Among the casualties of last night’s violence was a beloved restaurant that has long been an institution in Acre, Uri Buri, which was torched by Arab rioters on Tuesday night; but its defiant owner, Uri Yirmias, vowed that this hostile act and a night of terror would not break him.
Riots erupted in many Arab-Jewish communities in Israel during a long night as rockets were fired into the South and the Tel Aviv area, and Uri Buri, which is located in an ancient stone building overlooking the harbor, was the most prominent landmark to be hit by the violence.
Yirmias, who always emphasized that the acclaimed fish restaurant and the Efendi Hotel, which he also owns, were models of coexistence, with Arabs and Jews working and dining alongside each other, told Radio North on Wednesday, “I was inside the restaurant, masked men came and broke the windows. We thought it was over and in the meantime I got a message that they were trying to attack the hotel and I ran there.... I saw at the hotel that it was already full of soot and burn marks, and one guest was badly burned and was trying to get out.”
When he got back to the restaurant, which he opened 32 years ago, he put out the flames himself before the fire department arrived.
“The damage is great, but I’m not angry; anger inhibits. I did not recognize the attackers, because they were masked, but there are enough good people in Acre who have come to lend a hand,” he told the radio show.
“We take this difficult incident very seriously and expect the Israeli police, who are in the city with increased forces, to take a hard line against the lawbreakers,” Acre Mayor Shimon Lankri said in a press conference.
Asked whether the restaurant was targeted specifically – possibly because it was so closely associated with coexistence – Lankri told The Jerusalem Post, “a large number of Jewish-owned businesses were the target. The incident was completely nationalistic.”
But as Yirmias prepared to spend the day sorting through the debris of his life’s work, he vowed: “We will renovate and reopen.... Nothing will break me.”
The outspoken, bearded Yirmias, who has long been one of the city’s most colorful residents, ironically told the Post’s David Brinn in 2017: “You won’t see police on the streets here, because we don’t need them. Acre is truly an example of coexistence between all of its residents.”
Speaking to the website Departures, in 2014, he said over a glass of arak, “Food and sex – these are the basic ingredients of survival.”
Given his achievements and his personality, it seems likely that his will to survive will help him with the daunting task of undoing the damage from a night of hate-filled destruction.