June 1, 2021

Last Friday night in the Sinai Temple sanctuary, Consul General of Israel in Los Angeles Hillel Newman introduced those gathered in the pews to an unfamiliar face in the crowd: Mher Hagopian, an Armenian-Lebanese Christian who stood up and fought with several Los Angeles Jews during a recent antisemitic attack in Los Angeles.

On May 18, Hagopian was enjoying dinner with several of his Jewish friends when a group of pro-Palestinians attacked the Jewish diners. Hagopian, a local wedding photographer, attempted to defend those being attacked and endured a heavy beating as a result. He has since been touted as a hero for defending the Jewish diners.

Hagopian, Newman said at Sinai on May 28, “leapt to the aid of his Jewish friends without thought of his own safety.”

Hagopian was one of several speakers this past Friday night at Sinai Temple’s Israel solidarity Shabbat. Standing on the bimah, appearing shy in front of the crowd of a couple hundred people, Hagopian, 36, said he did not feel like a hero but believed God had placed him at the restaurant the night of the attack for a reason.

Hagopian said he did not feel like a hero but believed God had placed him at the restaurant the night of the attack for a reason.

“I don’t think I was there just to have dinner with my friends; I was there for a purpose—God put me there for a purpose,” he said, eliciting multiple standing ovations from the worshippers in the pews.

Sinai Temple Rabbi Erez Sherman told the crowd how much the Jewish community needed friends like Hagopian and announced that Hagopian would be visiting Israel for the first time this summer.

Additional speakers at the service, held in-person and streamed online, included Sinai Rabbi David Wolpe and Orna Wolens, general campaign chair at the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles and a lifelong congregant of Sinai.

“It is hard to appreciate how improbable and miraculous it is we have a [Jewish] state because we were not alive when it was impossible,” Wolpe said during an impassioned sermon.

Wolens, meanwhile, highlighted L.A. Federation CEO Jay Sanderson’s recent visit to Israel on a Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA) mission, during which Sanderson met with communities and families directly impacted by the more than 4,000 rockets Hamas fired on Israel.

“The trauma and fear from this constant barrage is profound,” Wolens said, speaking about the Federation’s partnership with the Israel Trauma Coalition, a coalition of trauma management NGOS in Israel.

“During these complicated and painful times, we are united by Ahavat Israel—our love of Israel and the Jewish people,” Wolens added. “We stand with Israel, we pray for peace.”

According to the L.A. Federation, the JNFA trip was the first mission to Israel since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Pastor John Paul Foster of Faithful Central Bible Church and over 15 partnering organizations, including StandWithUs and UCLA Hillel, participated in the service. During the height of the recent conflict, Foster reached out to Sherman and conveyed his support for the Jewish community at a difficult time.

The musical service blended liturgy and contemporary music and featured Rabbis Sherman and Nicole Guzik’s daughter singing a rendition of “A Million Dreams,” from the film, “The Greatest Showman,” Sinai Cantor Marcus Feldman leading services, and a performance of “Jerusalem of Gold.” The evening concluded with everyone reciting the “Hatikva,” Israel’s national anthem.

Attendees of the in-person service were asked to bring proof of vaccination, and those who had been fully vaccinated were allowed to sit in the Sinai sanctuary without a mask.

A couple hundred supporters of the Palestinians, Black Lives Matter and other social justice movements attended a rally on May 29 at Pan Pacific Park.

Carrying Palestinian flags and signs with anti-Israel and anti-racism messages– from “Defend Gaza! The New Warsaw Ghetto” to “Racism Sucks More than the Cats Movie”—demonstrators gathered at the park in view of the Holocaust Museum LA and listened as multiple speakers criticized Israel, linking the hardships endured by Palestinians living under occupation to the police-involved brutality facing African-American communities in the U.S.

“We have to be reminded of the power of joint struggle, of standing side-by-side, walking together through the fight,” said a speaker from a group called Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM). “In this way when we stand against police brutality here in the U.S., we are standing against police brutality worldwide, including in Palestine.”

PYM is a self-described “transnational, independent, grassroots movement of Palestinian and Arab youth struggling for the liberation of our homeland and our people.”

The PYM speaker – this reporter was unable to learn his name – said his organization two weeks ago participated in a demonstration against Israel that “shut down the streets of Los Angeles to stand with Palestine and against the Zionist’s regime all-out assault on the Palestinian people. We expected a crowd of about maybe 2,000 to show up, and instead … we were met with a historic turnout of 25,000 people in Los Angeles.

“The growing number in our movement is a testament to the changing tide of public opinion as Palestinians regain control of our narrative and Israel becomes increasingly unable to hide the reality of settler colonialism and ethnic cleaning upon which the Zionist state was created and upon which it continues to be built everyday,” he said.

Lulu Hammad, an organizer with Yalla Indivisible, also spoke. Her group describes itself as “a grassroots group committed to fighting for progressive values, centering Palestinian rights, the Black, Indigenous, and people of color communities.”

During her remarks, Hammond accused Israeli soldiers of perpetrating sexual violence against Palestinian women in 1947 and 1948 and singled out the academic, Mordechai Kedar, for arguing in favor of rape against Palestinian women as a deterrent against Palestinian terrorism.

“Just as they occupy the land, they think they can occupy our bodies,” she said.

She also denounced “the dominant patriarchal culture in which we live in Palestine. So, yes, when we are talking about settler colonialism, we are talking about sexual abuse, we’re talking about all these concepts—the supremacy, patriarchy, they are all interconnected, and the root to that is to sort of bring it down, all down!”

Rather than questioning Hammond’s claim about Israeli soldiers committing acts of sexual violence against Palestinian women—Kedar’s statements were taken out of context—the crowd of people applauded after she was finished speaking, with one person in the crowd even yelling “F-ck Israel!”

The demonstration—which was nonviolent—was an example of intersectionality, a phenomenon of communities with seemingly little in common coming together and building coalitions through a feeling of similar oppression and shared struggle.

The event was promoted in a flyer distributed in the days leading up to it as “Abolish State Terror: From Colombia and L.A., to Palestine and Beyond. Fight like Colombia, Resist like Palestine, Abolish like BLM.”

While there was no pro-Israel counter-protest on Saturday at Pan Pacific Park, father and daughter Barry and Hannah Poltorak turned out with homemade signs saying Hamas was anti-LGBT, anti-women and against peaceful coexistence.

In an interview, Barry Poltorak said it was hypocritical to support a movement like Black Lives Matter and not stand up against anti-Semitism.

“The Black Lives movement stands up for race, stands up for religion and yet they stand up for everything except Jews and Zionist or Israel, and I think it’s just a ridiculous hypocrisy,” he said.

“The Black Lives movement stands up for race, stands up for religion and yet they stand up for everything except Jews and Zionist or Israel, and I think it’s just a ridiculous hypocrisy.”

Hannah, 18, who attended Shalhevet High School and will be starting at Louisiana State University in the fall as a sophomore, said she was frustrated by how so many of her peers on social media have stood with Black Lives Matter and Asian-Americans in response to hate against those communities but how few of them have spoken in support of Jews despite recent increases in anti-Semitism.

“When kids my age are posting on their [Instagram] stories about being active and BLM and Asian hate and things like that and these movements, I’ve never seen the Jewish sentiment, because Jews are minorities, and so when people are standing for these other movements, I am missing that part in that free speech,” Hannah said. “I want to see people stand up for Jews as well because, of course, there is anti-Semitism, and so I want to see that change because no one is standing up for Jews except for Jews.”