Woman arrested after stomping on American flag from Miami Beach bagel shop – NBC 6 South Florida

An arrest has been made after a woman was caught on video stomping on an Israel-American flag and an American flag last December.

Bagel Time Cafe on Alton Road has been vandalized three times since the Israel-Hamas war broke out. In one of the incidents, surveillance video caught a woman assessing the flags — one Israeli-American flag and then a second American flag — then she rips them down and drags them to the middle of the road where she stomps on them.

The woman caught in the video has now been identified as Yasmeen Hasan Al-Akhras.

Al-Akhras has been charged with petit theft. She was arrested on a warrant in Pennsylvania and later turned herself in to the Miami Beach Police Department.

Her attorney stated in court that there is no evidence that proves Al-Akhras knew that the owner of the store was Jewish.

“I believe that there is no evidence, nothing there to suggest that my client was where the owner of the store was in fact Jewish,” said her lawyer while arguing that the accusation that this act would have been a hate crime by his client was false. “It was more of a political statement than anything else.”

“This lady, she is the lowest, compared to anyone else that was involved in any of it, she was the lowest, intentionally, she knew what she was doing, she knew what she was coming to do, she did it with hate.” cafe owner Josh Nodel said.

This isn’t the first time somebody has desecrated Nodel’s restaurant, which caters to an orthodox Jewish clientele.

The signs and flags went up shortly after the Israel-Hamas war broke out. In one incident, a man took a knife and slashed his sign outside reading how the restaurant stands with Israel.

The man who slashed the sign has also been arrested and charged.