NFive Orthodox teens charged in bias attack

Report:

Five Orthodox Jewish teens have been slammed with hate-crime charges in the brutal beating of a Pakistani immigrant in Brooklyn.

"They hit me in the face with brass knuckles four or five times while somebody held my hands," said the victim, Shahid Amber, 24, a gas station attendant. "Then they all beat and kicked me. They were screaming 'Muslim m-f-r. You m-f-g Muslim terrorists. Go back to your country.' "

Amber, who was eating ice cream outside a Midwood Dunkin' Donuts when the gang attacked on Sunday, needed 15 stitches on his broken nose and reconstructive surgery.

Witnesses who called 911 said that 10-12 youths jumped him, a source said.

Amber said the attack began after one of the group asked if he were Muslim and he answered yes. Amber's father, Umbar Islam, 56, described a brutal assault by boys in long black jackets, black pants and black hats.

"They punched and broke his nose. They ripped his jacket. He was covered in blood. They said, 'Jews rule this country!' " Islam said. "These people are crazy. In his life, he's never fought. He doesn't know how to fight."

Yitzi [H], 15, David [B], 15, Yossi [F], 17, Shulomi [B], 16, and Benjamin [W], 16, all of Borough Park, were charged with assault as a hate crime, gang assault, menacing, harassment and criminal possession of a weapon.

Adding insult to this particular embaressment are the klavern of commentators at Yeshiva World where the readership (and not the blogger himself, I hasten to add) are already hard at work making excuses for the "five heliga neshamos" and reminding us that unlike, say the Yated, " the non-Torah media do not hesitate to lie, distort, exaggerate, and substitute opinion for fact."

[Note: I don't know what happened the other night in Midwood, and like you, I am having trouble imagining a gang of yeshiva boys attacking someone. Still, I'm content to let the police do their jobs, and I have no reason to think they have bungled the case. And, if a gang of Muslims stood accused of attacking a Jewish man, I'd take the exact same position.]