Posted on 08/17/2026 12:33:52 PM PDT by MeanWestTexan
There’s not much to say here, since the woman posted the full account of the encounter on Facebook. Then the video was uploaded. Jessica Watson just wanted to get her eyebrows done at a salon in Alexandria, Virginia. As is common at these establishments, a conversation started, but when she mentioned her Jewish heritage, the owner of the salon, an Afghan, decided to go full terrorist on her. Jessica got kicked out.
I’m nauseated even having to write this, but I won’t be quiet about it. I want my friends—Jewish and non-Jewish—to know what I experienced at a salon in Alexandria, Virginia, because I refuse to let antisemitism become normalized in our country.
I went to the salon yesterday to get my eyebrows done. The esthetician turned out to be Afghan. I was delighted, since I just finished writing a novel based on true stories that is partly set in Afghanistan. I told her about the amazing Afghans I interviewed for the book. We talked warmly about our shared love of Afghan poetry and food. Then she asked me to tell her more about the premise of my novel.
My story is about a Muslim Afghan refugee and the son of Jewish immigrants who forge an unlikely friendship in post-9/11 Alabama, only to find that their shared gift for languages draws them into America’s shadow war in Afghanistan. I joked about how I went down a rabbit hole studying Islam and Sufism to create the Muslim character, but that I at least had an easier time sketching the Jewish half-Israeli character, since I’m Jewish and half-Israeli myself.
The woman stopped short. Then, “Get out of my shop.”
“Excuse me?”
“I can’t provide service to an Israeli. It’s against my political beliefs. You need to leave immediately. And there is no such thing as Israel. It’s Palestine. A bunch of Jews from New York showed up a few years ago and stole the land from the Arabs.”
(A bunch of Jews from New York showed up and…what?! This would’ve been funny if it wasn’t so insane.)
Shocked, I began packing up my purse to leave. The woman took out her phone and began recording me while chanting, “Free, free Palestine!” I asked her to stop recording me. She said I had signed a photo / video waiver and she had every right to record me. She then demanded I apologize for the genocide.
I told her there is no genocide, I wasn’t apologizing for anything, and that she was totally out of line for subjecting a customer to blatantly racist harassment. (By the way, denying service to someone based on their nationality is illegal in this country.) I also told her she needed to give me a full refund, since I hadn’t received the service I’d booked. She told me she was keeping the money and that I should be ashamed of myself and my people.
I was wearing a T-shirt she had given me for the treatment, so I asked her to stop recording while I changed back into my own clothes. She didn’t. I turned my back to the camera and changed anyway while she continued chanting “Free Palestine!” I’m pretty sure whatever waiver I signed didn’t give her permission to record me while I was half-naked.
I left the salon completely shaken. I cried all the way home. I cried for my kids and the uncertainty of their future as Jews in the United States. For all the lies we can’t possibly fight. For our people having to put up with this total bullsh*t.
We don’t deserve this.
I’m not naïve about the fact that the majority of Afghans are Muslim and that relations between Jews and Muslims are highly tense right now. The irony of this situation is that we had spent the previous minutes bonding over the very culture I had spent years trying to understand and portray with empathy, only for that curiosity and goodwill to be stamped on the moment she learned I was Jewish.
In the meantime, I already contacted my bank. They immediately refunded the money and contacted the woman to let her know they would be withdrawing the funds based on the incident I reported. I would also like to report what happened to any appropriate authorities and organizations in the D.C. area. If anyone knows specifically where an incident like this should be reported, please let me know.
Likely not much legal action will come of it (unless she is dumb enough to post the video), but I want a record of what happened. I want to at least do my part to make sure this kind of discrimination isn’t quietly accepted as the new normal for Jews in the United States.
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How about we ship Afghans back?
Easy lawsuit.
We let these people in why?
They’re all savages. Kick the out. Every last damned one of them.
L
This is an Afghan, not an Arab, Iranian or a Turk.
Muslim.
And people wonder why there cannot be peace in the middle east..........
Honestly I am sadly amazed at the amount of hatred for the Jews that seems to be all around me in Rochester New York.
Its the same cadre of people who embrace the DSA and hate our country.
Very frustrating, sad situation.
Because they were all “translators” — N’Sheet
Because they were all “translators” — N’Sheet
Why are you going to an Afghan Eyebrow Trimmer?
Can’t find an American shop?
Buy American.
Start there.
Honestly her book is pretty cringe to begin with. Liberal “understanding” and “finding common ground* with alien and enemy cultures. Hope this taught her a lesson that her premise was complete B.S.
I’d go back with a suicide vest on holding a trigger switch hollering “Praise be to Jesus, Praise be to Jesus”. Then laugh my azz off and say “How do f—kers like it?”
I never did find the video of the incident, it was just the woman talking.
Will still vote Democrat though.
It certainly would be actionable here in CA. Actual damages and, if I remember correctly, a statutory penalty of about five grand. Having a cause of action is not like winning the lottery. Whether it’s with pursuing with this kind of payout is for the aggrieved patron to decide
Jews didnt just “show up” and steal land from Arabs.
British Foreign Secy Arthur Balfour issued the “Balfour Declaration” in Nov 1917. Britain issued this public statement during World War I to secure Jewish support for the Allied war effort, influence Jewish opinion in the U.S. and Russia, and establish a pro-British ally to protect the Suez Canal.
Key Reasons for the Declaration
Wartime Support: Britain hoped to rally global Zionism and Jewish communities to back the Allied powers against the Ottoman Empire.
Geographic Strategy: Leaders believed a friendly, allied population in Palestine would secure vital imperial communication lines near Egypt.
Ideological Beliefs: Key British leaders, including Balfour himself, held personal and religious sympathies for the idea of a Jewish return.
The 1917 letter to Lord Rothschild promised a “national home” rather than a sovereign state, while stating that non-Jewish communities’ civil and religious rights should be protected.
The text was later written into the British Mandate for Palestine approved by the League of Nations. This foundational backing advanced the Zionist movement, indirectly paving the way for the United Nations partition and the creation of Israel in 1948.
The declaration called for safeguarding the civil and religious rights for the Palestinian Arabs, who composed the vast majority of the citizenry.
Pronto.
My thoughts exactly.
That part flew right over her head. Lay down with dogs you get fleas.
I second the motion. Why are these primitive goat humpers even allowed
in the Land of the Free? Afghans are fossils from the 12th Century.
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