Arrest Warrant Issued for Woman Who Attacked Indian American and His Toddler Son for Wearing a Keffiyeh
- Ashish Prashar and his 18-month-old son were at a basketball court in a Brooklyn park when the unidentified American Jew accosted them.
Almost a week after Ashish Prashar and his 18-month-old son were attacked in Brooklyn, New York, police have identified the woman who accosted them, but haven’t disclosed her name yet. The New York Police Department has “issued an arrest warrant and is waiting for her to be picked up,” according to a post on X by the 40-year-old Indian American man. The New York Police Department is investigating the incident as a possible bias incident,” the New York Daily News reported.
Prashar, who was wearing a keffiyeh, a headscarf traditionally worn by Palestinian men, was with his 18-month-old son on a Brooklyn basketball court last week when the woman charged at the pair. The London-born-and-raised man told news media including CNN and the Daily News that as he watched his son play with another boy, the woman approached him. She then asked him if he supported Hamas and if he was aware that they were terrorists. “Then she said my people are all dogs. … ‘Do you know your people burn babies? … I hope someone burns your baby in an oven,’ ” Prashar recounted to CNN, adding that the woman told him she’s an “American Jew.”
When he took out his phone to record the incident, the woman went berserk, he told news media. The video, shared on Instagram, shows the woman throwing her phone toward them and then a cup of hot coffee as he picked up his son. “My whole goal was to protect my son,” Prashar told news outlets. “There was disbelief in the beginning when she called me a terrorist. But then it got worse, and it got more serious. I needed to protect my son and keep him at a safe distance.” His son was unharmed, Prashar told CNN, but he received “scrapes and bruises from the woman’s open-hand strikes and attempts to rip his phone away while he recorded.”
Prashar’s website describes him as a “political strategist, criminal justice activist, and an award-winning executive.” His X account shows several posts supporting the Palestinians in Gaza and their cause. “The US government & media machine will be responsible for the blood spilled of every person killed or injured in Israel’s attack on Al-Shifa hospital,” reads a Nov. 14 post. “For peddling the lies and unverified claims, and citing all the anonymous ‘intelligence sources’ that led us to this point.”
Another post written a day before, on Nov. 13 reads: “Calls for a cease-fire must be in tandem with calls to end the occupation, otherwise we’re just accepting the continuation of 75 years of a settler colonial apartheid state.”
Calls for a cease fire must be in tandem with calls to end the occupation, otherwise we're just accepting the continuation of 75 years of a settler colonial apartheid state. #FreePalestine 🇵🇸
— Ashish Prashar (@Ash_Prashar) November 13, 2023
As a teen growing up in London, Prashar was arrested for theft at a London department store, he told Independent’s Josh Marcus in a Mat 5, 2022 interview. He was sent to Feltham Young Offender Institution, one of England’s most notorious prisons. After surviving his time there, he went on to a career in journalism and politics, working for politicians like Tony Blair, Boris Johnson, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden.
After beginning his career in journalism, Prasher “shortly moved over to politics, handling communications for the Conservative Party,” according to his website. He became the youngest press secretary for the Mayor of London when he joined Boris Johnson’s press team in 2008. He also worked for the Tony Blair Africa Governance Initiative in Sierra Leone.
In the U.S., he worked on Barack Obama’s 2008 U.S. Presidential Campaign, the 2018 Midterms for several Democrat candidates, and President Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign. He also “mobilized formerly incarcerated citizens to exercise their right to vote in the 2020 election.”
The NYPD defines a bias incident as an offense that is “motivated in whole or substantial part by a person’s, a group’s or a place’s identification with a particular race, color, religion, ethnicity, gender, age, disability, ancestry, national origin, or sexual orientation.”