Tarek Bazrouk and American Domestic Extremism Seth Mandel
https://www.commentary.org/seth-mandel/tarek-bazrouk-and-american-domestic-extremism/
How a society responds to a crisis tells us just as much about that society as the crisis itself, maybe more. Which is why the scene yesterday at a Manhattan federal courthouse is so dismaying.
Tarek Bazrouk was sentenced yesterday to 17 months in prison—the maximum allowed by his plea deal—for three separate anti-Semitic assaults. Yet it wasn’t the judge who was cheered but Bazrouk. Luke Tress reports:
“Around 200 Bazrouk supporters filed into the federal Southern District court in Manhattan on Tuesday morning for the sentencing. Several dozen, including his family, sat in the courtroom, while the rest were diverted to an overflow room to watch the proceedings via livestream. The attack victims and a smaller number of their supporters from the Jewish community sat across the aisle.”
When Bazrouk was arrested, officers reportedly found over $750,000 and an “arsenal” of weapons. Text messages showing Bazrouk’s anti-Semitism made the hate-crimes charges easy. According to prosecutors, Bazrouk was a member of a chat group receiving regular updates from the late Hamas spokesman Abu Obeida. He wore a Hamas headband during one of the attacks. Bazrouk appears to have been a violent criminal who went looking for Jews to assault and finally got locked up for it.
Which is to say, there is nothing sympathetic about the American-born Bazrouk. But that itself is what makes him such a figure of sympathy for the pro-Palestinian activist class.
In 2024, he was arrested for attacking pro-Israel protesters and in fact assaulted another one as he was being arrested. This lovely ball of hate was at it again later in the year, ambushing a Jew near a Columbia protest. Then in January of this year, he got his hat trick.
All of the episodes were uncontrovertibly violent; not only was Bazrouk not protesting peacefully, but in all cases he physically assaulted peaceful protesters. Nevertheless, Columbia University Apartheid Divest, the hate group at the center of other high-profile pro-Hamas incidents, posted that Bazrouk “has been locked up for over five months for speaking out against genocide,” and they claimed it an example of “political repression.”
The Palestinian Youth Movement unsurprisingly filed a petition for leniency, announcing it “stands in solidarity with Tarek.” Students for Justice in Palestine, probably the most extreme collection of Hamas boosters, “demands his immediate liberation.” (Note the word choice: liberation being the euphemism du jour for spilling Jewish blood.)
SJP says Bazrouk “has been targeted by the United States government for his activism.” Which in a way is true: Pro-Palestinian activism in the U.S. is indeed marked by its violence and incitement.
It’s no surprise, then, to see at the courthouse 200 supporters of a man who admitted to a string of assaults. And it is important for us all to acknowledge this support. These “pro-Palestinian” groups conflate violence with speech, and have been fooling free-speech groups for years with the ruse.
Now, however, they are using Bazrouk’s case to make plain what everybody should have seen all along: They do not support free expression but rather respond to free expression with violence, just as their heroes in Gaza do. The movement has one main organizing goal: attacking Jews’ freedom of speech, expression, and association.
Additionally, they reject their naïve defenders’ claims of nonviolence. The Palestinian advocacy groups in the U.S., and the wider progressive movement in which they are now fully embedded and integrated, do not believe they are being targeted for mere speech. They simply believe that speech and violence are equally legitimate forms of expression. And, considering their welcome reception in American political culture, why wouldn’t they?
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