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Joseph Borgen was beaten in the streets while wearing a kippah. Now, he’s fighting in the NYC court system
(New York Jewish Week) — Before Joseph Borgen was beaten in the street nearly two years ago, on the way to a pro-Israel rally, he enjoyed playing basketball after returning home to the Upper East Side from his day job as an accountant.
In the time since Borgen, now 30, was attacked, that hasn’t been possible. The incident — in which five men shouting antisemitic slurs punched, kicked, pepper-sprayed and beat Borgen with crutches — left him needing surgery on his wrist. Only recently has he started going back to the gym.
“It’s something that is still lingering and I’d love to put it in my rearview,” Borgen, who is the eldest of five siblings, told the New York Jewish Week. “It doesn’t just only affect me. My little brother was seeing me on the news. He’s still a kid. We’re very close.”
The attack on Borgen drew national attention, and came amid a string of antisemitic assaults in the United States surrounding the May 2021 conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. Now, Borgen is caught in a conflict of a different kind, one that illustrates the long tail of hate crimes that have faded from public consciousness. He doesn’t want the beating to define him, but finds that its after-effects have festered — and that a controversy over the ensuing trial of his alleged attackers has spurred him to become a passionate, if ambivalent, advocate against antisemitism.
“There is some value and good in speaking about what happened and just getting the message out there,” Borgen said. “But it’s not something I want to harp on.”
Joey Borgen, victim of a violent antisemitic attack last yr which took place few blocks from Times Square, said “The attack on me was no isolated incident. Pittsburgh to Poway to across the river in NJ— violent, deadly antisemtism is increasing to record levels”#ShineALight pic.twitter.com/4x29t9Pzi2
— JCRC of New York (@JCRCNY) November 29, 2021
Borgen was walking to a pro-Israel rally when he was attacked in the street in midtown Manhattan on May 20, 2021 — the same day Hamas and Israel announced a ceasefire after 11 days of conflict. A blurry video of the attack that circulated on social media showed a small crowd of men surrounding Borgen, kicking him and beating him with sticks. A photo of Borgen from later that night shows Borgen with a puffy red face, and wearing a neck brace.
“I was just wearing a kippah, listening to music, just minding my own business — and it all just erupted,” Borgen said, recalling the incident. “Before I can even really react or do anything, there’s a group of individuals surrounding me. I didn’t have the time to process what was going on.”
Borgen is still facing those who have been accused of attacking him — but that confrontation has moved to the courts. The lead perpetrator, Waseem Awawdeh, was charged with hate crime assault, along with a list of other charges. The case is still in process, and the next hearing is on April 20.
“I can’t even tell you how hard personally I’ve been fighting for this,” Borgen told the New York Jewish Week. “If there’s no accountability or consequences of what took place, what happened to me is going to happen to someone else.”
Borgen is currently worried that Awawdeh will go to prison for a small fraction of the maximum sentence he faces, which, according to Borgen’s attorney, is 15 years. That concern stems from reports in the New York Post and New York Sun that Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg offered Awawdeh a six-month plea deal.
Those reports have sparked a chorus of criticism, as well as a letter to Bragg by nearly two dozen groups lobbying against the deal. The signatories were a mix of right-wing, pro-Israel and Orthodox groups, including the Rabbinical Council of America, an association for Orthodox rabbis; the Zionist Organization of America, a right-wing organization; and Americans Against Antisemitism, a group founded by former New York State Assemblymember Dov Hikind, who represented a Brooklyn district.
“Failing to impose severe consequences here would send the dangerous and unacceptable message that Jews can be brutally attacked with impunity,” said the letter, which was sent earlier this month.
Hikind told the New York Jewish Week that he wants more Jews to vocally support Borgen. “We need to fill the courtroom,” Hikind said. “Unfortunately, we’re just not there. The community needs to come out.”
The six-month deal, however, seems like far from a sure thing. Awawdeh’s lawyer, Peter Marc Frankel, confirmed the deal to the Post in January, as did prosecutors on the case. But speaking to the New York Jewish Week on Monday, Frankel said he was unsure if the deal would come to fruition.
“I don’t know if it’s going to happen, frankly,” Frankel said. “It’s unclear at this point. I don’t know if it’s going to be a six-month deal, but I would not expect a shorter deal, certainly.”
The deal has not yet been openly discussed in court, and Borgen’s lawyer, Ross Pearlson, who is representing his client pro-bono on behalf of the Anti-Defamation League, told the New York Jewish Week that “it’s not clear” if the six-month deal will hold.
“I’m unaware of any offers being made,” Pearlson said. “I believe that a year would be more appropriate. Six months to me still seems a little light considering the mob violence and the damage that was done to [Borgen].”
Bragg’s office declined to comment on the deal. The ADL likewise did not respond to requests for comment on the case.
Shortly after the attack, in 2021, a prosecutor on the case said that Awawdeh had told one of his jailers, “If I could do it again, I would do it again,” according to the Post. But Frankel told the New York Jewish Week that “that quote was taken completely out of context” and that Awawdeh has offered to meet and apologize to Borgen. He also met with the prosecutors to explain how remorseful he felt.
“[Awawdeh’s] behavior was the result of bad impulse control and a bad reaction to a bad situation, rather than an effort to try to seek someone out who is Jewish to commit a hate crime,” Frankel said.
Pearlson added that Borgen “has been traumatized by this event.”
“He’s very emotional when I speak to him about it,” Pearlson said. “He gets agitated for each one of these court appearances. When we talk about the case, he’s passionate about it.”
There are now five defendants in the case, including Awawdeh, and the D.A.’s office is treating them differently based on their alleged respective roles in the beating.
“Justice is not one size fits all,” Pearlson said. “It doesn’t move quickly, but in this case, it’s not the D.A.’s office delaying things or dragging its heels. There’s going to be some element of justice done.”
The fact that Borgen’s case is being prosecuted at all puts it in the minority of hate crimes complaints in Manhattan. According to NYPD statistics, police precincts in the borough received 241 hate crime complaints in 2022, and made 118 arrests based on those complaints.
Bragg’s office told the New York Jewish Week that 92 hate crimes were prosecuted in Manhattan last year. His office currently has 20 open hate crime cases related to antisemitism for this year. A report last year in The City, a local publication, found that most hate crimes charges are dropped before any convictions take place.
Although Borgen remains involved in the case, and has spoken about his experience publicly, he suggested that it was still hard to think about.
“Some people have said, ‘God only put you through this because you can handle it,’” said Borgen, who is modern Orthodox and puts on tefillin daily. “But if I start to think about it in those terms, I don’t want to go there. I don’t want to let it factor into my views on God and spirituality because if I did, it might make me start to question and wonder about things. I don’t want to go down that road.”
On March 9, Borgen appeared in court, sitting in the same room as his alleged attackers. While he could not comment on the specifics of the hearing, not wanting to impact court proceedings, he said that “it sucks to be in the same room as individuals who could have killed me.”
“I don’t like going to court,” Borgen said. “I do it because when I’m there with other people, a large group of Jewish individuals, it sends a message that we’re not lying down and taking this.”
—
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Macklemore got canceled. Kanye is playing sold-out shows. What’s the difference?
Moments after Seattle rapper Macklemore led fans in New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium in a call to “Free Palestine” that ended his opening spot on a national tour, another notorious rapper, despite years of toxic, antisemitic behavior, played to a sold-out crowd in Chicago’s Soldier Field for the second night in a row: the artist formerly known as Kanye West.
On Monday, Macklemore paid the price for that Sept. 4 show where he accused Israel of genocide and apartheid while opening for English singer and songwriter Ed Sheeran. That gig ended when Robert Kraft, owner of Boston’s Gillette Stadium, said Macklemore was not welcome there for Sheeran’s two scheduled shows.
The shutout went beyond Gillette. With 10 more shows left on the tour, eight including Macklemore as the opening act, Kraft rallied other stadium owners to bar him too. Macklemore was removed.
“The venue’s and promoter’s decision was final,” Sheeran wrote on Instagram. “Macklemore coming off tour was the promoter’s decision. It was not mine. I have spent this week trying to build bridges, to find a solution and unfortunately, was unable to do so.”
On Tuesday, Sheeran’s three other opening acts and his back-up band withdrew in solidarity.
On that list of stadiums that barred Macklemore was AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, where tickets to see Ye in November went on sale last week. But there was no mention of canceling that show.
Neither Soldier Field nor AT&T Stadium responded to the Forward’s inquiries about why Ye was still welcome there despite his escalating antisemitism over the years.
In 2025, his antisemitic conduct hit a fever pitch when he ran a Super Bowl ad directing viewers to an online store that briefly sold a $20 T-shirt emblazoned with a black swastika. He also released a music video on X titled “HEIL HITLER (HOOLIGAN VERSION),” featuring the lyric “So I became a Nazi, I’m the villain,” which surpassed one million views. He was banned by Twitch after appearing in a livestream giving a Nazi salute and shouting “Heil Hitler.”
So is hating Jews more acceptable than hating Israel?
Not exactly, said Ari Ingel, executive director of The Creative Community for Peace, a nonprofit dedicated to fighting antisemitism in the entertainment industry. Macklemore has shown no signs of remorse or intention to understand why his actions were harmful.
Meanwhile, Ye has paid a hefty price for his antisemitic rants over the years, losing lucrative deals with Adidas, Gap, Balenciaga and Universal Music Group. And while some still question Ye’s sincerity and he has more work to do, he did apologize, Ingel said.
“Kanye is still being held accountable for his statements,” Ingel told the Forward. “He’s not working with the biggest promoters in the industry … We have not let go of all the harm he has caused yet, but his team has put him on a better path.”
Though Ye has performed in some European shows, his headline act at this summer’s Wireless Fest in London was canceled after the U.K. denied him a visa to travel to the country. Concerts in Italy, Russia and Poland also got nixed.
Here in the U.S., his promoter has only been able to book select stadiums for this 2026 tour, including the New Orleans Superdome, San Antonio Alamodome, and two shows at Soldier Field in his hometown of Chicago.
In San Antonio, Mayor Gina Maria Ortiz Jones unsuccessfully tried to prevent Ye’s July 4 show in the city-owned stadium. But backlash against pulling the plug was too intense and the show was allowed to go on. U.S. Sen. Rick Scott also sought to cancel Ye’s June shows at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, another publicly-owned venue scheduled to host Sheeran on Nov. 7.
Ye’s shows have featured the spectacle that he is known for – the artist performing on top of a gigantic spinning globe in the center of the stadium with billows of fog, laser light shows, fireworks and surprise guest appearances. His setlist covers the span of his career, minus the song “Heil Hitler.”
Macklemore, by contrast, commandeered what was supposed to be a family-friendly show to deliver a not-so-family-friendly, even hostile, message, Ingel said. He didn’t just speak briefly about the plight of Palestinians, which would have been within his right to do. While singing “Hind’s Hall,” his tribute to pro-Palestinian protesters who occupied a building at Columbia University, he projected images of war and encampments on giant screens and led the crowd in a call and response, creating an atmosphere where Jewish fans felt threatened.
“Ye, despite the previous statements, is not doing that at his shows,” Ingel said. “He’s not whipping up the crowd into a frenzy of antisemitic hatred.” If he did, his tour would undoubtedly come to a screeching halt.
“Stadiums are not going to allow their venues to turn into forums for hate,” Ingel said. “This is about bringing people together.”
And so far, ironically, that’s what Ye’s shows try to do by sticking to the music. Unfortunately, Ingel said, Macklemore did not.
The post Macklemore got canceled. Kanye is playing sold-out shows. What’s the difference? appeared first on The Forward.
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Feds say Cisco likely failed to protect pro-Palestinian workers from harassment
(JTA) — Cisco Systems likely violated the civil rights of Palestinian, Arab and Muslim employees, a federal agency has found, after employees were subjected to harassing messages — some of them posted by employees in an internal forum called the Connected Jewish Network.
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission determined in June that there was “reasonable cause to believe” Cisco subjected the employees to a hostile work environment based on their national origin, religion or association in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The determination follows on media reports and an EEOC probe into an ugly climate at the tech company following the Oct. 7, 2023, deadly attacks by Hamas on southern Israel. Pro-Palestinian employees called on the company to end its business dealings with Israel, while Jewish employees said the company had failed to protect them from harassment by pro-Palestinian employees.
The EEOC case, however, turned in part on messages shared in the internal Connected Jewish Network forum. A complaint filed by Legal Aid at Work, which represented the Muslim and pro-Palestinian employees, said employees on the Jewish forum had “repeatedly glorified violence, joked about sending people to their deaths” and “labeled Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims as murderous, violent, terrorists.”
“This is a massive multinational corporation with all the resources in the world and they couldn’t get it right,” Christopher Ho, a director at Legal Aid at Work, told the Guardian, which reported on the EEOC finding last month. “Thankfully the EEOC did.”
Ho said Cisco had “at best failed to take their harassment seriously” and through its inaction had sent “the implicit message that its pro-Palestinian employees were unworthy of protection.”
The letter is not a binding ruling, and both sides said the EEOC has indicated it will not sue. The finding could nonetheless strengthen employees’ cases if they pursue their own lawsuits. The employees are considering collective and individual litigation, according to media reports.
The case examines the period after a group of mostly Palestinian, Arab and Muslim employees called Bridge to Humanity circulated an open letter urging Cisco to end its business dealings with the Israeli military. More than 1,700 employees signed the letter. The employees said they were subsequently subjected to racist and Islamophobic harassment.
In August 2024, employees — including some concerned Jewish employees — filed a 76-page ethics complaint accusing more than a dozen colleagues of creating a hostile work environment through posts on the Connected Jewish Network, which was visible to all company employees, according to the Guardian.
The episode was not one-sided. Wired magazine, in a 2024 investigation into the dispute, reported that some Jewish Cisco employees also believed the company had failed to protect them from harassment by pro-Palestinian employees. One former employee told the magazine that Cisco leadership could have done more to “reduce the mess across the board.”
Legal Aid at Work believes this is the first EEOC finding against a major tech company involving discrimination against workers engaged in pro-Palestinian advocacy. Since the Oct. 7 attacks, the EEOC has made combating workplace antisemitism a major policy and enforcement priority, with scrutiny on academia and the private sector increasing under the Trump administration.
Cisco has disputed the EEOC’s determination, saying it had “thoroughly investigated all concerns and took appropriate action.” The company previously said it had removed some comments, issued discipline warnings and provided coaching to multiple employees.
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Mahmoud Khalil sues Columbia University citing ‘hostile environment’ for pro-Palestinian students
Mahmoud Khalil, the Palestinian Columbia University alum who was detained by the Trump administration last year, is suing his alma mater along with an Israeli dean of the school he attended for facilitating a “hostile environment” for pro-Palestinian students.
Khalil became a national symbol of the campus pro-Palestinian protest movement when he was detained in March 2025 after the government accused him of being aligned with terrorists. On Monday, he filed a civil rights lawsuit in federal court accusing the school of engaging in months-long “deliberate indifference” toward the harassment of pro-Palestinian students on campus, including at the hands of right-wing pro-Israel groups.
He contends that Columbia’s alleged indifference ultimately helped to lead to his 104-day detention by federal immigration authorities, during which he missed the birth of his first child, before being released after a federal judge ruled his detainment was likely unconstitutional. He is joined in the suit by members of the School of International and Public Affairs Palestine Working Group, a pro-Palestinian student group on campus.
“Columbia laid the groundwork for my targeting by the Trump administration through its deliberate indifference and discrimination aimed at intimidating Palestinian students,” Khalil told reporters at a press conference in New York on Monday.
SIPA’s Dean Keren Yarhi-Milo speaks during a book talk for Fareed Zakaria’s new book, “Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present” at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs on April 3, 2024 in New York City. (Shahar Azran/Getty Images)
In addition to the university, the suit also names Keren Yarhi-Milo, the dean of the Columbia School of International and Public Affairs, who is Israeli-American, as a defendant. The complaint says that Yahi-Milo had unfairly accused Khalil, while a student in the school, of antisemitism and harassment.
In a statement to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Columbia representatives defended Yarhi-Milo in general terms.
“Throughout her time at Columbia and during her service as dean, Dean Yarhi-Milo has worked with and supported students of all backgrounds, including our Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim students,” the statement reads. “The University is grateful for her tireless efforts on behalf of our students and her commitment to a campus free of discrimination and harassment.”
Columbia representatives declined to comment further on the lawsuit but said that “creating a campus environment where every member of our community feels welcome, supported, and safe is fundamental to who we are as a university. It is also a responsibility we take seriously.”
A leading figure of the encampment movement that began at Columbia before spreading to schools across the country, Khalil was the first pro-Palestinian student protest leader to be detained by the Trump administration and spent months in an immigrant detention center despite holding a green card.
In the months since a federal judge ordered his release, Khalil has filed a number of lawsuits, including against pro-Israel groups that he said “conspired” with the government to target him. He has also sued Columbia before, for disclosing student records as part of a congressional investigation.
Khalil’s latest lawsuit against Columbia claims the school violated Title VI protections for him and his fellow plaintiffs based on their ethnic identity, national origin or “affiliation with Palestine.” The lawsuit invokes the same federal civil rights law that Jewish and Israeli students have used in discrimination claims against universities, some of which have resulted in settlements.
Columbia itself signed a controversial agreement with the Trump administration last year to resolve federal civil rights investigations, paying $221 million and agreeing to a number of concessions in order to free up hundreds of millions in federal funding. During his press conference Monday, Khalil called such settlements “disgraceful.”
The suit notes that, as a student, Khalil called Yarhi-Milo “genocidal” in a message to fellow students. The suit then describes a subsequent internal university investigation into Khalil as “unfounded and retaliatory,” and claims the school “repeatedly launched meritless allegations of antisemitism against Mr. Khalil” prior to his federal detention.
During the press conference, Khalil accused Yahi-Milo of being someone who “weaponizes her identity to shield herself from legitimate concerns and criticism.” Khalil added, “Her priority has never been her students, me and my fellow students here. Her priority has always been Israel.”
The lawsuit’s examples of indifference include a claim that Columbia failed to intervene when a right-wing group, Accuracy in Media, labeled some of the members of Palestine Working Group as “Columbia’s Leading Antisemites” in messages on the side of trucks driven near campus for months after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks. The group had targeted pro-Palestinian students in a similar fashion at several campuses.
Joseph Howley, a classics professor at Columbia who is Jewish, spoke at the press conference in support of Khalil, whom he called a friend. “We all see how the university’s anti-Palestinian racism has directly endangered its students,” said Howley, who wore a Jews for Racial and Economic Justice hat and a “Not In Our Name” shirt. “I won’t be wasting any more time on town halls or listening sessions or imagining anything.”
In a statement to JTA, Accuracy in Media president Adam Guillette said his group “uses publicly available information, and we are steadfastly opposed to doxxing. We pledge to continue delivering accountability to pro-Hamas radicals across the country.”
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