‘Guerrilla journalist’ says he was beaten by anti-Israel protesters at CUNY for waving American flag on campus: video
One New Yorker learned the hard way that waving an American flag on a college campus is the fastest way to make enemies these days.
Ami Horowitz, a self-described “guerrilla journalist,” said he was beaten, headbutted and punched by an angry mob of anti-Israel protesters on the uptown campus of CUNY’s City College of New York on Friday.
The aggressive reception came after Horowitz claimed to have shown up to the pro-Palestinian encampment armed only with an American flag.
His cameraman caught the wild four-minute melee on video, but the footage does not show what led up to the brawl.
“I was violently attacked by more than a dozen people for carrying a flag,” he exclusively told The Post.
“There was no commentary, no questions. I didn’t say a word and they just descended on me.”
The filmmaker’s videos exposing “indoctrination” in higher education often go viral, including his shocking December video from San Francisco State University reportedly revealing college kids pledging money to kill Jews.
Horowitz said his goal at CUNY was to expose the level of hate festering within the encampments but he got more than he bargained for after he was allegedly assaulted by competing sets of “mobs.”
“I had no idea it would get so violent so quickly,” he said.
Though he never said a word about Israel or identified himself as Jewish, Horowitz, who was repeatedly told to “Get the f–k out of here,” admitted he was “scared,” adding that the “adrenaline was super kicked in.”
He’s heard on video saying, “I’m an American, I want to go to campus,” as he’s told, “You can go to hell.”
Chalking up the protests to anti-Israel ideology alone is naive, he said, noting that the connection between anti-Israel and anti-American sentiment has never been clearer.
“If you Venn diagram those who hate America and Israel, it’s the same exact circle. It’s the same side of the same coin – that’s how clear the connection is,” he said.
While many who surrounded him were fresh-faced students, Horowitz noted older participants, including an apparent imam draped in white who’s shown in the video punching him in the throat.
Others included Arab nationals who didn’t speak English, he said.
While the video showed Horowitz being aggressively removed from the scene by campus police and NYPD in a “tight armlock,” he decried that they were simply following orders from higher officials.
“These violent people are being protected by the city officials. The bigger problem is that they’re being tolerated,” he said.
Blasting the recent Michigan rally that invoked chants “Death to Israel, death to America” and President Biden’s recent “sick moral equivalence” remarks that seemingly excused the aggressive campus agitators, Horowitz said an immediate crackdown is needed to restore order.
“These guys are anti-Israel, anti-American, and they’re being tolerated and coddled by this administration and president,” he said.
“They not only support violence and Hamas in word, they are perpetrating violence in deed, as we saw with me in real time. They all need to be removed now.”
After seeking immediate medical care, Horowitz said he was dealing with a bruised torso.
“These guys knew exactly where to punch,” he said, noting that he took punches to his spleen and kidney, “the two most dangerous places you can punch someone.”
The danger in the protestors “mirroring Karl Marx to a tee” and relitigating capitalism from the last century, is the canary in the coal mine, he added.
“These people are looking for the destruction of our way of life – not Israel, which is just the MacGuffin,” said Horowitz, invoking the Hitchkockian device that uses something as a pretext for the real motivation.
“America and the West is the real issue,” he added.
After leaving the police station without incident, Horowitz ended the video by taking his own swing at the “system” that allows this hate to fester.
“I went to this protest with an American flag on a city college that I and all American taxpayers pay for. And I got my ass kicked – I was punched, I was choked, I was thrown down a flight of stairs,” he said on camera, calling the mob “thugs, animals, outside agitators… who will attack somebody who just walks up with an American flag. Nothing about Israel, nothing about Jews.
“They hate America. They hate this country. That’s what we’re dealing with in this country.”
The Post reached out to the protest organizers and CUNY for comment.
