after the arrest of 26-year-old Alexander Heifler<\/a> last Thursday.<\/p>\nHe is accused of assembling eight Molotov cocktails working with an undercover New York City police officer to target Kiswani and her child.<\/p>\n
Kiswani was supported by an arsenal of pro-Palestinian activists, human rights activists and Islamic activists Monday. They are all calling on lawmakers to more strongly denounce the attacks.<\/p>\n
Kiswani said she is still getting attacks on her life and said some threats have called Heifler an amateur.<\/p>\n
Kiswani talked about being at home and receiving a number of phone calls Thursday night from an unknown caller, but she was too afraid to answer.<\/p>\n
She said her parents and siblings then started getting calls, too. When her brother eventually answered the phone, that is when they learned that the NYPD made an arrest.<\/p>\n
“When I learned that someone was preparing to attack my home, building explosives with the intention of taking my life, I was not just processing that as a public figure. I was processing that as a mother, holding my infant, thinking what it means for someone to target my home, where my child sleeps, where my family is supposed to be safe,” Kiswani said.<\/p>\n
Mayor Zohran Mamdani addressed the incident on Monday and said he is relieved that Kiswani is safe.<\/p>\n
“I think any New Yorker has the right to critique, and also we need to protect them from any threat of political violence. That is the truth for Nerdeen and for anyone who calls this city home,” Mamdani said. “I want to be very clear that we do not tolerate any kind of violent extremism in this city. No one should face violence for their political beliefs or for their advocacy.”<\/p>\n
Kiswani also talked about wondering if she needed to flee her home once she got the call from the FBI that there was a threat on her life. But she says it only strengthens her resolve to speak out for her cause.<\/p>\n
Her attorneys are calling for the temperature to be turned down on Islamophobia and for other lawmakers to speak out against the purported terror plot.<\/p>\n
Copyright \u00a9 2026 WABC-TV. All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK — The pro-Palestinian activist who was the target of an assassination plot thwarted by law enforcement…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":177480,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[72695,71810,71876,9,56,63,65,64],"class_list":["post-179942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-72695","tag-alexander-heifler","tag-nerdeen-kiswani","tag-new-york","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179942"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179942\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/177480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}