On May 6, Ben, a Jewish New Yorker who was raised Orthodox, counter-protested a pro-Palestinian rally that was part of the “Citywide Day of Rage for Gaza,” outside of CUNY Hunter College on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.
The “Day of Rage” coincided with Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day.
The event was promoted by Within Our Lifetime (WOL), an anti-Zionist organization spearheaded by Nerdeen Kiswani, a 2022 CUNY law commencement speaker who was caught on video telling a man, while she was holding a lit lighter, that she wanted to light his IDF sweatshirt on fire.
WOL announced the “Day of Rage” rally with an incendiary image of someone covered in a keffiyeh holding a fiery torch, which student groups, Palestine Solidarity Alliance (PSA) and CUNY for Palestine, posted onto their social media. Ben, who said he’d prefer to use only his first name, told The Jewish Press, “This was an angry mob and Within Our Lifetime was inciting a riot with obvious warlike imagery.”
He asked, “Inciting a riot – is that a crime anymore?”
Three months ago, The New York Jewish Week reported that a spokesperson for Meta, which owns Instagram and WhatsApp, told them that WOL accounts has been removed for violating its “Dangerous Organizations & Individuals policy.”
Ben said a high percentage of the protestors “seemed to be Arab,” and that he believed “a lot of them were definitely not Hunter students…they were much older.”
He was aware of a police presence, and didn’t see violent eruptions at that time.
To counter the pro-Palestinian slogans, Ben chanted back, “Down with Hamas! Victory for Israel!”
Ben said the protestors marched out of Hunter and around the Upper East Side in “a snaky path…probably trying to avoid the police.” He believes they could have been heading towards the Met Gala, where The New York Post reported over 1,000 protestors were being blocked by police. Ben explained, “They got filmed by half the city beating and harassing people, blocking traffic and swarming the Met Gala.”
As Ben followed them along Madison Ave. up toward 86th street, he described the crowd as “all over the place…arguing with people… exchanging insults with pro-Israel people.”
In a video posted on X, two masked men harassed a man with a dog in the street, and one of them threatened to slap the woman he was with.
Ben said a middle aged woman yelled “Heil Hitler!” at him, and a girl whose face was covered in a hijab shouted, “Hitler would burn you all!”
Ben relayed how he “let passion take over. I took out my Israeli flag. I just started shouting, “Nazis, out of the East Side! Nazis, out of the East Side!’” He said he called them Nazis because the “Day of Rage” was on Holocaust Remembrance Day, and the protestors reminded him of “the pro-Nazi German American Bund that used to march on the Upper East Side back in the 30s.”
Jewish World War I veterans and gangsters like Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel took to the streets to battle them, believing it was their civic duty to fight back.
On 74th and Park Ave., Ben said there were no police in sight and he was assaulted – punched in the body and face, and kicked multiple times by different assailants. When one of them snatched his sudra decorated with the Star of David off his head, he dove into the violent crowd and retrieved it, waving it triumphantly. “I didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of taking away my symbol,” he explained.
Someone threw a stone at Ben, injuring his right peck. A few people chased him down the street afterwards, but Ben said he walked and didn’t run because he “didn’t want to look like a coward.” Ben noticed that the glasses he was wearing weren’t even broken.
The Jewish Press has confirmed Ben’s account via the video that has been posted on social media.
Ben said that only after he viewed the video online did he see two New York intelligence offices restraining protestors who shoved and cursed at them on 74th street between Lexington and Park avenues.
Ben lost his beloved Chai necklace, which he believes someone could have grabbed off of his neck. He commented, “My uncle who gave who gave me that necklace would be proud that I lost it doing that.”
You can see the video here: https://x.com/nicksortor/status/1787671509051298154?s=46.
