{"id":348702,"date":"2026-09-16T22:06:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-16T22:06:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/348702\/"},"modified":"2026-09-16T22:06:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-16T22:06:09","slug":"jew-hating-attacker-flashes-wild-victory-sign-after-nyc-judge-hands-him-light-sentence-for-antisemitic-assault","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/348702\/","title":{"rendered":"Jew-hating attacker flashes wild ‘victory sign’ after NYC judge hands him light sentence for antisemitic assault"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yehia Amin, of New York, smiled and flashed what court observers saw as a \u201cvictory sign,\u201d as he was sentenced on Tuesday to 90 days in jail for stalking kippah-wearing Jews through Times Square and punching an Israeli tourist<\/a> days after Oct. 7.<\/p>\n

Amin pleaded guilty in March to third-degree assault as a hate crime under a plea agreement with the Manhattan District Attorney\u2019s Office. He originally faced seven charges stemming from the Oct. 18, 2023 attack.<\/p>\n

Glenn Richter, founder of the New York Jewish Community Judicial Watch Group, told JNS that Amin arrived at court late in the day with his mother after failing to appear in the morning.<\/p>\n

Amin was sentenced to 90 days in jail after being indicted on hate crime charges for allegedly stalking, harassing and punching an Israeli tourist in Times Square. Steven Hirsch for NY Post<\/p>\n

\u201cMr. Amin, who should have been there in the morning, saunters in in the afternoon, along with his mommy,\u201d Richter told JNS. Court staff had to locate an Arabic interpreter, which pushed the case to the end of the day, he said.<\/p>\n

During the sentencing, Althea Drysdale, a judge in the New York City Criminal Courts, saw Amin smiling and asked him about it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI see you smiling,\u201d the judge told Amin, as Richter recalled. \u201cThis is a serious matter. Why are you smiling?\u201d<\/p>\n

Amin said, via the interpreter, that he was smiling because he wanted to look good for the photographs, Richter told JNS.<\/p>\n

Amin\u2019s demeanor struck Richter as especially jarring given that he was being sentenced to jail. \u201cWhat kind of guy grins at this very, very, very tough judge Althea Drysdale as she\u2019s sentencing him to prison time?\u201d Richter told JNS.<\/p>\n

Richter said that he did not interpret Amin\u2019s hand gesture as a peace sign. \u201cTo me, it\u2019s a V for victory,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s possible that he thought, listen, there were originally seven charges that were going to be thrown against him, and it was plea bargained down to one charge of third-degree assault as a hate crime.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yehia Amin is sentenced to 90 days in jail on Sept. 15, 2026. Steven Hirsch for NY Post<\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe to him this was a victory,\u201d Richter told JNS.<\/p>\n

Richter, who attended prior hearings in the case, said that Amin hadn\u2019t behaved that way previously.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think this is because he was finally being sentenced,\u201d he told JNS.<\/p>\n

The smile \u201ccould have been a smirk of satisfaction,\u201d he said. \u201cYou know, \u2018I only got 90 days.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Prosecutors said that Amin followed the 23-year-old Israeli and four friends, all of whom were wearing kippahs, for several minutes near Times Square while making antisemitic threats<\/a>. The latter included \u201cHamas should kill more of you,\u201d \u201cmay Allah kill all the Jews\u201d and \u201call Jews should die,\u201d prosecutors said.<\/p>\n

After the Jewish group tried to get away, Amin ran up behind the Israeli and punched him in the back of the head, according to prosecutors.<\/p>\n

Prosecutors said that Amin followed the 23-year-old Israeli and four friends, all of whom were wearing kippahs, for several minutes near Times Square while making antisemitic threats. Steven Hirsch for NY Post<\/p>\n

Members of Richter\u2019s watch group, who have attended Amin\u2019s court appearances, said that the plea agreement is too lenient.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is an example of the imbalance with Bragg\u2019s office,\u201d Serena Smulansky told JNS, of Alvin Bragg, Manhattan district attorney. \u201cThis man has appeared 22 times in court with so many excuses. He is completely unrepentant.\u201d<\/p>\n

Smulansky said that during an earlier court appearance, Amin behaved threateningly toward her in a courthouse hallway during a break.<\/p>\n

\u201cI went to the bathroom and when I returned and had to walk past the defendant, he kind of started toward me and said something like, \u2018What are you looking at?\u2019\u201d she told JNS. \u201cHis mom and his lawyer told him to stop it and he said, \u2018But she was looking at me.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Smulansky said that she told the assistant district attorney handling the case that she considered Amin\u2019s conduct to be a threat but received no follow-up.<\/p>\n

Richter, who attended prior hearings in the case, said that Amin hadn\u2019t behaved that way previously. Steven Hirsch for NY Post<\/p>\n

She compared Amin\u2019s treatment with that of Larry Montes, 46, who is accused of attacking a<\/a> congregant and security guard and damaging religious objects while disrupting Shabbat services at Central Synagogue, a Reform congregation in Midtown.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have a nutcase like Montes, who committed a similar act of violence but is clearly off his head, and he is being held in federal custody, up to 15 years in prison on state charges alone,\u201d Smulansky said.<\/p>\n

She told JNS that the disparity reinforced her view that prosecutors \u201cchoose certain defendants to make an example out of,\u201d and others are not detained during their cases and ultimately face little or no prison time.<\/p>\n

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Richter also said that the 90-day sentence was too light. Plea agreements are often a consequence of prosecutors having limited time and resources to take cases to trial, as he sees it.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a slap in the wrist, because that\u2019s a plea deal,\u201d Richter told JNS. \u201cThere\u2019s a plea deal because of limited resources.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brian Chenensky, another court-watch participant who attended the sentencing, took a different view.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s a miracle that he got sentenced, taking into account the state of the justice system in New York City,\u201d Chenensky told JNS. \u201cHe\u2019s going to jail for 90 days.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s more than a slap on the wrist,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Yehia Amin, of New York, smiled and flashed what court observers saw as a \u201cvictory sign,\u201d as he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":348703,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[3862,357,10685,4234,57,9,24,56,63,65,64,2027,58],"class_list":["post-348702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-antisemitism","tag-assaults","tag-hate-crimes","tag-judges","tag-metro","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news","tag-times-square","tag-us-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348702","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=348702"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348702\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/348703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=348702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=348702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=348702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}