Chef Guy Vaknin, the owner of successful vegan restaurants in New York—City Roots, Reverie, Willow, Le Basque, the Sentir sushi chain and Coletta—revealed in a recent interview with Israel Hayom an ongoing campaign of harassment, threats and antisemitic incitement against him.

“They’ve been after me for two years,” he said. “I tried to stay out of politics, but they threatened my children. They even sent me photos of my son. These people are sick.”

Vaknin, who grew up in Sderot, near the Gaza Strip, with a single mother and later immigrated to the U.S. to pursue his culinary dream, described the difficult road to success. As a young man, he served as an infantryman in the Samson Unit before turning to the culinary world after his release from the army.

“I started with a hole in the

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