An Iranian American with an Israeli flag in his window to demonstrate solidarity for his Jewish friends and family was the target of a vicious antisemitic verbal assault last week in Reseda, which was caught on tape.
The victim, who only wanted to be identified as a Los Angeles resident called Justin, was alone in his car on May 22 when the unprovoked, vicious tirade began.
Justin told KTLA’s Rachel Menitoff that the man rolled down his window and threatened to kill him.
“He said, ‘I’m going to f kill you,'” Justin remembered.
According to dashcam footage of the event, an anonymous man driving a Kia approaches Justin’s Tesla and brakes forcefully; his carelessness, according to the victim, activated the Tesla’s emergency braking system, nearly causing Justin to be rear-ended by the motorist behind him.
The man in the Kia then exits his vehicle, cellphone in hand, probably to video the incident, and launches into a profanity-laced string of threats, saying that Justin was “a f coward.” “I will beat your ass in front of everyone, okay?”
The man spits at Justin’s vehicle, accuses him of not being an American, and says, “Go back to your country, you Zionist piece of s***.”
The terrifying public exhibition of antisemitic road rage occurred just one day after a young, soon-to-be engaged couple, both members of the Israeli Embassy, was killed down outside the Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C. on May 21.
The gunman in that case has been arrested, and federal officials are treating the incident as a targeted act of terrorism.
Justin, who believes that antisemitic attacks are becoming more common, believes it is critical to demonstrate unity and participate in conversation.
“I would love to offer this person who accosted me, or someone like him, if you want to debate the merits of the war, we can look at that and analyze things, and we can be as objective as possible and acknowledge our biases,” he told me. “[We can] try to see if we can reason that way in public and then we won’t be so confused about who our neighbors are and prejudge people and feel so righteous to be openly bigoted against somebody who could be perceived to be Jewish.”
The event, according to Justin, who filed a police report, is being investigated as a hate crime, but the individual has yet to be discovered or apprehended.
