Boichick Bagels’ mothership Berkeley location was targeted with graffiti this week in what its owner described as a “clearly antisemitic act.”
Owner Emily Winston, who is Jewish, said she discovered the graffiti when she went to the bagel restaurant’s College Avenue location shortly before 6 p.m. Wednesday. Someone had spray-painted “Israel baby killer” in stylized lettering in several spots on the sidewalk outside.
The letters appeared to be stenciled, and were positioned right where guests line up when the restaurant is open.
Whoever painted the sidewalks must have known something about how the College Avenue location operated, because it appeared sometime between when a manager closed up at 3 p.m. and when Winston stopped by at 6, Winston said.
Winston was meeting a friend that evening — also Jewish — and said her friend was “horrified” at the graffiti. They called city police and then went to a Home Depot to get solvents which they then spent the evening using to scrub off the spray paint.
City police did not immediately have any details on the incident.
Other Jewish- and Israeli-owned restaurants in the Bay Area have experienced harassment since Hamas’s terrorist attack of Israel Oct. 7 and Israel’s lethal response in Gaza in the following months, the Jewish News of California reported earlier this year. That has taken the form of pro-Palestinian graffiti, damage and vandalism and harassing phone calls and online messages, the outlet reported.
Winston said that she has remained silent on the Israel-Hamas conflict. “I don’t feel it’s necessary or appropriate,” she said. “I’m running a large business. We have 120 employees right now, I don’t want them to be made uncomfortable, or made to be a target.”
She said she has been harangued online simply because she has not waded into the debate over Israel’s military action in Gaza, and that businesses like hers have been singled out for harassment.
“It’s absolutely directed at Jewish-owned, or Jewish-related businesses, 100%,” Winston said. “Honestly it feels a lot like the Spanish Inquisition. ‘Make a statement, and if you don’t make a statement that we want you to make, we’re going to cancel you.’”
Winston said the graffiti was her “first personal experience with antisemitism,” and that she believed that simply selling bagels – food items connected to Jewish culture – had made her a target.
“We’re supposed to be a very tolerant society here in Berkeley,” Winston said. “People can have all the political beliefs you want, but that doesn’t mean you should be tearing other people down.”
