I stood up to Zohran Mamdani’s rabid thug — and – Latest News
Beware, New Yorkers: Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s received a cadre of humorless, hypersensitive goons on his aspect — and they’re all too prepared to bully you for opposing him.
That’s what I discovered Monday, when a bearded Hezbollah-supporting Mamdani stan confronted me on my commute home aboard an uptown 6 prepare.
I’d hopped on at 51st Street and had simply settled into my seat, closed my eyes, and pulled up my hoodie to pay attention to a podcast when I heard somebody call my title.
A masked thug accosted New York Post Editorial Board member Michael Benjaming on the subway over a joke he made about Zohran Mamdani in 2024. Camara Porteradmedia/AdMedia through ZUMA Press Wire
“Michael Benjamin. Michael Benjamin. I see you. You can’t hide.”
I opened my eyes to discover a black-masked man standing over me, angrily shaking what appeared like a pager in my face.
It slowly occurred to me that this unhinged particular person was calling me out for a post I’d made on X almost two years in the past, in October 2024, commenting on the get together Mamdani threw to launch his mayoral marketing campaign.
“Is it true that no pagers were allowed?” I’d snarked — referring to Israel’s well-known exploding-pager operation of the earlier month.
“He writes for The New York Post and tweets about killing people,” the livid stranger introduced to the opposite passengers within the car, clearly hoping to have them be part of his effort to condemn me.
I wasn’t shocked to be acknowledged — my Post columns, an lively Twitter/X account and eight years in public workplace have made me one thing of a public individual.
But the person’s menacing method was startling to say the least.
My thoughts raced to assess the state of affairs: “Is he alone? Is he armed?”
I rapidly realized he was the proprietor of the large black e-bike I’d glanced at when boarding IRT subway car 1675. A younger lady was sitting alongside him.
I stood up to confront him and the ranting coward retreated, nonetheless waving his black pager in my direction.
A pair of younger, able-bodied males scrambled away towards the far finish of the car, dishearteningly reluctant to come to an harmless commuter’s assist.
“Remove the mask,” I demanded — he appeared acquainted, however together with his swarthy face obscured by his black surgical cowl, I couldn’t be sure.
He shouted that I thought I was a robust man as a result of of the place I grew up, however that I’d grown outdated. (Gosh, I realized, this loon actually does learn my tweets.)
“You and Mayor Mamdani support terrorism,” I roared back, as adrenaline surged and heightened my senses.
“I’m not afraid of you.”
That’s when one other passenger approached and advised my accuser to step away from me.
He refused, and the would-be mediator flashed his badge: an off-duty police officer.
“He’s a supporter of violence,” the Mamdani fan implored.
The back-and-forth continued, with the officer between us, all the best way to 86th Street, the place the prepare operator signaled for the NYPD.
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Two officers boarded. They requested what occurred.
The male cop threatened to arrest me until I received off the prepare; I advised him and his feminine accomplice that I didn’t do something improper and promptly sat down.
“Remove him,” I mentioned, gesturing to the straphangers who had witnessed me being accosted in hopes they’d back my story.
Fortunately, two commuters — a man and a lady — nodded in settlement.
Eventually, the officers persuaded my aggressor and his now-crying girlfriend to disembark together with his beater e-bike.
When the off-duty cop received off at 138th Street, he patted me on the shoulder as if to say, “Take it easy, brother.”
Looking back, it’s type of humorous that a bearded pro-Palestinian thug brandishing a pager in a threatening fashion thought it proper to forged me as a supporter of state violence.
But backside line: These Mamdani simps have repeatedly proven us all that they be at liberty to accost innocent people with out incurring any penalty.
That has to change.
Since the brutal Oct. 7 assault on Israel by Hamas and the following struggle in Gaza, Jewish New Yorkers have been relentlessly focused by masked, antisemitic hooligans in eating places, in entrance of synagogues, on metropolis streets — and on the subway, with different riders all too typically sitting silently by.
Now I’ve gotten a style of what they’ve endured.
Gov. Kathy Hochul should reinstate New York state’s public masks ban at once.
Disguised antifa, pro-Palestinian bullies and nut jobs are have confirmed themselves to be as harmful because the Ku Klux Klan ever was.
Masks allow dangerous actors to anonymously harass, intimidate and vandalize with impunity.
Meanwhile, we need more New Yorkers to stand their ground towards these goons.
Together, we are able to ship them crawling back beneath the filthy rocks from whence they got here.
My stalker gained’t scare me off the 6 prepare — or keep me from calling out Mamdani’s tacit assist for Hezbollah, Hamas and anti-Zionist radicalism around the globe.
Michael Benjamin is a member of the New York Post Editorial Board.
