The father of two young women arrested for tearing down an Israeli child hostage poster while shouting “F–k Israel” on the Upper West Side on Tuesday defended his daughter as a “good girl” and insisted the ongoing conflict in Israel “is not about Jews and Muslims.”
In an exclusive interview with The Post, Hasan Bakaret said he always did his best to teach his daughter right from wrong.
“That’s how I was raised,” said Bakaret, a New Yorker who immigrated from Lebanon more than 35 years ago.
He spoke of the tightrope he walked explaining the violent history between Israel and his home country when they were growing up.
“Coming to America now, they are good girls. I used to teach them but never mentioned religion. It is not about Jews and Muslims. It’s about land, power and who can control,” he said.
“And now my daughter is watching pictures of dead babies, buildings collapsing on people. It does something.”
One of two women arrested tearing down an Israeli hostage poster in Manhattan on Tuesday.Rita Panahi/X
Bakaret’s daughter Aya and Dana went viral after being seen ripping a poster from a storefront window at Broadway and 79th Street by Marilyn Adler, who confronted the woman and filmed the encounter while out with her two grown daughters.
“We ask them not to take down the poster. They cursed my daughter. I was very scared. I was scared,” Adler told The Post, saying she feared the woman might physically harm her daughter.
In a video, widely shared online by nonprofit organizations Stop AntisemitismAdler’s daughter Melissa pleaded with the woman to stop, stressing that those depicted on the poster were “innocent civilians.”
In response, one of the women shouted “F–k you, f–k Israel.”
It is just the latest in a string of similar poster-ripping incidents across the city in recent weeks as Israel continues its retaliation against Hamas, which kidnapped more than 200 Israelis during a terrorist attack on October 7.
Such episodes have proliferated so much that it prompted Mayor Eric Adams to take a serious stand in denouncing the practice.
Hasan Bakaret, the father of the women, said he raised his daughters to be “good girls.” twitter @ RitaPanahi Bakaret says that even if her daughters make the mistake of using profanity, they are not antisemitic.Rita Panahi/X
“Tearing down the hostage poster is a very misguided act of disrespect to the victims of violence,” the mayor said in a statement.
Bakaret said she spoke with her daughter after their confrontation made the front page of The Post and while she disagreed with their offensive language, she insisted they were not anti-Semitic, and that their actions were taken out of context.
Marilyn Adler with her daughter Melissa Kaplan, who confronted Aya and Dana Baraket about tearing down the posterProvided to the New York Post
“I know my daughter shouldn’t curse the F-word, but at the same time, I want to understand. They said ‘Dad, it’s not true what they say, it started this way and ended this way, but didn’t show why it happened.’”
Bakaret said her daughter claimed they had been provoked by Adler, and that he had snatched a picture of a dead Palestinian baby from Aya’s hands.
“What happened in Manhattan with my daughter, I believe them. The woman provoked them, stole the baby’s picture from their hands and told her ‘this will keep happening to you as long as you support these people.’”
Adler could not immediately be reached for comment Friday.
As for what might have motivated her daughter’s actions, Bakaret said they experienced a traumatic incident during a trip to Lebanon that coincided with the Israel-Lebanon conflict in 2006, when they were just six and two years old.
The family was trapped in Bakaret’s parents’ home not far from the Israeli border, unable to escape “because [Israeli soldiers] shoot any car, any movement,” he said.
After waiting for 10 days, Bakaret said the army bombed the house next door with six women inside.
“A very bad picture for their age to remember,” he added.
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
