Jewish Californians are fearful that the light sentence handed to pro-Palestinian protester who fatally attacked attacked pro-Israel demonstrator in Thousand Oaks could embolden more acts of violence.
Loay Abdel Fattah Alnaji, 53, will serve just a year in county and two years probation for the 2023 death of Paul Kessler, the Ventura County district attorney announced Tuesday.
Alnaji pled guilty in May to felony involuntary manslaughter and felony battery charges over the violent attack that left the 69-year-old Ventura retiree dead, sparking outrage around the globe.
Alnaji, a former professor at Moorpark College, struck Kessler with a megaphone, causing him to fall to the ground and hit his head on the pavement, prosecutors said. Kessler died the next day.
Prosecutors had argued for a state prison sentence and objected to the court’s decision to impose one year of jail and probation.
“Every American should be very concerned right now for just what has been allowed to happen, and how far and how quickly radicals have popped up in different areas,” Rabbi Yossi Eilfort, founder of the Los Angeles nonprofit security outfit Magen Am, told The California Post.
Eilfort said members of the Jewish community in Los Angeles and across California are concerned that more violence could follow after Alnaji got off with such a light sentence.
“When we don’t hold people accountable, it looks like people are being given permission to act like this,” he said.
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Eilfort added that Magen Am has received more requests for security services since the start of the Israel-Hamas war and that demand rose again after Kessler died.
“It’s been busy, and I have a hunch it’s gonna get busier,” he said.
Others also sounded off on Alnaji’s sentencing.
Los Angeles attorney Elizabeth Barcohana said that “jihadist ideology” motivated the former professor’s attack on Kessler.
“The Ventura County DA outrageously refused to file hate crime enhancements in the case,” Barcohana, a member of LACounty’s GOP Central Committee, wrote on X.
