“Raise your hand if you’re a Zionist,” the mob chanted. “This is your chance to get out.”
No one on the crowded New York subway car dared to move. After a moment, a man from the mob shouted, “Okay, no Zionists here. We’re good.”
The antisemitic incident happened on June 10 at the 14th Street-Union Square Station and, shortly after that, went viral on social media.
Meanwhile, a few miles away, under the flags of Hamas and other terrorist organizations, protestors convened at a rally outside the long-running Nova Music Festival Exhibition on Wall Street, a commemoration of the lives lost at that Israeli festival at the hands of terrorists.
With banners proclaiming “By Any Means Necessary” and “Long Live October 7th,” the demonstrators blocked the street as part of a “citywide day of rage.”
The exhibit—described by Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine as “a moving, heart-wrenching remembrance” that “offers a message of tolerance and hope”—was targeted by protest organizer Nerdeen Kiswani as “nothing more than Zionist propaganda.”
In a video released by the NGO Stop Antisemitism, Kiswani is seen saying, “Zionists decided to rave next to a concentration camp; that’s exactly what this music festival was, like having a rave right next to the gas chambers during the Holocaust.”
The NGO’s response to Kiswani, the protests, the hate speech and attempted intimidation was, “We have no words for this evil.”
Levine called the targeting of the Nova exhibition “repulsive, vile.”
Posters for the citywide day of rage call for participants to “take autonomous action all day” and then “converge” at Union Square (the site of the subway incident). The five locations where “autonomous action” was encouraged were the American Museum of Natural History, the Metropolitan Museum, MoMA, the Whitney Museum and the Brooklyn Museum. The following day, New York City Mayor Eric Adams condemned the protests. In a video posted online, Adams said, “While peaceful protests will be allowed, New York City will never cower in the face of those trying to divide us. Hate has no place in our city.”
Photo credits: Jerusalem Post.
