First-generation Israeli-American Avi Shemtov, a multi-ethnic chef, has confronted racism, antisemitism and shocking charges of White supremacy ever since speaking out against the Hamas terror attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, he told Fox News Digital.
“Cry harder, Nazi,” read one attack on social media against the owner of restaurant Simcha in Sharon, Massachusetts, he relayed.
“People have basically called me a White supremacist,” Shemtov said in an interview — despite the fact that his late father’s family is from Asia.
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Yona Shemtov was a chef, Sephardic Jew and first member of his Turkish family born in Israel. His uncle was murdered during a period of antisemitic violence in Turkey. The family fled for the new Jewish state in 1949 as it welcomed people of all races and ethnicities from around the world.
Yona Shemtov then moved to the United States in 1972.
Front row, Simcha and Ovadya Shemtov, Sephardic Jews from Turkey who moved to Israel in 1949, where they raised their children. Yona Shemtov (standing, second from right) is the late father of Massachusetts chef Avi Shemtov. The restaurateur has faced antisemitism since he publicly supported Israel after the Hamas terror attack on Oct. 7, 2023. (Courtesy Chef Avi Shemtov)
Avi Shemtov opened Simcha in 2019 to celebrate his multicultural heritage and the global influences of modern Israeli cuisine he learned from his father.
Simcha serves Moroccan carrots, Yemenite fried chicken and woodfire-roasted okra — common in East Africa. Its signature dish is shakshuka, a savory tomato stew with influences from Turkey and North Africa.
“Israel enjoys maybe the world’s most diverse food scene because Israel may have the world’s most diverse population.” — Avi Shemtov
“Israel enjoys maybe the world’s most diverse food scene because Israel may have the world’s most diverse population,” said Shemtov, whose mother is Polish-American.
“It has all the diversity found in the United States compressed into an area the size of New Jersey.”
He was typically bemused when guests asked if the woman depicted in a mural on the restaurant wall was Native American.
A pro-Palestinian protester holds a “White Supremacy” sign during a rally held on Wall Street in support of Palestinians on Oct. 26, 2023. The protest was against manufacturers and Wall Street firms investing and creating weapons used in the retaliation bombing of Gaza after the Palestinian militant group launched a deadly attack in southern Israel on Oct. 7. (Michael Nigro/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images)
The woman is actually his late grandmother, Simcha.
She and her husband, Ovadya, were Sephardic Jews born and raised in Istanbul before they moved to Israel. Simcha is also the Hebrew word for “joy” or “happiness.”
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His grandmother’s ethnicity merely confirmed the restaurant’s purpose, said Shemtov. It showed that the Israeli people, like the food he served, defied a single identity.
After Oct. 7, a concern for safety
But his bemusement turned to anger, activism and concern for the safety of his family in the United States and overseas after the Hamas terror attacks in October.
“Jews have never been indigenous to Israel,” one critic raged at Shemtov on social media, contradicting the entire known history of the Jewish people. “You’re White. White people aren’t indigenous to the Middle East.”
Chef Avi Shemtov is the owner of Simcha, a modern Israeli restaurant in Sharon, Massachusetts. His paternal grandparents and father were Sephardic Jews from Turkey who moved to Israel in 1949; his mother is Polish-American. Avi Shemtov has been called a “Nazi” for publicly supporting Israel’s right to defend itself after the Oct. 7, 2023, terror attacks by Hamas. (Courtesy Chef Avi Shemtov)
Shemtov, a member of the local school committee and a prominent figure in the Boston-area food scene, was shocked when he was confronted by the racism and ignorance at the root of antisemitism in America.
“Nobody would ever call my grandmother White. Nobody ever thought of my father as White,” said Shemtov.
“The reality is that in Israel you will see Jews who look Black, brown, Asian, African and everything in between.”
“Look at my dad’s family. Do they look White? This is what Israelis look like.”
The image he provided of his grandparents, father, aunts and uncles shows a family with various shades of olive to deep brown skin with dark eyes and thick, dark hair.
“The reality is that in Israel you will see Jews who look Black, brown, Asian, African and everything in between,” Dan Feferman, a former national security adviser to the Israel Defense Ministry, told Fox News Digital last week.
Simcha Restaurant in Sharon, Massachusetts, is named for Simcha Shemtov, a Turkish-Israeli Sephardic Jew and grandmother of chef-owner Avi Shemtov. His grandmother is often mistaken as Native American. “Simcha” is also the Hebrew word for “joy” or “happiness.” (Courtesy Chef Avi Shemtov/Simcha Restaurant)
“The mischaracterization [that Israelis are White] is wildly inaccurate and unfortunately drives animosity in the Middle East and around the world against Israel.”
More than 1 in 5 of Israel’s 9.4 million residents are Arab, according to the nation’s Central Bureau of Statistics.
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About 72% are Jewish, but more than half of them are, like the Shemtovs, Sephardic.
They are Turkish, Arab, Persian and African, among other ethnicities.
More than 90% of the Jews in America, however, are Ashkenanzi Jews from Europe, said Feferman.
The image of White Jews has been reinforced in American pop culture, from Woody Allen flicks to the classic TV sitcom “Seinfeld.”
Shakshuka, a savory tomato stew with origins in both Turkey and North Africa, is a signature dishe at Simcha, a modern Israeli restaurant in Sharon, Massachusetts, owned by multi-ethnic Sephardic Jewish chef Avi Shemtov. (Adam DeTour photo/courtesy Avi Shemtov)
The narrative of Israel as a White nation is being exploited by organizations such as National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP), among those inciting protests around the United States and calling for the destruction of Israel.
“Israel was founded through racism,” the NSJP wrote last year in its online magazine, The Written Resistance.
“If you think for a second I’m going to beg forgiveness … for demanding that our hostages be returned, you’ve misjudged me.” — Avi Shemtov
The attack on Israel continued, “The idea of a state ‘for’ a particular ethnic group is racist because it entails privileging one group over another. Therefore there can be no Jewish state, or any ethnostate for that matter, that is not fundamentally racist.”
The narrative of Israel-Palestine as a race war parroted in protests is also being used to fuel charges of racism used against Israeli-Americans.
Shemtov’s defense of Israel sparked a community petition in November looking to remove him as chair of the local school committee.
This undated photo provided by Rachel Goldberg shows her son Hersh Goldberg-Polin. The 23-year-old Israeli-American was born in California ad lived in Jerusalem. He was last seen when Hamas militants loaded him into the back of a pickup truck with other hostages abducted from a music festival in the western Negev Desert on Oct. 7. (Courtesy of Rachel Goldberg via AP)
“Mr. Shemtov has tried to justify the use of white phosphorous bombs on Palestinian civilians,” one person even charged in a public school committee meeting late last year.
But Shemtov wrote in a social media response to critics, “[My great uncle] was stabbed to death in public as part of the pogroms that expelled Jews from Turkey and other Arab lands.”
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So “if you think for a second I’m going to beg forgiveness for expressing my support for my people and for demanding that our hostages be returned, you’ve misjudged me.”
He survived the effort to remove him from elected office with his position intact.
He is still, however, confronting the reality of the ignorance, much of it stoked for political gain, at the root of antisemitism.
Left, a protest declaring Zionism is racism; right, members of Massachusetts chef Avi Shemtov’s Sephardic Jewish family from Israel, via Turkey. (Andy Soloman/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images; courtesy Chef Avi Shemtov)
“There is complete ignorance about Israeli culture and background that leads people to believe this is very much a black-and-white racial cause,” said Shemtov.
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“Folks think of Israel as this White European monolith inhabited by people who came to the region in 1948, replacing those who had already been there. Why they don’t realize is that most of us had been there all along.”
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