Pakistani Owner of Swanky Santa Monica Hotel: “Get the [expletive] Jews out of my Pool”
Latest update: July 31st, 2012
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The Hotel Shangri-La in Santa Monica, California.
Photo Credit: Promotional image.
An upscale hotel on a Santa Monica, California, beach is an odd place to be singled out from a crowd and removed because you are Jewish, but that’s what happened to 18 young professionals who are telling their story to a jury in a discrimination trial taking place in Santa Monica Superior Court this week.
Ari Ryan is the grandson of a Ukranian Jew who lost most of his family in the Holocaust and narrowly escaped death at the hands of the Nazis. Ryan’s grandfather moved to Israel in 1942 and served as a captain in the Israel Defense Forces.
Seventy years later Ryan says he got a small taste of what his grandfather lived through, but rather than in the forests of the Ukraine, it took place at an upscale hotel in Santa Monica. Ryan and more than a dozen others have brought a lawsuit alleging anti-Semitic discrimination against them by a multi-millionaire Muslim American hotel owner.
Two years ago Ryan and other twenty- and thirty-something Jews planned to raise money to send children of fallen IDF soldiers to camp with a charity event at the Hotel Shangri-La in Santa Monica, California.
On the morning of July 11, 2010, Ryan and others arrived at the hotel and began setting up Friends of the IDF banners, literature and piles of shirts for the event guests.
But the event was aborted after, according to one employee’s sworn testimony, the hotel’s owner told staff members, “Get the [expletive deleted] Jews out of my pool.” Then the hotel security and other employees began removing the materials and ordering the guests to leave.
Ryan said, “Anyone wearing a blue wristband,” which identified them as being with the Friends of the IDF, “was asked to get out of the swimming pool and the hot tub.” In fact, no one who was identifiable as Jewish was so much as “allowed to dip their feet in the water.”
Tehmina (Tamie) Adaya, a Pakistani-American Muslim, is the owner of the Shangri-La. Her father, Ahmad Adaya, was a founding partner of the California real estate company IDS Real Estate Group. He also was a founder and benefactor of the New Horizon School for Muslim religious education in Southern California.
The father bought the Shangri-La Hotel in the 1980‘s and the daughter took it over in 2004, investing $30 million to renovate the property into a design award-winning opulent destination. In addition to the hotel, Adaya runs an upscale artist collective called the Crown Jewels which she blogs about at her site “Culture Shock to Culture Architect.”
In the cross-complaint she initially filed, Adaya claimed Ryan and his friends were trespassing on the Shangri-La property and became unruly.
“Not so,” said James Turken, managing partner of the California office of the DC-based law firm Dickstein, Shapiro, attorney for the plaintiffs. He explained that Adaya withdrew her complaint after he interviewed her, under oath, and she was unable to substantiate any of the allegations she had made.
Turken told The Jewish Press that witnesses will testify that, in addition to cursing the Jews and yelling at her staff to remove them from the pool, Adaya was heard saying, “my family will disown me,” and that her “investors will be furious,” if the plaintiffs remained on site.
The defense claims there was no discrimination and that, instead, the promoters of the event had failed to properly schedule the event with the hotel, and therefore they were trespassing.
According to Turken, however, all the necessary arrangements had been made in advance, as evidenced by the initial assistance provided by the Shangri-La employees, which included putting up a rope and stanchions and a check-in table. What’s more, he said, the day before the event “the head of hotel security gave a briefing to the staff to prepare them for the crowd of 150 that were expected to attend.”
The removal from the pool of Jews who were wearing Jewish-identified wristbands evokes a similar selection process of seventy years ago. Ryan, recalling his grandfather’s legacy, said “I felt the weight of standing up to what he had to live through.”
The plaintiffs are seeking $ 1 million from Adaya and the Shangri-La Hotel for emotional distress, attorneys’ fees and other statutory damages.
tell a friendAbout the Author: Lori Lowenthal Marcus is the US correspondent for The Jewish Press. She is a recovered lawyer who previously practiced First Amendment law and taught in Philadelphia-area graduate and law schools.
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5 Responses to “Pakistani Owner of Swanky Santa Monica Hotel: “Get the [expletive] Jews out of my Pool””
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God Bless the IDF.
This is big news and neither I, nor my sister who lives in Long Beach, CA never heard, or read anything about this racist piece of crap. I hope this law-suit ends with the Friends of the IDF, owning the hotel and inviting IDF Soldiers there for a well needed vacation. After-all, chasing desert rats can be tirering. Long Live Israel!
This is big news and neither I, nor my sister who lives in Long Beach, CA never heard, or read anything about this racist piece of crap. I hope this law-suit ends with the Friends of the IDF, owning the hotel and inviting IDF Soldiers there for a well needed vacation. After-all, chasing desert rats can be tirering. Long Live Israel!
Aha. Comment upon TripAdvisor.com about this!
Aha. Comment upon TripAdvisor.com about this!
I believe in property rights. the owner of a hotel should have the right to keep any people out of his hotel if he so chooses. It might not be wise as it will surely cost him business, but still, his right and ofcourse a Jewish person should be allowed to bar him from his property as well.
I believe in property rights. the owner of a hotel should have the right to keep any people out of his hotel if he so chooses. It might not be wise as it will surely cost him business, but still, his right and ofcourse a Jewish person should be allowed to bar him from his property as well.
I just posted this link on their Facebook page: we’ll see how long it stays up
I just posted this link on their Facebook page: we’ll see how long it stays up
https://www.facebook.com/ShangriLaHotel
https://www.facebook.com/ShangriLaHotel
Here is the pakistani anti semite bitch right here:
http://www.facebook.com/tamieadaya
How do I get a blue wristband?
How do I get a blue wristband?
Anti-semitism has NO place in Santa Monica. That being said, let’s wait for the facts to come out before everyone attacks this woman. I’ve met her before and she seems like a great person. She certainly has close Jewish friends, which doesn’t mean she’s incapable of anti-semitism, but it does mean that such behavior, if true, would be very surprising and out of character. PS The racism on some of these comments is worse than the claims against the hotel owner. Don’t try and combat racism and prejudice with racism and prejudice.
Anti-semitism has NO place in Santa Monica. That being said, let’s wait for the facts to come out before everyone attacks this woman. I’ve met her before and she seems like a great person. She certainly has close Jewish friends, which doesn’t mean she’s incapable of anti-semitism, but it does mean that such behavior, if true, would be very surprising and out of character. PS The racism on some of these comments is worse than the claims against the hotel owner. Don’t try and combat racism and prejudice with racism and prejudice.
the owner of this hotel should be executed.
the owner of this hotel should be executed.
It’s time to vote with our pocket books by boycotting the hotel, standing outside to make sure guests are aware of the remarks made by the owner, advising event coordinators in the area of the anti-semitism practiced by the owners, taking out ads in Santa Monica to encourage local citizens to eat elsewhere and patronize other establishments and encourage City Hall to join in this lawsuit.