I stood up to Zohran Mamdani’s rabid thug — and you can, too

Beware, New Yorkers: Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s got a cadre of humorless, hypersensitive goons on his side — and they’re all too willing to bully you for opposing him.

That’s what I learned Monday, when a bearded Hezbollah-supporting Mamdani stan confronted me on my commute home aboard an uptown 6 train. 

I’d hopped on at 51st Street and had just settled into my seat, closed my eyes, and pulled up my hoodie to listen to a podcast when I heard someone call my name. 

“Michael Benjamin. Michael Benjamin. I see you. You can’t hide.”

I opened my eyes to find a black-masked man standing over me, angrily shaking what looked like a pager in my face. 

It slowly occurred to me that this unhinged individual was calling me out for a post I’d made on X nearly two years ago, in October 2024, commenting on the party Mamdani threw to launch his mayoral campaign.

“Is it true that no pagers were allowed?” I’d snarked — referring to Israel’s famous exploding-pager operation of the previous month.

“He writes for The New York Post and tweets about killing people,” the furious stranger announced to the other passengers in the car, clearly hoping to have them join his effort to condemn me. 

I wasn’t shocked to be recognized — my Post columns, an active Twitter/X account and eight years in public office have made me something of a public person.

But the man’s menacing manner was startling to say the least.

My mind raced to assess the situation: “Is he alone? Is he armed?”

I quickly realized he was the owner of the big black e-bike I’d glanced at when boarding IRT subway car 1675. A young woman was sitting alongside him.

I stood up to confront him and the ranting coward retreated, still waving his black pager in my direction.

A couple of young, able-bodied men scrambled away toward the far end of the car, dishearteningly reluctant to come to an innocent commuter’s aid. 

“Remove the mask,” I demanded — he seemed familiar, but with his swarthy face obscured by his black surgical cover, I couldn’t be sure. 

He shouted that I thought I was a tough guy because of where I grew up, but that I’d grown old. (Gosh, I realized, this loon really does read my tweets.)

“You and Mayor Mamdani support terrorism,” I roared back, as adrenaline surged and heightened my senses.

“I’m not afraid of you.”

That’s when another passenger approached and told my accuser to step away from me.

He refused, and the would-be mediator flashed his badge: an off-duty police officer. 

“He’s a supporter of violence,” the Mamdani fan implored. 

The back-and-forth continued, with the officer between us, all the way to 86th Street, where the train operator signaled for the NYPD. 

Two officers boarded. They asked what happened. 

The male cop threatened to arrest me unless I got off the train; I told him and his female partner that I didn’t do anything wrong and promptly sat down. 

“Remove him,” I said, gesturing to the straphangers who had witnessed me being accosted in hopes they’d back my story. 

Fortunately, two commuters — a man and a woman — nodded in agreement. 

Eventually, the officers persuaded my aggressor and his now-crying girlfriend to disembark with his beater e-bike. 

When the off-duty cop got off at 138th Street, he patted me on the shoulder as if to say, “Take it easy, brother.”

Looking back, it’s kind of funny that a bearded pro-Palestinian thug brandishing a pager in a threatening fashion thought it right to cast me as a supporter of state violence.

But bottom line: These Mamdani simps have repeatedly shown us all that they feel free to accost blameless people without incurring any penalty.

That has to change.

Since the brutal Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas and the subsequent war in Gaza, Jewish New Yorkers have been relentlessly targeted by masked, antisemitic hooligans in restaurants, in front of synagogues, on city streets — and on the subway, with other riders all too often sitting silently by.

Now I’ve gotten a taste of what they have endured.

Gov. Kathy Hochul must reinstate New York state’s public mask ban without delay.

Disguised antifa, pro-Palestinian bullies and nut jobs are have proven themselves to be as dangerous as the Ku Klux Klan ever was. 

Masks permit bad actors to anonymously harass, intimidate and vandalize with impunity.

Meanwhile, we need more New Yorkers to stand their ground against these goons.

Together, we can send them crawling back beneath the filthy rocks from whence they came.

My stalker won’t scare me off the 6 train — or keep me from calling out Mamdani’s tacit support for Hezbollah, Hamas and anti-Zionist radicalism around the world.

Michael Benjamin is a member of the New York Post Editorial Board.