"Pro-Palestine" Groups Rally Behind Man Convicted of Three Violent Antisemitic Attacks in NYC

If you think Students for Justice in Palestine would at least pretend not to support antisemitic violence to make its cause look better, you would be wrong.

The Times of Israel reports:

Anti-Israel activists in the US have rallied behind Tarek Bazrouk, a New York resident who confessed to carrying out antisemitic attacks against three Jews.

In June, Bazrouk, 20, pleaded guilty in a federal court in New York to attacking the individuals because of their Jewish or Israeli identity. The victims of the attacks, which took place surrounding anti-Israel protests in 2024 and early 2025, were all wearing Jewish or Israeli symbols or were otherwise identifiable as such.

According to SJP, Bazrouk is a "political prisoner." Rather than being a perpetrator of antisemitic violence who deserves a long prison sentence, Bazrouk is instead a victim of "repression" by the United States government as part of a campaign "to silence the movement for Palestinian liberation."

Lest you charitably suspect that SJP only wishes to ensure that Bazrouk not receive a disproportionate sentence for political reasons, SJP pledges "unwavering support of him and demands his immediate liberation."

And it's not just SJP that is cool with attacking random Jews on the street: "Other prominent activist groups that have backed Bazrouk include the Palestinian Youth Movement, Within Our Lifetime, Pal-Awda, the anti-Israel campus coalition Columbia University Apartheid Divest, and other student groups around New York City."

What more do we know about Bazrouk?

A US Justice Department statement said Bazrouk self-identified as a "Jew hater." He wrote to acquaintances, regarding Jews, "They are worthless," "Allah get us rid of them," derided a Jewish man as a "Fucking Jew," and threatened to shoot Jews. He also told a friend he was "mad happy" to find out he has family who are Hamas members while he was visiting the West Bank and Jordan.

On Instagram, he posted a video of a Jewish child, told his followers to "get him," and posted the name of the child's Jewish school.

If for some reason you doubted that SJP and its allies are antisemitic hate groups, this should erase those doubts.

UPDATE: Perfect timing for this letter by a group of (at best) useful idiots:

We write, specifically, as Jewish Americans who condemn the charge of antisemitism being leveled against student activists – many of whom are Jewish – for their legitimate criticisms of Israel's violence in Gaza and their universities' connections to the Israeli occupation," the letter states. "That this accusation is being used as a pretext to abrogate students' rights to free speech, and to deport non-citizen students, should raise the highest level of alarm.

Let's review: The most prominent activist group, SJP, is calling for the "immediate liberation" of a guy who attacked Jews on the streets of New York City on three separate occasions. The same criminal is getting support from a wide range of other "pro-Palestine" activist groups. This is worse than mere antisemitism, it's an explicit endorsement of antisemitic violence. But nothing to see here.

 

Comments

[Stupid Government Tricks]

"If for some reason you doubted that SJP and its allies are antisemitic hate groups, this should erase those doubts."

I suspect that anyone who harbored such doubts won't be swayed.

[Brett Bellmore]

Yeah, it's not like there was much reason to doubt it before.

[Martinned2]

What's going on with that "Jewish or Israeli identity" in the description of the man's pleadings? I assume that's not actually what it says in the law? Because those are two very different things...

[Jazzizhep]

I guess that's why they used "or" as opposed to "and."

The quote is not from the indictment. It is from the "Times of Israel" summation.

Two of the attacks were against men wearing traditional Jewish head coverings. The other attack was against a man with an Israeli flag draped around his shoulders. He was wearing a Star of David, but it would hard to see under the flag.

In short, it seems two men were attacked for being Jewish; one man was attacked for carrying an Israeli flag. See, Jewish or Israeli identity.

Not hard.

[Martinned]

I understand the word "or". But I also understand the concept of a first amendment right to criticise other countries. A sentencing enhancement based on the victim's assumed support for Israel seems much more constitutionally problematic than a sentencing enhancement for anti-semitism.

[Brett Bellmore]

I'm not seeing why. Neither makes the person attacked more attacked. Both represent motives for attacking members of groups.

Why is enhancement for anti-semitism more justified than for anti-Zionism, or anti-big-endism?

My personal opinion is that people should be sentenced on the basis of conduct, not motive. But once you breach that, privileging one motive over another seems hard to justify. I mean, it really looks to me like punishment for conduct, plus punishment for opinion.

[Martinned]

My personal opinion is that people should be sentenced on the basis of conduct, not motive.

Fair enough, but that is not the law.

[r]

"My personal opinion is that people should be sentenced on the basis of conduct, not motive. But once you breach that, privileging one motive over another seems hard to justify. I mean, it really looks to me like punishment for conduct, plus punishment for opinion."

Isn't that exactly what hate crime laws are intended to do? If you are going to punish based on motive, of course you're going to punish certain disfavored motives much more than others. Punching someone for being Jewish is going to result in an enhancement while punching someone for being a stock broker won't.

Privileging (or de-privileging) some motives over others is a feature, not a bug.

[David Nieporent]

My personal opinion is that people should be sentenced on the basis of conduct, not motive.

So you think shooting your neighbor in self defense, shooting your neighbor because he slept with your wife, and shooting your neighbor because you want to steal his valuables should all result in the same sentence?

[Brett Bellmore]

Look, shooting in self defense is about circumstance. You have to reasonably be in fear of your life.

So, given that you're reasonably in fear of your life from the neighbor you're shooting, I wouldn't much care whether you liked or hated him. Similarly, if you weren't reasonably in fear of your life from the neighbor you're shooting, I also wouldn't care if you liked him or hated him.

In the first case it's self defense, in the 2nd it's not.

I think maybe you're confusing motive and intent here?

[Sarcastr0]

So you're BrettLawing the law of self defense now, as well.

[Brett Bellmore]

I was literally explaining the reasoning behind "my personal opinion". Just like you, I'm entitled to have one.

Unlike you, I stay aware that it's not the Court's opinion.

[ReaderY]

Opposing African-Americans having rights such as voting, suing white people, owning property, passing white people in the street without bowing or other gesture of submission, etc. is an equally political motive. But it has long been established that it’s a legitimate basis for a sentencing enhancement.

KKK apologists such as Thomas Dixon in his KKK trilogy novels repeatedly made the distinction between opposition to African-Americans having political and civil rights on the one hand, and opposition to African-Americans as people on the other, many times. Like Dixon, numerous KKK apologists said that they opposed black people having rights not out of anything against them, but because it was not in their interests for them to have them. But the law has long regarded this distinction as a distinction without a difference. Today, KKK violence against black people is universally regarded as motivated by racial bias pure and simple.

Moreover African-Americans have hardly been alone. Attacks on ordinary British people by Irish Republicans have been treated as nationality-motivated bias ciolence not politically motivated violence. While assassination of an official or public figure might be different, attacking ordinary people for wearing symbols of an identoty is an attack motivated bu bias agaisnt the identity pure and simple.

There is no reason to treat violence against Jews any differently from these other historical examples.

The Supreme Court upheld the practice against exactly the First Amendment challenge you raised in Wisconsin v. Mitchell, 508 U.S. 476 (1993). In that case, the Supreme Court noted both that motives for crimes have long been considered in sentencing decisions, and that bias crimes are rationally regarded as causing more distress both to the victim and to the conmunity, and to be more likely to lead to general civil unrest than other kinds of crimes. For these reasons, the court held that a sentencing enhancement for crimes motivated by bias does not violate the First Amendment.

[Stupid Government Tricks]

I knew a guy who was racialist, not racist, which I had never thought of as a distinction. He did not hate blacks at all, did not think them inferior, worked with blacks without problem. Where he got squirrelly was seeing mixed race couples. He did not think the races should mix. I have never met anyone else like that, and I don't understand it. Why not also get squirrelly over different hair or eye color? Or ancestry, should Italians and Germans keep separate?

[Brett Bellmore]

It does seem crazy, but racial separatists ARE distinct from racial supremacists. Why shouldn't there be different sorts of irrationality?

[Martinned]

If I'm interpreting the page correctly, you wrote this as a reply to my comment. I'm just having a little trouble seeing the connection. It was Brett who raised the general issue of sentencing enhancements. I just raised the question of why bias against Israel would be treated the same as bias against Jews, which isn't something your comment seems to discuss.

[David Bernstein]

Again, national origin discrimination. He wasn't "biased against Israel", he attacked someone based on perceived Israeliness, or so the government is alleging.

[ReaderY]

We can address this without splitting these hairs. Once people engage in conduct, such as violent crime, their motives for engaging in that crime no longer get First Amendment protection. The State CAN enhance sentences because of political views that motivate people to attack.

Just as one can’t get out of the consequences of attacking black people by claiming it was done because of opposition to Negro Government, not negros, one can’t get out of the consequences of attacking Jews or Israelis as such by claiming ones motivation is opposition to Jewish or Israeli government, not Jews or Israelis.

You seem to think that opposing Israeland Zionism is political while the KKK’s historical opposition to negro equality, rights, and participation in government was somehow not political. Both are equally political. Both should be treated similarly.

[neurodoc]

You are complaining of something I encounter all the time here and finding very annoying: that is difficulty or inability to be clear as to who is responding to whom because it isn't clear which comments are connected by those vertical lines to the left. It would really, really be great if changes were made to this website.

[David Bernstein]

Jewish: hate crime based on religion or ethnicity
Israeli: hate crime based on national origin