I never cease to be amazed by Angelinos out here who muse that they wish they had public transportation as New York City has. Imagine: No need for a car. No need for traffic jams on the 134, the 101, the 405, the 110, the 10, the 5, even the 73. How much better it would be for the environment if only we had a subway like New York’s alongside California’s own Green New Deal bans on plastic bags, plastic straws, and gas stoves.
I listen. I smile. I don’t contradict. I save my arguments for only two subjects: (i) Left vs. Right in America and Israel, and (ii) Israel-Zionism vs. The Rest of the World.
But what about public transportation, New York style?
Been there. Done that.
I lived and worked in New York — Brooklyn, Manhattan — until my age 32. Through many of those years, I rode the New York subways. I hated it.
New York’s vaunted subways are dehumanizing. Around rush hour, you struggle to get into the car. If you don’t push, you don’t get in. It is survival of the fittest or the meanest. You push, and then the train doors slide to close, but they cannot close because a few sardines are sticking out. So the sticker-outers have to decide rapidly: Do I back off, get out, and wait for the next train — or do I push even harder?
Once in the car, if it is crowded, fuggediboud a seat. You grab an overhead strap or vertical pole and become a “strap hanger.” You stand throughout the ride. If the train suddenly stops, as often happens, you lurch — but so do all the other strap hangers, so it works out. You shake left and right with the train and bump into people. Young women have it worst. At the next stop, you hope many will exit so you can get a seat. But that does not happen; instead, more sardines fight their way into the can.
This is dehumanizing even when you manage a ride without a worm publicly shouting a warning that all Zionists must get off the train — or else.
In a Los Angeles or Tel Aviv automobile, you may get stuck interminably long on a freeway, but you control your environment: heat or air conditioning; standard radio or XM; a podcast. It’s a m’chayeh (Yiddish for a pleasure). Sure, the freeways (Californian for “highway”) could be faster, but you keep reminding yourself “Would you rather be on Manhattan’s Westside Uptown Local?” It’s similar to, if you ever have a disagreement with your second spouse (if your first marriage ended in divorce) the best marriage counseling I offer is: “Just think — would you rather still be married to the last one?” Ends all marital hurt instantly. Same with leaving behind the New York subways.
It’s a big city, New York — almost nine million? That’s practically the same as populate the entire country of Israel, including the known Arab Muslim terrorists there. In such a massive mix, it is impossible not to have all kinds of people. And the percentage of illegal aliens, murderers, and mentally ill is quite a thing in New York, New York. One of the gifts of liberalism and woke ideology is that, as long as they mostly vote Democrat, you honor the weirdos, leave them alone, and encourage more to come. You don’t deport Illegals. On the contrary, you declare yourself a “Sanctuary City” and buy advertising in Florida to encourage more Illegals to abandon DeSantis’s Florida for de Blasio’s (and now Adams’s’) New York. (If New York had not paid for those billboards, Florida probably would have. Now New York wants to send them back, but the 30-day return period expired.).
New York City barely imprisons murderers. No cash bail. Felonies downgraded to misdemeanors, and then misdemeanors negotiated down to “violations.” And you do not compel the mentally ill to receive caring and loving treatment. Instead, you keep them all around, rent thousands of hotel rooms for them, feed them, provide them free healthcare — and then ask the federal government for more money to care for these Democrat voters to keep the town blue. Good ole New York. Most New Yorkers — the minorities and the Jewish liberals in the wealthy lily-white nooks — keep voting for more of the same. The Italians, Poles, and Irish vote Republican. The MAGA Jews (mostly Orthodox but increasingly even the G-dless conservatives) who do not make aliyah move to Florida.
I rode those subway cars for years and years. From what I read now, those were the good ol’ days. Back in my matured Big Apple period, centered around the 1970’s, there was this blind woman — I was sorry for her — who seemed to be on every single train, unless she simply was following me. Every day, every ride. She somehow would enter the train car from the adjacent car and would walk the car’s length while playing an organ. She manifestly was truly blind. People would put coins in her cup. At first I did, too. Then, after a few times, something in me told me “This is ridiculous. Stop encouraging it. What if every blind person in New York did that”? It was terribly disruptive. And she never played any song I liked — nor that I even recognized.
There was another guy who, likewise, seemed to be on every car I rode, day after day, for 15-plus years. His shtik was: he would come at non-rush-hour, would find a seat, then take off his shoes, and then rub between his toes — all eight gaps. Within minutes, the stench was unbearable. He knew it. I don’t know why he did it. Certainly, once the odor started wafting, no one went near his cup to donate; rather, the entire train car cleared out. The blind lady with the accordion never entered. She could not see but could smell. That was the subways.
I left that world forty years ago.
I did encounter one anti-Semitic attack on the New York subways. I was an undergraduate at Columbia University in Manhattan, and I went home to Brooklyn every Friday afternoon to observe and celebrate the Holy Shabbat with my Mom of blessed memory and three sisters, from Friday sunset until Saturday nightfall. (My Dad of blessed memory had died of leukemia at his age 45, my 14.) And then I would travel back to campus after the Havdalah (End of Sabbath) ritual late Saturday night. Because I took college courses with heavy reading assignments, I traveled at non-rush-hour times to be sure of getting a seat, and I then devoted the next 90 minutes each way to doing my readings. That gave me three hours of focus for reading. The blind organ player and guy with the toes did not do a night shift or weekends.
One Saturday night, a trio of three older-teen troublemakers got on the car. They were not the beneficiaries of White Privilege. There always was the chance of that, and you learned as a subway commuter never to look up when such vermin got on your car. As the train stopped at their intended station, two exited while the third swiped my yarmulka off my head, laughed, and was about to get off before the train door closed. My sister, Debbie, had knitted that yarmulka for me; it was brown with my name in light yellow. I did not stop to think. That was Debbie’s kipah that animal had grabbed off my head.
I jumped up, raced at him as he was getting off the train, and kicked him with all my might in his male privates. He stopped laughing, hit the floor, groaned, and dropped the kipah reflexively. The train doors started closing, but he was half in and half out, so the doors went back open and then tried closing again. Since his two associates already were outside the car, and he was half on and half off, I kicked him and kicked him two or three more times until he was completely off. Everyone else on the train car looked down, New York style. No help. Not a word. Never happened. And maybe they could not intellectually process the image of a Jew with four college textbooks kicking one such as that.
The Daniel Penny incident reminds me of the New York City subways I knew 50 years ago. Penny is that former U.S. marine who was on a subway car, minding his own business, as a madman entered and frighteningly shouted, threatening violence, and terrifying everyone in the car. He rose where there was no man, and he was a man, chokeholding the maniac until he was sure the threat had passed. Inadvertently, Penny had held on too long, and the wild man died accidentally.
He acted justly and heroically. Daniel Penny did not intend to kill the maniac who scared and threatened the people on that car. All I could do to my anti-Semitic attacker was kick him in the privates as hard as my karate training had taught me and then kick him off the train, aiming at his spine. Penny protected a carload of innocent commuters. Predictably, Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg, who previously had targeted Donald Trump unfairly, now put Penny on trial for manslaughter. The Manhattan jury threw out the charges.
The New York City subway is a scary place. There were approximately 1,120 violent crimes there last year, in 2023. Another 538 such crimes in the first three months of this year. We all have heard or read about the particularly insane and terrifying cases of innocent people being pushed from subway platforms and onto the tracks of incoming trains. There were 15 of those during the first nine months of last year.
The police do not do enough of the job. The mayor and city council do not do it. Alvin Bragg is too busy prosecuting Donald Trump and Daniel Penny to do it. Daniel Penny is a hero, and we need many, many more Daniel Pennys because not everyone is an Alvin Bragg with the privileges he enjoys (meantime). Nothing to do with the violator’s color; just a warm fuzzy feeling that it is righteous to rid us of people in our society who abuse and terrify innocent subway riders, ruining their lives every day, whether sexually abusing a woman or shouting about wanting to kill himself and acting wildly, scaring a car-full of human beings who just want to get to work or get home.
Daniel Penny is a hero.
Amid all the obvious in New York, all the more obvious in Israel. The land belongs to the Jewish people. Sojourners and fellow dwellers are warmly welcomed. But there are laws, and they must be honored. Any non-Jewish person in Israel who does not accept Jewish sovereignty in the land should have his citizenship terminated. Any who breaks the law criminally should be deported. Murderers should be executed. It is simple to look at Daniel Penny from afar and to see how obviously right his action was.
An Israeli society that tolerates murderers who murder (not “kill” but “murder”) Jews in Israel because they do not accept Jewish sovereignty should be executed. Because their families often tend to vow to continue the murderous legacies their deceased murderous relatives leave behind, they all should be deported. Imprisoned terrorists should be tried for murder and executed if found guilty or sent to lifetime hard labor if not murder.
A Jewish government has no business paying for legal representation for Hamas terrorists. Let them get pro bono representation from all the leftist lawyers evading army service or marching at Kaplan. Let them raise money for them at Kapaln rallies. Let the Soros and EU NGOs pay for their lawyers. And if they are found guilty of murder, execute them like Eichmann. This makes so much sense. Even a left-wing Manhattan jury could figure this out.
Adapted by the writer for Arutz Sheva from a version of this article that first appeared here in The American Spectator.
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