The mayor called it a ‘vicious, targeted antisemitic attack.’ So why did the men accused get sentenced to a museum visit?
A court transcript muddies the narrative around an anti-Israel protest in Los Angeles
Protesters shout anti-Israel slogans in front of a Los Angeles restaurant shortly before a violent confrontation with Jewish and non-Jewish diners. May 18, 2021. Photo by YouTube
Senior Columnist Rob Eshman August 14, 2023
A lot of people are having a very hard time understanding why a Los Angeles judge sentenced two pro-Palestinian protesters who beat up Jews at a restaurant to visit a museum.
After speaking with the defense attorney and the district attorney’s office, and reading the court transcripts, I think I can help: What we all thought had happened was not what it seemed. The sentence was fair, maybe even a little harsh. And we American Jews need a better way of understanding what antisemitism is, and isn’t.
The men, Xavier Pabon, 32, and Samer Jayylusi, 37, were charged with two counts of felony assault and a hate crime and faced up to eight years in prison.
But on June 9, Superior Court Judge Laura Priver sentenced Pabon and Jayylusi, who pled no contest to the charges, to 80 hours of bias and cultural sensitivity counseling, an eight-hour program at the Museum of Tolerance and two years probation.
Jewish groups decried the punishment.
“They should also have been sentenced to serve time in prison,” said Roz Rothstein, founder of StandWithUs. The leader of the local Anti-Defamation League chapter said the sentence “does not help the greater community heal.”
“I was furious,” Liora Rez from Stop Antisemitism told Fox News Digital.
“What the heck does a Holocaust museum have to do with this?” said Rez, who called the defendants “monsters.”
If your only understanding of what happened outside Sushi Fumi restaurant on the evening of May 18, 2021, comes from initial news reports, press conferences and statements from Jewish leaders and politicians, the outrage makes sense.
Video clips replayed across social media show a group of anti-Israel protesters rushing from a vehicle toward diners, then fighting with them, beating one to the ground.
It certainly looks like what then-Mayor Eric Garcetti took to Twitter the next day to call an “organized, antisemitic attack.”
But Garcetti and others spoke before a police investigation had begun, much less been completed. The lack of facts created an abyss between what Jews believed should happen to the accused, and what actually happened.
Who said ‘f-you’ first?
Before a story that once dominated headlines disappears for good, it’s worth trying to answer at least two questions: Did a couple of vicious antisemites get off with a slap on the wrist?
Or did Jewish groups and politicians, fueled by superheated social media and a worrying upswing in antisemitism, turn a street fight into a pogrom?
When they appeared before Judge Priver at an Aug. 21, 2022, preliminary hearing, Pabon and Jayylusi were facing charges that could land them in prison for two years.
In press accounts, the men were identified as part of a group of anti-Israel protesters driving through LA, waving Palestinian flags and shouting anti-Israel slogans, before stopping their cars outside Sushi Fumi restaurant and attacking diners they identified as Jewish.
But in the course of the testimony, the evidence undermined the idea that only one side provoked the violence, and that the two men charged were the actual offenders.
Under questioning, Matthew Haverin, one of the key Jewish witnesses, retracted his previous public assertions that the pro-Palestinian protesters used a megaphone to ask the diners, “Are you Jewish?”
When Mark Kleiman, Pabon’s attorney, asked Haverin, who was under oath, if he heard that statement, Haverin said, “I don’t think so.”
Haverin also acknowledged that the people on the sidewalk launched glass bottles or plates at the protestors, though he couldn’t say which side started throwing objects first.
Who started it? became a key issue in the hearing. Melissa Gonzalez, the Los Angeles Police Department detective who investigated the incident, testified that she saw cuts on Pabon’s leg caused by flying glass.
According to the video evidence, shattered glass is heard, after which the anti-Israel group, whose vehicles are stopped at a red light, leave their cars to confront the diners.
“The first person that said — excuse my language — ‘Fuck you’ was from the restaurant, correct?” Kleiman asked Gonzalez.
“Based on the video it sounds as if it came from the restaurant, yes,” said the detective.
“And based on your investigation there were bottles being thrown from this restaurant toward the caravan?”
“It sounds like it, yes.”
“And it was after these bottles were thrown that people from the caravan exited from their cars?” asked Kleiman.
“Yes.”
“And someone yelled, ‘Mher got crazy?’” Kleiman asked.
“Yes,” answered Gonzalez.
A hero’s story under question
“Mher” is Mher Hagopian, an Armenian Christian wedding photographer who was dining with Jewish friends when the brawl began. Jewish groups lauded Hagopian as a hero after the fight—he was a guest of honor at a 2021 gala fundraiser for StandWithUs.
But under questioning, the detective and others acknowledged what the video shows: Hagopian ran over 80 feet to confront the protesters, picked up a heavy metal stanchion and began swinging it at Jayylusi.
Witnesses, including Haverin, testified that at the time Hagopian swung at Jayylusi, Jayylusi was walking away with his back turned.
After Hagopian struck and punched Jayylusi, Jayylusi turned, grabbed the stanchion, and punched Hagopian in the face.
“It was after my client was hit by the metal pole and punched in the face that my client engaged in a fight with Mher?” asked Kleiman.
“Yes,” said Gonzalez.
Kleiman and Pedro Cortes, the deputy public defender representing Jayylusi, argued that based on the evidence, the event was a case of “mutual combat,” a legal term that translates as a street brawl.
Paul Kim, the deputy district attorney, asserted that because Jayylusi and Pabon “had taken sides in a long-standing ethnic divide between Palestinians and the Israelis” they were “interested in a confrontation.” The hearing record makes clear that the two men had not violently confronted any pro-Israel groups or diners during the week they engaged in daily protests.
Kim referred my questions about the case to a DA spokesperson, who said, “As attorneys we are prohibited by professional ethics on commenting publicly on a judge’s action.”
Meanwhile the DA presented no evidence the men who pleaded no contest to a hate crime actually expressed hate toward Jews, while the defense, in Pabon’s case, showed the opposite.
“Xavier has always shown my family and I respect, he knows we are Jewish,” Moshe Levkowitz, 87, a longtime friend of the Pabon family, wrote to the judge prior to sentencing.
During the sentencing, none of the people who came forward as victims or witnesses to the incident appeared in court.
“I’m not saying that is a comment on what actually happened,” Kleiman told me in a phone interview. “But it’s certainly a comment on their enthusiasm for going to court over it.”
Julie Gerchik, a litigation partner at Glaser Weil who is representing Hagopian in a civil suit, declined to comment on the fact that the victims failed to appear in court, citing the pending civil litigation.
Keeping the conflict there
In 2021, following the incident itself, Gerchik did, correctly, point out that it took place at a time of rising antisemitism.
“Whether on college campuses, in houses of worship, at Jewish day schools, or out while dining, Jews are being targeted and terrorized at an increasing rate. Enough is enough,” she said at the time.
Those increased incidents, which came during a spike in violence between the Israeli army and Palestinians in Gaza, set the community on edge, understandably.
That explains the intense coverage this incident got, the desire to see someone punished, and the understandable fear created by a viral video of fighting between Jews and Palestinians and their supporters.
But the actual testimony raises disturbing questions that have nothing to do with Jew hatred: How should Jews and their supporters respond to provocative anti-Israel demonstrations? How can sympathetic public officials, from the mayor on down, help fight antisemitism without inflaming the situation? How can we all work to keep violence 10,000 miles away from spilling onto our streets?
The Jewish community portrayed what happened on La Cienega Boulevard that night as a sign of its victimhood. “This month, we recall the antisemitic attack on Jewish diners in Los Angeles,” the ADL recently tweeted.
But the way the case was publicized and prosecuted was, if anything, a mark of the community’s power.
The mayor, the DA, and the media all stood by the Jewish community. Two men who participated in the anti-Israel protest have now been sentenced for the La Cienega confrontation, but whoever shouted curses and threw objects at them initially — likely Jewish advocates — got away with it.
It’s hard to say it’s a bad thing, given a 2,000-year history of antisemitism, when the fingertips of power tip the scales of justice toward the Jewish community. Maybe the punishment in itself will deter future anti-Israel caravans from rolling across LA.
But it’s just as likely, in the long run, that a minority’s best protection lies in the fairest possible dispensing of justice. The evidence presented under oath undermines any certainty that what happened on May 18, 2021, was an antisemitic attack. That makes Jews the victims of the battle on La Cienega, just not in the way we thought.
Correction: The original version of this article stated the defendants faced two years in prison. They faced eight.
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