New York – A Jewish couple and their friends were brutally attacked by a group of passengers on a New York City subway. The only person who jumped in to save them was a Muslim man.
In a video broadcast by CNN and posted on Facebook by The Deen Show, Walter Sebastian Adler, his girlfriend Maria Parshavo and a friend were heading home last Friday night at 11:30 p.m. after a Hanukkah celebration in Manhattan.
The young couple boarded the ‘Q’ train on Canal Street. As they boarded, Adler said “Happy Hanukkah” to a group of passengers who gave him a dirty look and proceeded to physically beat up Adler, Parshavo and friends.
Walter recalled how six women and eight men punched him, stomped on him, while yelling insults and accusations of a racial tone, typical of so-called Christian extremists.
“You killed Jesus, you killed him on Hanukkah,” the attackers screamed, adding “You dirty Jew, you f***ing Jew.”
While no one stood up to help Adler and his friend, Hassan Askari, a Muslim young man onboard the same subway car jumped in to defend the Jewish victims.
Askari suffered injuries as well when the attackers punched and beat him up.
Walter told CNN how if it had not been for Hassan’s intervention, his girlfriend, his best friend and himself “could have been beaten to death.”
According to Hassan, he was raised by his Muslim parents to help others, be kind and courteous, because that what Islam teaches.
“A Muslim-American saved us when our own people were on the train and didn’t do anything,” Walter stressed.
“Someone whom in the media often gets painted as the enemy of Israel and the Jews,” he added.
Hassan is a Bangladeshi-Sunni Muslim who did not think twice to risk his own life to save the lives of innocent Jews who were being brutally assaulted.
Maria hopes that this story will “reach a lot of people and it will change the way people view each other, it will change the way people act toward one another.”
