There is a disturbing controversy in Northern Virginia where Jessica Walton alleges that she went to Karimi Salon in Alexandria to get her eyebrows trimmed, only to be pushed out of the salon after the owner, Fatana Karimi, learned that Walton is Israeli. The incident raises a prior issue discussed on this blog: the right of business owners to refuse service based on political or religious beliefs as a matter of free speech. Walton posted a full account and a video on social media. Karimi, however, may not have a constitutional claim to defend against a discrimination complaint.
In the video, the person identified as Karimi says that she declared on Instagram that she would not serve those who support Israel (She also adds that she got Walton to sign a release for the video):
I have included Walton’s full account below. She said that she was “nauseated” after a pleasant conversation turned nasty when she alluded to be Israeli. She claims that Karimi immediately declared “I can’t provide service to an Israeli. It’s against my political beliefs.”
We previously discussed businesses refusing to prepare cakes, websites, and other products over conflicting religious or political beliefs.
In prior columns, academic articles, and my book, “The Indispensable Right, I discussed the never-ending litigation targeting Jack Phillips, the Christian baker who declined to make cakes that violated his religious beliefs.
The case went all the way to the Supreme Court in what many of us hoped would be a final resolution of this conflict. I had long criticized the framing of the case (and other cases) under the religious clauses rather than treating it as a matter of free speech. In the end, the Supreme Court punted in a maddening 2018 decision that technically ruled in favor of Phillips based on a finding that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission showed anti-religious bias against Phillips.
In 2023, the Supreme Court delivered a major victory for free speech in 303 Creative v. Elenis, when it ruled that Lorie Smith, a Christian website designer, could refuse to provide services for a same-sex marriage. Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote, “the framers designed the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment to protect the ‘freedom to think as you will and to speak as you think.’ … They did so because they saw the freedom of speech ‘both as an end and as a means.’”
Notably, in cases like Masterpiece Cakeshop, Phillips insisted that he would always sell cakes to any couple, including same-sex couples. He only refused to make cakes specifically celebrating same-sex marriages due to his religious views. In this case, Karimi is refusing to perform the same services for Walton due to her identity. Eyebrow trimming does not convey a political or religious viewpoint.
The Virginia Human Rights Act is designed to:
“Safeguard all individuals within the Commonwealth from unlawful discrimination in employment because of race, color, religion, ethnic or national origin, sex, pregnancy, childbirth or related medical conditions, age, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, or military status.”
Karimi is likely to argue that she was not refusing service due to Walton’s religious or national origin but her support for Israel, a political position. That could be difficult to maintain since Walton merely noted that she is part Israeli.
The case is reminiscent of the abusive treatment afforded to Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz at Martha’s Vineyard by a pierogi stand. He was also refused service over his political views.
The line between national origin and religious discrimination versus political discrimination can be tenuous and unclear. Walton would have the advantage in my view under the state law in asserting discrimination. In the video, the owner states it is her national identity that is causing the action: “Get out of my shop. I can’t provide service to an Israeli. It’s against my political beliefs. You need to leave immediately.”
It is not clear if Walton will now move forward with a formal complaint.
Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.”
N.B.: Here is part of Walton’s account:
I’m nauseated even having to write this, but I won’t be quiet about it. I want my friends—Jewish and non-Jewish—to know what I experienced at a salon in Alexandria, Virginia, because I refuse to let antisemitism become normalized in our country.
I went to the salon yesterday to get my eyebrows done. The esthetician turned out to be Afghan. I was delighted, since I just finished writing a novel based on true stories that is partly set in Afghanistan. I told her about the amazing Afghans I interviewed for the book. We talked warmly about our shared love of Afghan poetry and food. Then she asked me to tell her more about the premise of my novel.
My story is about a Muslim Afghan refugee and the son of Jewish immigrants who forge an unlikely friendship in post-9/11 Alabama, only to find that their shared gift for languages draws them into America’s shadow war in Afghanistan. I joked about how I went down a rabbit hole studying Islam and Sufism to create the Muslim character, but that I at least had an easier time sketching the Jewish half-Israeli character, since I’m Jewish and half-Israeli myself.
The woman stopped short. Then, “Get out of my shop.”
“Excuse me?”
“I can’t provide service to an Israeli. It’s against my political beliefs. You need to leave immediately. And there is no such thing as Israel. It’s Palestine. A bunch of Jews from New York showed up a few years ago and stole the land from the Arabs.”
(A bunch of Jews from New York showed up and…what?! This would’ve been funny if it wasn’t so insane.)
Shocked, I began packing up my purse to leave. The woman took out her phone and began recording me while chanting, “Free, free Palestine!” I asked her to stop recording me. She said I had signed a photo / video waiver and she had every right to record me. She then demanded I apologize for the genocide.
I told her there is no genocide, I wasn’t apologizing for anything, and that she was totally out of line for subjecting a customer to blatantly racist harassment. (By the way, denying service to someone based on their nationality is illegal in this country.) I also told her she needed to give me a full refund, since I hadn’t received the service I’d booked. She told me she was keeping the money and that I should be ashamed of myself and my people.
I was wearing a T-shirt she had given me for the treatment, so I asked her to stop recording while I changed back into my own clothes. She didn’t. I turned my back to the camera and changed anyway while she continued chanting “Free Palestine!” I’m pretty sure whatever waiver I signed didn’t give her permission to record me while I was half-naked.
I left the salon completely shaken. I cried all the way home. I cried for my kids and the uncertainty of their future as Jews in the United States. For all the lies we can’t possibly fight. For our people having to put up with this total bullsh*t.
We don’t deserve this.
I’m not naïve about the fact that the majority of Afghans are Muslim and that relations between Jews and Muslims are highly tense right now. The irony of this situation is that we had spent the previous minutes bonding over the very culture I had spent years trying to understand and portray with empathy, only for that curiosity and goodwill to be stamped on the moment she learned I was Jewish.
In the meantime, I already contacted my bank. They immediately refunded the money and contacted the woman to let her know they would be withdrawing the funds based on the incident I reported. I would also like to report what happened to any appropriate authorities and organizations in the D.C. area. If anyone knows specifically where an incident like this should be reported, please let me know.
Likely not much legal action will come of it (unless she is dumb enough to post the video), but I want a record of what happened. I want to at least do my part to make sure this kind of discrimination isn’t quietly accepted as the new normal for Jews in the United States.
We should use every non-violent tool at our disposal to “educate” everyone in the shop owner’s customer base about her actions. Pile shame upon shame on anyone who does business with her. Make her famous. We didn’t start this war of political madness. We didn’t set the rules. Her own claims set us free to express ourselves.
Absolutely. Totally bankrupt that miserable waste of protoplasm.
The owner violated the state law. But the owner had a right to limit customer speech that in other venues might be constitutionally-protected.
The owner should have refunded the money and expressed regret for not having posted or stated her condition for refusal-of-service prior to accepting money.
The victim was lured into an unethical contract for service because the state law failed to recognize the owner’s legitimate right to impose limitations on customer speech.
PT, the shop owner lives by sharia, it’s her political view. She must kill jews. She threw her out based on religion. She cannot kill Ms Walton, yet. The shop owner refused to serve a jew. How clever.
Censor?
I’d evacuate Israel and NEVER have anything to do with Islam, the middle east again. No immigrants as it is impossible for them to understand freedom.
Censor?
Trump’s War On Universities Was Merely A Shakedown
In the case of Brown, investigators, including Ms. Van Erem, were told in April 2025 of a plan to “systematically interview Middle East studies professors, particularly Muslim faculty” to see if they would say anything that could be labeled antisemitic, the document states.
Later that month, the lawyers concluded that the investigation into Brown did not find a violation of Title VI, which prohibits discrimination by institutions that receive federal money.
Ms. Van Erem suggested sending Brown a “closure letter reflecting the team’s conclusion that there were no Title VI violations at Brown, noting such action might restore credibility to the investigations,” the complaint states. But Daniel Shieh, a top official in the health department’s civil rights office, said that administration “higher ups” would not accept closing the investigation because “everything is sequenced,” according to Ms. Van Erem’s account.
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Trump pushed Brown into ‘settling’ for $50 million. Which Brown unwisely agreed to for the sake of moving on. But it now emerges there never any case against Brown!
^ Chinese communist propaganda bot, ignore ^
Anonymous war on everything Trump…
All Americans should boycott terrorist supporters.
In other news, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, 59, beat a 27 year old gay, black, homeless, antisemitic, “Jewish” convert with zero work experience other than being a member of DSA and endorsed by the Bernie bros. Debbie looks like she is over 75.
Wasserman Schultz secures overwhelming win in Broward’s 20th Congressional District
The 20th District includes most of Broward’s African American and Caribbean American communities. The four other candidates in the primary, all of whom are Black, said Wasserman Schultz, who is white, shouldn’t have run there, arguing the district should be represented by someone with the lived experience of such a large bloc of residents.
https://www.sun-sentinel.com/2026/08/18/wasserman-schultz-secures-overwhelming-win-in-browards-20th-congressional-district/
If only enigmainblaque had campaigned for the blacks, Debbie would have never won. Never. ever. they’re a bunch of rayyysists in Broward!!!!
/s
Debbie is Estovir
Estovir you Ugly
Trump’s War On Universities Was Slow-Moving Disaster
At one point, Daniel Shieh, the associate deputy director for the Office for Civil Rights at HHS, “explained that the initial plan was for Harvard to be the first example, but when negotiations broke down, officials tried to make Columbia the example.”
One whistleblower describes the antisemitism investigation as initially focused on medical school commencement ceremonies as graduates engaged in protected free speech around Palestinians. The team was given a memo that cited a New York Post article as the basis for the investigation, noting that launching such a probe “based on a single article was highly unusual.”
When the DOJ attorneys arrived at HHS for their temporary assignment, they noted that HHS staff had been unable to find much evidence of discrimination in their investigation into medical schools, so the department decided to expand the probes into the universities writ large, “one of the first major indications to the DOJ assignees that the investigations were not grounded in law or fact.”
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/6035835-doj-whistleblower-ivy-league-probes/
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These revelations are coming from DOJ whistleblowers. And notice how it all started with an N Y Post article!
^ Chinese bot (not human) programmed to spout anti-American propaganda ^
^ Russian bot (not human) programmed to spout anti-American propaganda ^
it started with videos of Jewish students being harassed and attacked by Pro Hamas supporters
this school clearly failed to follow its code of conduct in allowing the harassment
It was Lincoln who was the “author and finisher” of the destruction of the Constitution, wasn’t it?
Lincoln was the inflection point into the current communist American welfare state, wasn’t he?
It’s been all downhill for the Constitution and Bill of Rights since “Crazy Abe’s” “Reign of Terror.”
American freedom persisted for a mere 71 years.
The right to private property is unqualified and, therefore, absolute.
Only the owner has the power to “claim and exercise” dominion in all aspects and facets and to every degree.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
“[Private property is] that dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in exclusion of every other individual.”
– James Madison
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The opposing view is communism which is definitively unconstitutional.
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“The theory of Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.”
– Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto
I was struck by the term “political beliefs” in this account. It brings back memories of freshman-year philosophical discussions of terms like “belief” while listening to 2,000 Light Years From Home in a haze of weed smoke.
What is belief? It’s something you hold onto despite it not being supported by any science or observation with your own senses. If something quacks and waddles, we know it’s a duck, because those are observable facts. If a mouse in a bell jar always dies, it must’ve consumed something in the air which can be measured.
Beliefs aren’t like that. Religious faith is having comfort in irrational beliefs we teach our children though others might disagree. To have “political beliefs” must be a consequence of society grasping onto ideology because old-time religion is deemed to be anti-science.
Creekan is Estovir with another first person account, this time from his Freshman year of college.
^ Anonymous is Estovir. He’s cleverly pretending he’s not in order to make the Estovir name famous. His plan is succeeding.
The few readers who come to this forum know that any stupid post, with a stupid name attached, is almost certainly Estovir. Estovir drove away most the ‘real’ commenters many years ago.
^ Anonymous is Estovir.
Trump’s War On Universities Is A Frame-Up
A new whistleblower complaint accuses the Department of Justice (DOJ) of having “predetermined” outcomes when it launched antisemitism investigations into Ivy League schools, writing that in some cases, investigators failed to find any violations of the law when the Trump administration demanded settlements.
The whistleblowers’ account accuses the Trump administration of speeding investigations, demanding a settlement from Brown University even after finding “evidence did not support a Title VI violation” and interviewing Muslim university staff unconnected to their investigations “not ‘to get information’” but to “elicit” remarks. Title VI prohibits discrimination on the basis of race or national origin.
The complaint filed with congressional committees comes from at least three DOJ attorneys who were temporarily assigned to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to investigate Title VI medical schools, including allegations of discrimination rooted in antisemitism.
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/6035835-doj-whistleblower-ivy-league-probes/
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Many of us suspected these investigations of Ivy League schools was just a spiteful scheme to damage them. And nothing in this piece dispells that suspicion. The war Trump is waging on these schools is merely a form of McCarthism under the guise of ‘ferreting out antisemitism’.
^ Chinese propaganda bot. Not human. Ignore ^
^ Russian bot (not human) programmed to spout anti-American propaganda ^
This younger generation of Jews are so naive. You shouldn’t be shocked by this. Once they hand power over to these people the first thing they are going to do is go after Jews and non-Jews will once again have to get between them and risk their lives to end it. Stop empowering these people. Stop looking the other way and making excuses for them.