Woman shaken by anti-Semitic attack on subway by nut shouting ‘Allahu akbar!’
An Israeli student riding a subway train in Manhattan said she was verbally and physically attacked by a woman who hurled anti-Semitic comments at her and another Jewish passenger — and yelled “Allahu akbar!”
In a video posted after the attack, Lihi Aharon said she boarded the train at Wall Street after her college’s induction ceremony last week and asked the woman if she could remove her bags from the seat next to her.
“No. Nobody sits here,” she quoted the woman, who was identified by police as New Jersey resident Zarinah Ali, 38, as saying.
Aharon said she then sat down across from Ali next to a Jewish man wearing a yarmulke.
“As soon as I sat, that woman started cursing and yelling at him about him being a Jew and ‘Allahu akbar’ and how Allah will end us all,” she recounted in the five-minute video, in which a scratch is seen on her face.
“She didn’t know I was Jewish, of course. I’m not only Jewish, I’m also Israeli, so I took out my phone and started recording her,” Aharon said.
Ali is then seen telling Aharon: “You can record everything you want to sell. Allahu akbar. But you know what they’re going to do? It’s gonna be deleted.”
Aharon said the woman then began yelling and cursing at her, before knocking the phone from her hand, as well as a phone belonging to her friend.
“All of a sudden she grabbed my face. It happened very, very fast so I decided, it’s not happening today and I had to fight back,” she said. “Eventually, that lady found herself outside on the subway station on the floor with all her belongings.”
Aharon said she called the cops, who arrived to arrest Ali as she continued to spew venom while sitting on some stairs.
The South Orange resident was charged with assault for the 11:40 p.m. Dec. 12 incident. Her rap sheet includes several arrests for assault, petit larceny and criminal trespass, police said.
“It’s in the Quran, where they curse the serpent Jew, you wouldn’t believe,” the woman says. “You f—- nasty a— Jew. You nasty mother—–. You a nasty a—- mother—-, you stink. You f—- stinkin’ a—- Jew.”
She also repeatedly chants, “Allahu akbar.”
Aharon said the Jewish man she sat next to told her the woman also praised last week’s deadly shooting at a kosher supermarket in Jersey City — and that she said it was a shame the attackers didn’t kill all of the Jews there.
Pro-Israel activist Rudy Rochman told the Jerusalem Post that Aharon reached out to him on Facebook and asked if he could share her story.
“When I got on the phone call with her, I realized that this was much bigger than just reporting on an act of anti-Semitism, but that her empowering outlook and courage could inspire so many,” Rochman told the paper.
“Although this woman may be Muslim, she does not represent all Muslims,” he added.
Aharon urged people to speak up in the face of hatred.
“Please, talk, do not be afraid to step up and shut people up because there is no place, not in New York or in any other place on Earth, for hatred,” she said, then pointed to her scar and said she wore it “proudly.”
“Do not be afraid to fight and return the fight,” she said. “All the haters beware. Do not mess with us.”
