Former AOC Youth Organizer Arrested for Antisemitic Call to ‘Attack’ Brooklyn High School

A former youth organizer for Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was arrested Friday after allegedly urging her 25,000 social media followers to “attack” a Brooklyn public high school because Jewish students attend there.

Authorities say 27-year-old Iman Abdul posted a screenshot of Leon M. Goldstein High School for the Sciences in Manhattan Beach on Google Maps, alongside a disturbing message.

“If anyone needs a public school in NYC to attack for whatever reason … Lexus driving Israhell (sic) loving Zionisits (sic) all attend here,” the since-deleted post read.

“They’ve all gone on ‘Birthright,’” the post continued, referencing the free 10-day trip to Israel offered to Jewish young adults.

Police arrested Abdul at her Brooklyn home the next day, charging her with making a terroristic threat, aggravated harassment, making a threat of mass harm, and acting in a manner injurious to a child.

Abdul previously worked on the 2018 Democratic primary campaigns of Ocasio-Cortez and state Sen. Julia Salazar, serving as a paid canvasser for Salazar. In a 2019 interview, she identified herself as a City College of New York student majoring in childhood education, sociology, and Latino studies, and as a director for IntegrateNYC, a youth-led group advocating for “desegregation” in schools.

The post triggered a swift response from Jewish activists, who shared the information with law enforcement.

“This is a very scary reflection of what New York City has become — and, more broadly, of what’s happening in our world today,” New York City Public School Alliance co-founder Tova Plaut told Belaaz. “Hate is spreading and becoming so normalized that people not only speak openly about their hatred of Jews and call for violence against us, but can even hold public office and be elected to it. This vitriol isn’t coming from the fringes anymore — it’s in the mainstream, and people are voting for it. That says more about our society than anything else.”

Plaut added, “Jew-hatred has become so mainstream online that sadly people find this type of speech acceptable and praiseworthy rather than horrifying and unacceptable.”

Regarding Abdul specifically, she said, “[Abdul] didn’t show any remorse for her call to attack a school, in her world, she’s done nothing wrong; that’s how normalized it’s become.”

Sources told the New York Post that NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch and the department’s intelligence unit were quickly made aware of the threat.

StopAntisemitism, a watchdog group, shared Abdul’s post on X and accused her of “inviting people to attack a Jewish school,” noting that while Goldstein High School is a secular public school, the rhetoric targeted Jewish students. “This incitement against Jews, specifically minor children, must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” the group said.

In a direct message to StopAntisemitism from her Instagram account, Abdul claimed, “I never called for an attack on the school in the sense of mass organization or not even individual people attacking individuals, that’s literally stupid. I called for an attack on the school, the Zionist institution funded by our public dollars … we have every right to verbally attack the school.”

Plaut dismissed that explanation.

“In her response, she now claims she meant to verbally attack, not physically attack. But there’s no mention of that in the original post — it simply says ‘attack,’” Plaut told Belaaz. “When you have 25,000 followers, you are a public figure. People want that kind of following because it gives them influence — and with influence comes responsibility for your words. This wasn’t a call to write letters or make phone calls; it was a call to ‘attack’ a school. Any rational person would read that as a call for physical violence. It’s easy to backpedal when you realize you might get in trouble, but that doesn’t change how most people understood it. Especially in politics, you know how rhetoric is interpreted. There’s no doubt in my mind about how her words were received.”

Goldstein High School, which has 998 students, is located on the Kingsborough Community College campus.

Abdul also posted a now-deleted video, shared with Belaaz, in which she makes obscene gestures while saying that she is being targeted by Zionists for exercising her Freedom of Speech rights. Top comments appearing in the video tell Jews to “learn how to fight,” as Abdul was talking. She did not address how her viewers clearly interpreted her calls for an “attack” to connote physical violence.

Calling for violence against individuals or a specific location is used as an example by legal scholars as a unanimously agreed upon exception to the First Amendment.

Following the backlash, both her Instagram and LinkedIn accounts were deleted.