A Jewish man named Joseph Borgen, who was 29 at the time was attacked in New York City on May 20, 2021, by a gang of PA Arabs who punched, kicked, and pepper-sprayed him while shouting antisemitic slurs. He later told CNN that he didn’t understand why so much hate had been directed at him. “My main takeaway would be to understand where they are coming from because I don’t get it, to be honest,” he told CNN’s Don Lemon, who has since been fired from the network. “Nothing in my life has ever made me want to do that to anybody,” Borgen said.
Just witnessed a beat down in Times Square. #NYC #TimesSquare #Palestine #WTF #NewYorkCity pic.twitter.com/KSR5GQRvtw
— Rob Bertrand (@Robertrand77) May 20, 2021
Waseem Awawdeh, who was 23 then, was arrested and charged with assault in the second degree as a hate crime and attempted gang assault in the first degree. Awawdeh was seen on surveillance video using a metal crutch to strike Borgen, who is seen trying to shield himself from the blows.
Awawdeh, a PA Arab resident of Brooklyn, and three PA Arabs from Staten Island who were arrested later: Mahmoud Musa, and Faisal Elezzi, were all charged with assault as a hate crime and gang assault.
Borgen described the attack to the NY Post: “I felt a liquid being poured on my face, and at first, I thought I was getting urinated on, but it turned out I was getting Maced and pepper-sprayed. My face was on fire. That pain was worse than the concussion and all the other stuff that followed.”
Two years later, Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg offered one of Borgen’s assailants, Awaadeh, a plea deal of 18 months on all the counts against him.
Borgen, now 31, who showed up at the Manhattan Supreme Court wearing a blue yarmulke for Waseem’s sentencing and delivered a blistering victim impact statement, was stunned.
“Why is he getting a break?” Borgen asked the court. “I really can’t fathom why he’s getting a deal. Me, personally, I wanted to go to trial, I wanted to see full justice.”
Everybody agreed with him, including Judge Felicia Mennin, who said at the sentencing, “The behavior of the group was despicable… This is not how people behave in a civilized society.” And DA Bragg’s deputy said, “No one should ever feel unsafe because of their religion, and we do not tolerate the antisemitic hate displayed by the defendant in this case.”
And all of this agreement and support resulted in a year and a half behind bars, even though the prosecutor had told the court Awawdeh said to a fellow prisoner that he would do it again. And that’s what Borgen told the Arab hate criminal during his sentencing hearing: “My biggest fear is you’re not going to do anything, you’re not going to do anything. You’ll go to jail for a year, go back to what you were doing, and attack another Jew. You said you would do it again – why don’t you do it again?”
