The Trump Administration has filed hate crime charges against a pro-Palestinian demonstrator accused of assaulting his pro-Israel counterparts. Notably, the hate crime charges are directly related to personal text messages police discovered during searches of the man’s phone and Jewish pressure groups are bragging online that the man was charged and arrested at their behest. He faces decades in prison if convicted.
20-year-old Tarek Bazrouk is accused by the Department of Justice of committing at least three assaults between 2024 and 2025 on pro-Israel demonstrators who were “wearing kippahs, carrying Israeli flags, and singing Jewish songs,” in New York City, amid widespread protests both for and against the Israeli war in Gaza.
Though he was initially arrested by local authorities, a federal indictment against Bazrouk was unsealed on May 7th in the Southern District of New York, charging him with three separate hate crime counts, each of which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.
Jessica Tisch, the Jewish Commissioner of the NYPD, told the media that her department “worked closely with the FBI and the US Attorney’s Office to track [Bazrouk] down and ensure he faces real consequences,” adding that “antisemitism and all forms of bigotry have no home here in New York – period.”
Furthermore, FBI Director Kash Patel says that the arrest of Bazrouk “sends a clear message that we are not backing down,” and vowed that his agency will continue to “pursue” legal action against those accused of antisemitism.
A public statement published by the US Department of Justice announcing the hate crime charges against Bazrouk reveals that among the evidence used to build the hate crime case against him are personal text messages and other digital items found during a search of his phone, which the DOJ describes as being “littered with pro-Hamas and pro-Hizballah [sic] propaganda.”
The DOJ statement reads:
Pursuant to judicially authorized warrants, law enforcement subsequently searched a cellphone used by Bazrouk. Evidence from that device revealed Bazrouk’s anti-Semitic bias and his support for anti-Jewish terrorist groups including Hamas, demonstrating his motivation for repeatedly assaulting Jewish victims. In text messages, for example, Bazrouk identified himself as a “Jew hater,” labeled Jews as “worthless,” extorted “Allah” to “get us rid of [Jews],” called an acquittance a “Fucking Jew,” and told a friend to “slap that bitch” in reference to a woman with an Israeli sticker on her laptop.
While both local and federal authorities, along with Jewish pressure groups, have honed in on Bazrouk, the feds don’t seem nearly as interested in addressing the multiple cases of pro-Israel mobs attacking pro-Palestinian protesters; like what happened at UCLA in 2024.
It was there that attackers carried Israeli flags as they stormed a pro-Palestinian encampment where they launched a mass assault using pepper spray, sticks, rocks, and even parts of the metal fence they ripped down to get their hands on their victims. According to reports published shortly after the attack, more than 100 people were injured and at least 25 were taken to hospitals for treatment.
After much public scrutiny, police appear to have charged three Jewish men in connection with the attack, though there does not appear to have been any movement in their cases thus far.
Remarkably, despite the kid-glove treatment of the violent pro-Israel side, the day after the UCLA attack took place, police raided the pro-Palestinian encampment and arrested more than 200 demonstrators.
