In September 2025, Israeli chef Eyal Shani opened a restaurant in Berlin. By April 2026, it was gone.
The restaurant, Gila & Nancy, did not close because it failed to attract customers or critics. It closed after months of sustained protests, harassment, and threats directed at its staff and patrons. Demonstrators gathered outside. Graffiti invoked violence. Online messages blurred the line between political expression and antisemitic intimidation. Eventually, the pressure achieved its aim.
A restaurant was made to disappear.
It would be tempting to treat this as an isolated incident tied to the broader polarization surrounding the war in Gaza, now months into a ceasefire. But that would deflect from an unsettling truth. What happened to Gila & Nancy shows something more troubling about today’s Germany: A shift in what is tolerated in the public square, and who is no longer defended.
Today, in the capital of Europe’s most powerful economic engine, police are investigating graffiti reading “Kill all Jews,” sprayed onto residential buildings. This is not coded language or debated “river to sea” lingo. It is not shorthand political critique. It is a direct call for violence, splashed on a wall for all to see.
Berlin is not alone. In Cottbus, a swastika was recently displayed in a public setting, a warning signal too few are heeding: Hate symbols once consigned to the dustbin of history are reappearing in everyday life. Germans would be wrong to treat these as disconnected incidents.
They are not disconnected, at least not for Germany’s deeply worried Jews. They did not need the comprehensive 2026 assessment of Jewish communities in Germany describing their “new normal” to understand what is happening. Persistent and growing insecurity has taken hold. A majority of communities report that life has become less safe since October 7, 2023. Only 13% of Jewish communities see a positive future in Germany. Jewish public visibility is declining. Events are being canceled. Solidarity from wider society has clearly eroded.
This is the time for fellow Germans to show solidarity with their Jewish neighbors.
When intimidation shuts down a business, when open calls for violence appear on city streets, and when a minority community begins to withdraw from public life—not by choice, but out of necessity—you have the beginnings of a dangerous road: a future Germany increasingly without Jews.
God forbid: No gas chambers, no Einsatzgruppen, no Nuremberg Laws. Just the slow, steady strangulation of Jewish life caused by burgeoning hatred and dehumanization spread by political extremists infiltrating mainstream politics, antisemitic elements within cultural elites, and Islamist hatred backed by genocidal regimes from Iran to Qatar.
The most powerful blows against German Jews are not slogans chanted, words uttered, or tweets posted. The most powerful weapon is one Jews have little ability to stop: the silence of neighbors, the apathy of the mainstream, the snickering of parts of the media, and a system that too often fails to hold perpetrators of hate accountable.
Across the UK, Scandinavia, France, and Spain, Jews are increasingly targeted with modern blood libels amplified by social media, indifferent courts, and too many silent faith leaders.
Simon Wiesenthal cautioned that the past could return—not necessarily led by a Hitler look-alike.
To defeat the 21st-century scourge of antisemitism, non-Jews must take the lead. And yes, it would make a huge difference across Europe if Germans took the lead.
The challenge facing Germany today is not only ideological. It is whether intimidation will be allowed to shape public life.
The closure of Gila & Nancy was not an accident. It was the result of sustained pressure that ultimately made normal operation impossible for a visibly Israeli business.
That should concern anyone who cares about democratic resilience.
The issue is no longer whether Germany condemns antisemitism in principle. The issue is whether democratic societies can prevent those who practice intimidation from succeeding.
Every time a Jewish or Israeli institution disappears under pressure, a message is sent: Intimidation works.
Such messages spread far beyond one restaurant—to schools, synagogues, universities, and families increasingly questioning how visible they can safely remain.
Berlin, of all places, should understand the danger of such normalization.
No democratic society should accept a situation in which Jews require extraordinary protection simply to participate openly in public life.
The closure of Gila & Nancy is not merely a story about one restaurant.
It is a warning. The real test is whether Germany recognizes it, and whether it is willing to push back.
