A man has been charged with a hate crime in connection with an antisemitic group assault last week, San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins announced.
According to court documents, a group of six people, including Juan Diaz-Rivas (36), were shouting, “F*** the Jews, Free Palestine” as they walked down the 3100 block of Fillmore Street in San Francisco’s Marina District on 14 June.
The victims, a 27-year-old male and his friend, Alana Gans, 28, were sitting nearby when the victim asked the group to stop making antisemitic chants because Gans is Jewish. Diaz-Rivas allegedly moved close to Gans to intimidate her, at which point the victim put himself between Gans and Diaz-Rivas, and the two subsequently attempted to walk away.
The group then came after them, and one of them allegedly “sucker-punched” the male victim, who fell to the ground, hit his head, and lost consciousness.
Diaz-Rivas and others in the group allegedly continued to punch and kick the victim while he was unconscious. According to Gans’s interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, the attackers continued to spew antisemitic insults during the continued physical assault, which she estimated lasted under a minute. Gans was also allegedly attacked, though less severely injured.
A nearby worker witnessed the altercation and antisemitic language and attempted to intervene but was kicked and punched while trying to help the victim.
The attackers ran away, only to return and yell, “F*** those Jews,” Gans, a student at the University of California College of the Law, San Francisco, told the SFC, adding that when officers showed up, she was able to identify them. She told J. The Jewish News of Northern California Weekly that the attack was the “scariest moment of [her] life.”
Charged with two counts of assault
Diaz-Rivas was charged with two counts of assault with force likely to cause great bodily injury, with the specification that this assault was a hate crime.
His arraignment took place on Wednesday, during which the court ordered him to stay in jail without bail.
Whether Diaz-Rivas should remain in jail or not was debated by the defending and prosecuting attorneys. Diaz-Rivas’s court-appointed attorney, Adam Gasner, said his client has no criminal record and said only “half of the story is being told” regarding the attack. Assistant District Attorney Jamal Anderson, however, disputed this, saying that the nature of the attack indicated that he “does pose a public safety risk.”
Judge Harry Jacobs decided that Diaz-Rivas posed a risk to the Jewish community, given that the alleged remarks “clearly sound like antisemitism.” Diaz-Rivas’s next court hearing is set for July 2.
The Jewish Community Relations Council Bay Area thanked the district attorney for filing a hate crime charge, adding that what happened “was a disgusting act of hate and it must be met with accountability.”
California State Sen. Scott Wiener called the “violent antisemitic hate crime” in Marine “terrifying” and praised Jenkins and the San Francisco Police Department for its efficiency in apprehending and charging the perpetrators and “sticking up for the safety of our Jewish community.”
“Antisemitism is on the rise in the US, and San Francisco is no exception,” he added. “The daily antisemitic statements and actions we see – demonizing Jews, holding Jews to unique standards, and promoting anti-Jewish stereotypes and conspiracy theories – inevitably lead to violence, and we are seeing that play out in San Francisco and around the country."