A Jewish mother and her husband were attacked and beaten by an Arabic-speaking man at a Brooklyn elementary school graduation ceremony. She told The Washington Post that her family had yelled at her, “Liberate Palestine!”, “Gaza is ours!” and “Death to Israel!” and mocked them.
The disturbance broke out at PS 682 in Gravesend, shortly after the school’s fifth-grade graduation ceremony, which ironically had the theme “All You Need is Love.”
Instead, the Jewish woman’s husband was thrown to the ground by other family members. One man strangled him, he said. Others grabbed him by the legs and kicked and punched him. One woman hit him multiple times with the sharp heel of a black high heel, her mother told police.
“They targeted our family because we are Jewish,” said the mother of 10-year-old twins who witnessed the attack.
“What was meant to be a fun and memorable graduation ceremony was transformed into a violent and traumatic one.”
Tova Plaut, a New York City educator and Jewish advocate, said this was an unspeakable escalation that made it one of the worst outbursts of anti-Semitism in a New York City public school since the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks in Israel and the war in Gaza.
“We have always warned that tolerating blatant anti-Semitic views creates a toxic environment for Jewish students and their families and will inevitably lead to physical violence,” Plaut said. “And that is what has happened now.”
The Jewish mother, Lana, and her husband, Yohan, who is Catholic and Dominican, told The Washington Post their horrifying story, outraged that the NYPD had not classified the incident as a hate crime.
But after the couple asked the NYPD to reconsider, a spokesman said Saturday that “the hate crimes team is investigating the incident.”
The Washington Post is not publishing the couple’s surname to protect the privacy and safety of their children.
The ceremony itself went off without incident, but Rana’s mother was upset when a student walked across the stage wearing a graduation cap that read “Liberate Palestine” and waving a small Palestinian flag. Her grandmother walked out.
School administrators told another parent that the city Education Department’s legal staff had approved the display as an expression of free speech.
After the event, Lana and Johan started taking photos with their two children in front of the PS682 flag and balloons, but a relative of the boy holding the flag tried to push them away, she said.
“We said there was room for both families,” Rana said. “An older man turned to us and, for no reason, said, ‘Free Palestine!’ My husband said it was not the time or place for that, but the man started cursing him in Arabic and shouting, ‘Free Palestine, Gaza is ours, death to Israel.'”
As Yohan was arguing with the older man and telling him to back off, another man “came out of nowhere, hit me over the head and a fight ensued,” he said. “I don’t remember anything after that because a lot of stuff was going on and there were a lot of people on top of me. Then I was choked. Someone was grabbing my legs. It was chaos.”
The 16-year-old son tried to help his father but was punched in the face.
Lana walked towards her son and managed to capture a brief recording of the scene on her mobile phone, which showed a group of people holding her husband down, shoving and screaming, before they attacked her too.
“A woman from the group came up behind me, pulled me by my hair, threw me to the ground and yelled, ‘I’m going to kill you,'” she said.
Lana yelled, “Call the police! Call the police!”
No security guards were at the scene and two male teachers rushed in to thwart the attack.
Photos showed Yohan was taken to Maimonides Medical Center with scrapes, bruises and swelling on his head, face and body, while Lana suffered cuts on her legs and her teenage son had a nosebleed.
Police made one arrest: Ezz Al-Deen Bazar, 26, the suspect who punched and dragged Yohan, according to a criminal complaint filed by the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office. The complaint did not say anything about a motive.
Bazar was released without bail. He and his lawyer did not respond to messages seeking comment.
The NYPD did not call the attack a hate crime, and reportedly told Lana, “There’s nothing on my body that identifies me as Jewish.”
But she and her children are well known at school as Jewish — the twins proudly displayed their Jewish and Dominican roots in self-portraits displayed at a recent art exhibit — and while Lana didn’t know the other family, her son was in the same class as their son last year.
Education Department spokesman Nathaniel Steyer declined to comment on how the school had classified the incident.
“Graduation ceremonies should be times of celebration and joy, and we strongly condemn anyone who behaves violently or aggressively during such events,” he said.
But he also shifted the blame onto Lana and Yohan: “Initial reports we have received from multiple witnesses indicate that both families engaged in aggressive behaviour, but we are still investigating the matter and are in discussions with the families to reach a resolution.”
Rana disputed this statement, claiming that no one in her family had provoked the attack and that school officials told the arresting officers that other family members had been the attackers.
“My husband was trying to defuse the situation,” she said. “The Ministry of Education is trying to cover up the incident to avoid further scrutiny of this heinous act of anti-Semitic behavior.”
