The Indypendent60%
Targeted: An NYC Congressman accused Poetica Coffee —of Antisemitism Bigotry Came to Avenge Him. 5%
By Elsie Carson65%
8/3/2026, 4:50:22 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 14 faulty reasoning types, including Confirmation Bias, Hasty Generalization, and Negativity Bias, with Framing Effect as the most egregious example at 9.6% saturation with 207 hits. Analysis detected 850 faulty-reasoning hits from 2,148 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 15.3% and a BS Rank of 5% (24,982 of 26,304 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 95.00% of the article peer group.
Pro-Israel death threats are now a regular occurrence at Poetica, a Brooklyn coffee shop.
If they’re not sent directly to the owner, they mostly end up at the Williamsburg location, where the baristas read them for fun.
One, purporting to be by a member of Israel’s military, threatened to pay a visit to the shop this summer.
Another, in Hebrew, read, “Whore son of a bitch die of cancer and diseases.”
Another was smeared with feces.
One of them, handwritten in red ink and strewn with anti-Asian slurs and epithets, also referred to the staff as “lesbs, Homos communists.”
One barista, whose identity is withheld out of safety concerns, convinced the owner to make a shirt out of the message.
The whole ordeal had been funny to her.
She never felt in danger, she said, because in the United States, “the Zionist angle is fear mongering and less direct action.”
Then they opened an envelope with white powder inside.
Dozens of firefighters and EMTs had to keep her there for hours while they assessed the powder.
The moment harkened back to the days of anthrax attacks in the early 2000s.
“I was just feeling, Oh, I hope we don’t get poisoned, and I get to leave soon,” the barista said.
“The leaving soon did not exactly happen.”
The barista stayed at the shop for five hours with first responders and law enforcement before she could go home.
They weren’t allowed to open letters anymore.
The death threats are part of what seems like the never-ending fallout from Representative Dan Goldman’s visit to Poetica’s Park Slope location on June 21.
Goldman, who represents the 10 th congressional district covering Lower Manhattan and western parts of Brooklyn, said he had taken his daughter there to use the bathroom.
The staff didn’t ask him to pay to use the bathroom, but he ordered a coffee anyway, tipped the barista, and left without incident.
But the barista didn’t want to accept Goldman’s money.
So she texted the owner, Parviz Mukhamadkulov.
Mukhamadkulov agreed with her.
In fact, he told her he would refund the whole purchase.
“Fuck this guy,” he later said.
But he went further, taking to Instagram.
He shared an image from security footage of Goldman in the Poetica shop, along with a photo indicating that he had been refunded for $9.82.
Underneath he added a caption, tagging Goldman: “We see that you stopped by our shop today for a coffee.
Do you see how it doesn’t taste like genocide juice?
Or are you still having a hard time telling the difference?
“See, here at Poetica, we don’t serve racists, fascists, homophobes, genocide enablers, or anyone in between.
Too bad we didn’t recognize you right away, or we would have turned you away.
We issued you a refund—we don’t need your money (it’s probably coming from AIPAC anyways).
Enjoy your loss on Tuesday.
Don’t ever come to Poetica.”
Mukhamadkulov, 36, didn’t set out to be the owner of a Brooklyn coffee shop.
He was a mechanic in the laundry business, mostly fixing washing machines.
But in 2011, he lost that job, and was evicted from his apartment.
Except for the occasions he crashed on friends’ couches, he spent half that year living out of his car.
To wash himself, he went to the same Dunkin’ Donuts bathroom every morning.
The staff never complained.
“That kind of had me thinking” about a coffee shop, Mukhamadkulov said.
When Mukhamadkulov was able to settle into a new apartment, he started thinking about buying a Dunkin’ Donuts location, but knew he couldn’t afford a franchise.
At the same time, he was doing well as a mechanic, running his own company with contracts with city hospitals and nursing homes, as well as a dry-cleaning business on Smith Street in Cobble Hill.
Then the Covid-19 pandemic hit New York City in 2020.
Hospitals were overburdened with new patients, and nursing home deaths were skyrocketing.
Washing machines would have to wait.
That left Mukhamadkulov in a difficult spot.
He didn’t have a lot of money at the time, and his partner was pregnant with their son.
But he still had the dry cleaners.
“So I was like, If I want to do a coffee shop, now is the time,” Mukhamadkulov said.
“And that’s how I opened the first shop.”
Poetica’s success came in part from the de Blasio administration’s Covid-related relief for businesses, Mukhamadkulov said.
But he also felt the pandemic had brought a strong sense of community and support for small businesses.
And as other businesses had to shut down under the weight of the pandemic, Poetica was able to grow, with now seven locations across Brooklyn.
“There is a yearning for this kind of place where people can come, and it’s a simple act of just ordering coffee,” he said.
“It was hard in 2020.”
He recalled a customer during the pandemic saying, “This is the first normal thing I did in the last three months.”
“And they would cry,” he said, “and we would cry.”
That sense of community extended to the staff, the Williamsburg barista said.
Having worked in many coffee shops, she thought Poetica was “better than normal workplaces.”
Mukhamadkulov “tries to take care of everybody,” she said.
“He just makes a pretty solid effort.”
Mukhamadkulov did not expect Goldman to reply.
As a constituent, he said, he regularly emailed the congressman and left comments on his posts.
Mukhamadkulov followed Instagram accounts like “Dump Dan Goldman” and “NY-10 Neighbors for Palestine,” which regularly feature videos of pro-Palestinian constituents challenging Goldman on his Israel policies and calling on Congress to recognize the genocide in Gaza.
In those videos, Goldman has expressed that he does not trust the official death toll of Gazans since October 2023 and dismissed efforts to block arms sales to Israel.
Mukhamadkulov, who has been a support of the Palestinian cause and human rights “since I know myself,” found it disrespectful that Goldman continued to support the genocide, despite clear opposition from people living in the district.
“He does not talk to us,” Mukhamadkulov said.
“He acts as if we are begging, and it’s up to him to decide if he wants to have a conversation with us or not.”
Mukhamadkulov realized things may be different this time when Goldman replied with his campaign’s Instagram, rather than the official government account Poetica had tagged.
“I’m sorry to see this post,” the comment from the campaign’s account read.
“The barista could not have been nicer to my 7-yr-old daughter and me.”
“I hope you at least make sure she gets the tip that she deserved,” he added.
The post went viral, and things got out of control for Mukhamadkulov.
In just hours, hate messages began to pour in, accusing Poetica of being antisemitic in its opposition to Goldman.
Fake Yelp reviews for Poetica’s Smith Street location accused the establishment of having rodents, dirty tables or stale food.
Media outlets swarmed the Williamsburg Poetica under the false impression that it was the location Goldman had visited.
The Trump administration’s Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division announced an investigation into Poetica for potential discrimination.
The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, a civil rights organization now representing Poetica and Mukhamadkulov, called the investigation “an unconstitutional effort to punish protected political speech.”
The next day, the day before the primaries, Goldman joined CNN to discuss the incident.
“It’s really dangerous when people start conflating the actions of the Israeli government with American Jews who have absolutely nothing to do with what’s going on in Israel, and the rise of antisemitism, because of what is happening in the Middle East, here in the United States is really dangerous and is escalating significantly.”
He noted that he did not support the DOJ investigation into Poetica, preferring instead that they investigate “antisemitism against people who do not have a platform,” including Jewish students on university campuses, where pro-Palestinian protests and encampments surged after the Gaza genocide began in 2023.
The next day, June 23, Goldman would go on to lose the Democratic primary to Brad Lander by 32 points, the former city comptroller and Jewish liberal Zionist who opposes selling “offensive” arms to Israel.
Mukhamadkulov has expressed support for Lander’s campaign.
Lander previously told The New York Times , “Politicizing our coffee shops — it’s not a great idea.”
When reached for comment about the death threats, a campaign spokesperson said, “Brad strongly condemns any threats of violence.”
In hindsight, the attacks appeared to make sense to the Poetica staff and their supporters.
They’d seen it all before.
“That’s their M.O.,” the Williamsburg barista said of Israel supporters.
“They’ll cling on to anything that anybody does and make it a show.
Especially with the election stuff.”
Rafael Shimunov, a longtime customer who later bonded with Mukhamadkulov over their shared Uzbek heritage, also suggested that the post would not have gotten such attention if Goldman hadn’t been losing the primary election.
He accused Goldman of “activating the most bigoted section” of his base “in hopes of changing his luck with this election.”
“And [he] then lost the election,” he said.
“Doesn’t say a word about Poetica, moves on completely because it’s useless to him now.
But now Parviz is set to pay that bill — for God knows how long that he’s going to have to pay — for how Goldman purposely conflated antisemitism with Parviz’s protest of his actual material support as a congressman for genocide.”
Goldman could not be reached for comment.
As a Jewish refugee and activist who has supported the Palestinian cause through his work with anti-Zionist organizations like If Not Now and Jewish Voice For Peace, Shimunov was familiar with the attacks Poetica now faces, having seen them come for himself and his colleagues.
He dismissed accusations that Mukhamadkulov had said anything close to antisemitic.
“He’s actually extremely careful and thoughtful about that,” Shimunov said.
When protesters denouncing Poetica demonstrated outside the Williamsburg location, a local business owner organized counter-protesters.
Neighbors came inside each location to check on the staff.
Shimunov helped Mukhamadkulov get in contact with lawyers to defend himself from the DOJ discrimination investigation and organized members of the community who wanted to express support.
“They organized themselves,” Mukhamadkulov said.
“They showed up.”
Betty Yu, a filmmaker who regularly patrons Poetica, had not met Mukhamadkulov before the incident, but as a longtime supporter of Palestinian liberation, she joined the community efforts to check in on Poetica’s staff soon after the incident.
As a parent, she felt strongly for Mukhamadkulov, whose son had been exposed to death threats.
“Seeing how shook up he was, it really breaks my heart,” Yu said about Mukhamadkulov.
“He’s just standing up for what he believes in.”
She added that Goldman had been aware of voters’ frustrations with his stance on Israel since the genocide began in 2023, but has only doubled down on that agenda.
“People can see right through Dan Goldman,” she said.
Mukhamadkulov temporarily took down the Poetica Instagram account to delete photos he’d posted there of his son.
Some of the hate mail had taunted him with those pictures, including with an AI-generated depiction of him and his son dressed as Hasidic Jews.
Others have targeted him with anti-Asian, Islamophobic, xenophobic and anticommunist attacks.
He has had to get a restraining order against one person, a 71-year-old man who had threatened in texts to attack him and his family.
He is working with the FBI — the bureau overseen by the same Justice Department now investigating him for discrimination — to get orders of protection against others who have threatened him.
But he never took down the post banning Goldman, despite media reports to the contrary.
He stood by what he said, and except for the white powder incident, hasn’t had to shut down the store.
Customers continue to come in as normal, drinking coffee, typing on laptops and scanning the bookshelves.
At the Park Slope location, a Palestinian flag hangs behind the counter.
Mukhamadkulov has turned the situation in his head over and over, trying to understand what happened.
The idea that Goldman turned the post into a political opportunity made sense to him, but it wasn’t a satisfying answer.
The real reason, he proposed, was that the Israel lobby’s ability to wield influence in American politics is collapsing (see sidebar, P TK), and that’s being reflected in how anti-Israel candidates prevail in elections despite the influx of money being injected into their opponents’ campaigns.
“People are tired,” he said.
“The future of this government, future of this country, is being decided in coffee shops by just regular people who are tired, are tired of this politics, and it will continue happening, no matter how much they try to silence.
This has already started.
It’s well underway, and it’s going to happen.”
Speakers
6speakers35%attributed speech1,402writer words
Selected voice
44%flagged-word coverageDan Goldman
123 attributed words16% of attributed speech28% writer coverage
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