Assailant in stick attack of Israeli Columbia University student charged with hate crime

The 19-year-old accused of beating an Israeli Columbia University student with a stick this week was slapped with hate crime charges – and granted supervised release during her arraignment in Manhattan Criminal Court Thursday, prosecutors said. 

Maxwell Friedman – who uses she/her pronouns – was charged with second and third-degree assault, both as hate crimes – in connection to the 6:10 p.m. Wednesday assault of the 24-year-old male student in front of Butler Library on the Morningside Heights campus, according to the criminal complaint and an account from the NYPD. 

Part of the assault was captured on video, according to Assistant District Attorney Alberto Gomez, who pushed for the highest level of supervised release to ensure that Friedman – who lives in Brooklyn but has family out of state – returns to court. 

Judge Soma Syed ultimately agreed to supervised release, but at a lower level.

The victim – who spoke to The Columbia Daily Spectator but only identified himself as “I.A.” – was part of a group that had been posting flyers around the university about the number of Israeli casualties during Hamas’ bloody sneak attack over the weekend, according to the court document.

They had also posted a photo of a kidnapped family from Israel in a designated news bulletin area, the complaint states.

Friedman began tearing down and ripping several of the posters, before she allegedly made snide remarks toward the group. 

“F–k you. F–k all of you p—k crackers,” Friedman sneered, according to the complaint.

“I disrespected you. What are you going to do about it? Do you want to talk about it like adults? If you have a problem, we can deal with it right now, fam. P—–s.”

Friedman then shoved the victim and struck him with a hard wooden object that appeared to be a broomstick – leaving him with a fractured finger and a cut, the complaint states. 

“This is because me being an Israeli these days. Not me because being myself,” the victim told the student newspaper. “It is because me being an Israeli who is under a certain kind of threat.”

The student said he will not be returning to campus in the near future due to concerns for his safety.

I.A. has also told other Jewish and Israeli classmates that he does not feel safe, and warned them about hostilities on campus as the Israel-Hamas conflict rages on.  

“We were all kind of shocked that this stuff can happen on our own campus, which should be a safe haven,” he told the paper. 

“We don’t know how to handle the situation, let alone that our families and friends are going through the worst nightmare, and we are mentally in the same ship with them,” he continued.

“And, now, we have to handle the situation that campus is not a safe place for us anymore.”

Friedman was also charged with aggravated harassment and criminal possession of a weapon, according to the complaint.

Reps for Columbia University did not immediately respond to the Post’s requests for comment Friday.