SF Police Investigate Marina District Assault as Hate Crime After Antisemitic Slurs

Updated 11:30 a.m. Tuesday

San Francisco police said Monday that they’ve launched a hate crime investigation into an attack in the city’s Marina District after reports the assailants spewed antisemitic speech.

An unidentified man was waiting for an Uber with a friend at 2:20 a.m. Friday near Fillmore and Moulton streets when a man near them reportedly started shouting, “F— Jews, free Palestine.”

The remarks were shouted by the unidentified man for about a minute before a woman, who is a friend of the victim, told the man that she was Jewish and asked him to leave, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. 

When the victim’s friend tried to pull him away, the situation quickly escalated into an unprovoked assault, police said. Other men jumped in and kicked the victim, repeating the anti-Jewish remarks and laughing, the friend told the Chronicle.

The men also pushed to the ground and kicked an employee from the nearby Balboa Cafe who tried to intervene, the woman said, adding that the attack lasted about 30 seconds.

The victim suffered a swollen lip from multiple blows to the head.

Teresa Drenick, deputy director of the American Jewish Committee, said the country is currently experiencing the worst surge of anti-Jewish hate in decades.

Two weeks ago in Boulder, Colorado, a man hurled Molotov cocktails into a crowd of marchers who were calling for the release of Israeli hostages.

Less than two weeks earlier, a young couple was shot to death while leaving an event at the Jewish Museum in Washington. And after last week’s anti-ICE protests in San Francisco, Manny’s — a cafe, bar and event space — was vandalized with graffiti and smashed windows.

“The Jewish community that I speak to here in the Bay Area is terrified,” Drenick said. “We are seeing the vandalism. We are seeing hate speech. We’re seeing the assaults that are taking place across the country and here at home — looking at the FBI data — reading what is happening in the news, and it culminates into this sense of our community being targeted.”

Antisemitic hate crimes more than doubled between 2021 and 2023, according to the FBI.

Drenick called for the Bay Area to join together and condemn the attacks.

“We need our allies, our elected representatives, our faith leaders and our neighbors to stand up and say this is not acceptable and this form of hate and bigotry is dangerous and must be condemned in the strongest of words,” she said.

SFPD arrested Juan Diazrivas, 36, in association with the attack and booked him in county jail on assault charges. Another man, who was not identified, was also arrested.