.
“They are using Hamas language and claiming it means something different to them.”