A Great Neck Everfresh Supermarket employee was fired on Tuesday after he allegedly made remarks Monday against the state of Israel while working at the store, according to an e-mail from a company representative.
“The views expressed about the state of Israel came from one Everfresh employee,” said supermarket owner Abraham Banda. “He just started working here recently in a part-time role, and none of us here were aware that he felt that way.”
In his e-mail to Everfresh customers, Banda did not specify the name of the employee who made the comments or what was said.
Great Neck resident Nahid Akins said she asked a cashier in the store at 533 Middle Neck Road to change the music to Israeli music, to honor those in Israel during the recent attacks on the country by Hamas, a Palestinian Sunni Islamist organization that has governed the Gaza Strip since 2007.
The employee allegedly turned around to Akins and said in Hebrew “Israel is not our country”.
Akins said she “was stunned.”
“I said [to the employee] the Hamas is firing on Israel, they want to destroy Israel or take over. How could you say such thing,” she said.
Akins said the employee then turned to her and said “let them, it’s not our country. Israel does not exist.”
The employee was fired the next day, Banda said.
He said the store’s management team is “embarrassed that it happened in our store” and that “the views that [the employee] expressed are his and his alone.”
“We apologize to the entire community about the incident,” Banda added. “We at Everfresh love the state of Israel.”
He said the management team of the store has strong ties to Israel.
“We support Israel regularly by buying as many Israeli products as possible,” Banda said. “We play Israeli music, along with other Jewish music, on a daily basis.”
He said many of the managers come from Israel and that some, including himself, have family who have visited the area recently.
Israeli forces have been engaged in an increasingly violent military confrontation with Hamas following the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers by men in the West Bank who Israel alleges belong to Hamas, followed by the kidnapping and murder of a Palestinian teenager, reportedly by an anti-Arab group of Israelis.
Banda said many of the people who work at the store have family in Israel right now.
“My daughter and her 8-month old baby, who live in Israel, both spent a lot of time yesterday in a bomb shelter,” Banda said. “The same is true of my son, who is currently studying in yeshiva in Israel.”
