Muslim mobs get a pass for assaulting Jews in NYC and LA

Attackers get off with no prison time and anti-bias training.

By Daniel Greenfield, FrontPage Magazine

In May 2021, Joseph Borgen was violently assaulted by a Muslim mob while walking down the street in midtown Manhattan in the vicinity of an anti-Israel rally. The Jewish man was kicked, punched, pepper sprayed, beaten with a metal object, and ended up in the hospital.

Borgen was taunted as a “dirty Jew” and the assault was caught on video. “They were kicking me in my ribs, my stomach,” he described.

Waseem Awawdeh, the best known of the attackers, was out two days later. Even after Awawdeh reportedly told prison guards, “If I could do it again, I would do it again”, Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg offered him a plea deal of only six months in prison. After public outrage, including protests and condemnations by elected officials, it was raised to eighteen months.

Faisal Elezzi, another of the attackers, got off with probation and an obligation to complete “anti-bias programming”.

That same month in Los Angeles, a pro-terrorist Muslim convoy was driving down the street near the Jewish neighborhood of Fairfax, and began harassing outdoor diners at a sushi place. Members of the Muslim mob waved a PLO terror flag, demanded to know who at the restaurant was Jewish, and witnesses said chanted, “death to the Jews” and “free Palestine”.

The Muslim attackers reportedly punched, kicked, threw bottles and pepper sprayed their targets who were members of the Persian Jewish community who had fled Islamic violence in Iran.

Samer Jayylusi and Xavier Pabon were arrested and immediately released on bail. They have since been sentenced to probation and ordered to visit a Holocaust museum.

The assaults in Manhattan and Los Angeles went viral. Videos of Muslim mobs attacking Jews made their way around the country and the world. They ended up appearing in national news stories. And yet most of those suspects got off with a slap on the wrist and diversity training.

“We take these cases extraordinarily seriously. That sort of hate has no place in Manhattan,” Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg had claimed.

“A hate crime is a crime against all of us,” Los Angeles DA George Gascon had promised, referring to the case. “My office is committed to doing all we can to make Los Angeles County a place where our diversity is embraced and protected.”

Both district attorneys have been linked to the pro-crime progressive prosecutor networks championed by George Soros as well as other leftist billionaires. And their promises of justice evaporated into consequences that could barely qualify as a slap on the wrist.

Of the four defendants sentenced so far in these four cases, whose sentences are known, three received probation and anti-bias classes. 75% of the perpetrators in these Muslim mobs may have spent only a few days in prison and have walked away with nothing except some classes.

The message that has been sent by DA Alvin Bragg, DA George Gascon and Judge Laura F Priver of the California Superior Court is that Muslim attacks on Jews will go unpunished. According to reports, Judge Priver thought that “counseling and Museum of Tolerance program was a better solution than sending the two to state prison as the prosecution had requested.”

While these two Muslim mob attacks on Jews caught the attention of the world, there have been individual assaults that have gone unnoticed and mostly unpunished.

Also in 2021, Suleiman Othman accosted Blake Zavadsky in a Brooklyn neighborhood with a sizable Jewish and Muslim presence and demanded, “Why do you support those dirty Jews? What are you doing in my neighborhood?” Othman then assaulted the Jewish man.

“The hateful and unprovoked assault this defendant admitted to today left one victim hurt, but also shook an entire community,” District Attorney Eric Gonzalez declared. “His conviction, jail time and probation should send a message that this kind of intolerance has serious consequences.”

In reality, Othman was offered a six month plea deal and when he turned that down, got only 60 days in prison and probation.

DA Gonzalez, like Bragg and Gascon, is a pro-crime prosecutor who ran on a platform of reducing incarceration. He’s a member of pro-crime organizations like the Soros-funded Fair and Just Prosecution alliance of prosecutors who commit to giving criminals a pass.

Gonzalez’s office had previously resisted filling hate crime charges against Farrukh Afzal, a Muslim cab driver who tried to run over a Jewish man, then after failing to hit him, got out and assaulted a second Jewish man, Rabbi Lipa Schwartz, 62, while shouting, “Allah, Allah” and declaring that he wanted to “kill all Jews”.

The Pakistani Muslim severely beat the rabbi who had been on the way to synagogue for morning prayers. He shoved him to the ground and repeatedly hit him in the head. When another Jewish man attempted to intervene, Afzal attacked him too, until he was finally restrained.

The DA’s office had attempted to dismiss it as a road rage incident with no hate crime element to it even though Afzal had eight prior arrests. Eventually he was convicted, but not of hate crimes, and while he was supposed to have been sentenced, there is no word on the outcome. No records appear for anyone by that name in the city system while the state system shows a man by that name who committed assault had a parole interview date last year.

Antisemitic attacks are routinely greeted by promises that they are being taken very seriously followed by the offenders quietly getting a slap on the wrist. Millions watched videos or read news stories about the violent Muslim mob attacks in New York City and Los Angeles. Only thousands are aware that most of the perpetrators walked away with anti-bias classes.

Pro-crime DAs like Bragg, Gonzalez and Gascon claim to take ‘hate’ very seriously, while remaining committed to a criminal justice reform movement that rewards criminals.

It is difficult to know to what extent the slaps on the wrist for Muslim mob attacks on Jews are due to sympathy for the ideological antisemitic motives of the perpetrators or a general belief that violent criminals should be coddled rather than being locked up. But to the victims it really doesn’t make much of a difference. The targets of Muslim antisemitic violence may be collateral damage in a pro-crime movement or leftist solidarity with terror supporters.

But the message to both Muslim mobs and the Jewish community is abundantly clear.

In the two cities with some of the largest Jewish populations in the country, Jews are fair game. Muslim thugs have little to fear from the legal system when they attack Jews except a few days in prison and a visit to a Holocaust museum.

AntisemitismLos AngelesNew YorkRadical IslamUltra-Orthodox