The FBI is investigating the attempted Islamic IED attack on New Yorkers as possible terrorism after a suspect reportedly mentioned ISIS to police.

I Was Supposed to Be There. Yesterday.

Two Radical Muslims from Pennsylvania brought shrapnel-packed devices to the Protests on the Upper East Side on Saturday.

I was supposed to be at the Gracie Mansion protest yesterday. Since the October 7th attack on Israel, I have been going to protests in New York City.

When Jake Lang announces he's staging an anti-Islam protest outside the home of the city's first Muslim mayor during Ramadan, that's a story. You show up. You bring your camera. You stand with a few people and an Israeli flag, and you hope you don't die if 50 Jihadis decide to lynch you. I came close a few times, and it's not a great feeling. Or you stand in the crowd with the other reporters, and you document what happens. That's the job.

I didn't make it. I was up all night writing from my research on BDS Mamdani and all the vectors of attack in Jews of New York. And I have been sitting with that fact since Saturday night, because if things had gone slightly differently outside Gracie Mansion, showing up to watch what happens could have meant catching shrapnel from a homemade bomb.

Let me be clear about something before we go any further. I am not a Jake Lang fan. Not even close. The man is a professional provocateur who builds a following by staging increasingly outrageous stunts, absorbing backlash, and posting the footage. He showed up with a live goat, staged a pig roast during Ramadan, and spent the previous night in Washington Square Park simulating a sex act with the goat while screaming anti-Muslim slurs from the back of a U-Haul. He's running for a Republican Senate seat in Florida. Everything he does is content. I don't have to like him, and I don't.

But that is not a reason to kill him and others just for being there.

And that is not a reason to kill the reporters standing ten feet away. Or the NYPD officers manning the barricades. Or the counter-protesters who came to shout him down. Or the residents of the Upper East Side who were watching from their balconies, trying to figure out why their Saturday morning sounded like a war zone.

Two teenagers from Pennsylvania didn't think about any of those people when they packed jars with nuts, bolts, and screws, wrapped them in black tape, attached hobby fuses, traveled to New York City, and threw them at a crowd of human beings.

THE DEVICES

Let's start where this story actually starts. Not with Lang's goat. Not with the politics. With the bombs.

NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch laid it out in her Saturday evening briefing. At approximately 12:38 PM, an 18-year-old counter-protester named Emir Balat lit the first device and threw it toward the protest area. Witnesses reported seeing flames and smoke as it traveled through the air. It struck a barricade in the crosswalk on East 87th Street and extinguished itself. It landed feet from police officers.

Balat ran. He retrieved a second device from 19-year-old Ibrahim Nikk. Balat lit it, started running with it, and dropped it on the west side of East End Avenue between 86th and 87th Streets.

And here is the part that should be in every headline and isn't: while everyone else ran away from the smoking device, NYPD officers ran toward it.

Tisch said it directly: "I always speak about the police running toward the danger when everyone else runs away." She commended officers on the scene for "putting the safety of others and their sworn duty to protect and serve above their own personal safety." These cops didn't know what was in those jars. They didn't know if the next three seconds of their lives would be their last. They ran toward it anyway. They tackled Balat face-first into the pavement and put him in cuffs. They grabbed Nikk. They secured both devices.

The bomb squad recovered the devices. Tisch described them: slightly smaller than a football, jars wrapped in black tape, filled with nuts, bolts, screws, and a hobby fuse that could be lit. X-ray imaging confirmed the hardware inside. Nuts, bolts, and screws. That's what you pack around an explosive when you want the blast to send shrapnel into human bodies. Into the reporters holding cameras. Into the officers holding the line. Into the 14-year-old watching from behind a barricade. Into me, if I'd been standing where I was supposed to be standing.

Tisch chose her words carefully: "We do not yet know whether the devices were functional improvised explosive devices or hoax devices, because we don't yet know if there was energetic material contained in them." Both are now at the NYPD's testing facility at Rodman's Neck in the Bronx. The FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force has taken over the investigation. Law enforcement officials traveled to Pennsylvania on Saturday night to interview the suspects' families and contacts.

No charges had been filed as of Saturday night. Let that sit for a moment.

WHAT 18 AND 19-YEAR-OLDS DIDN'T THINK ABOUT

I keep coming back to this. Balat is 18. Nikk is 19. Kids, basically a little younger than my son. And I keep trying to work out the sequence of decisions that led them here.

At some point, somebody acquired jars. Somebody acquired nuts, bolts, and screws – hardware specifically associated with shrapnel in IEDs. Somebody wrapped them in black tape. Somebody attached hobby fuses. Somebody packed them for travel. Two young men then drove from Pennsylvania to New York City, showed up at a political demonstration surrounded by journalists, police officers, protesters, counter-protesters, and neighborhood residents, and decided this was the place to light the fuse.

Did they think about the Gothamist reporter who was standing right there, watching them light the fuses from a stoop? Did they think about the photographer from the Daily News? The AFP photographer whose images are now on the front page of every news site in the country? Did they think about the NYPD officers who were three feet from where that first device landed -- officers with families, with kids, who showed up to work that morning expecting to babysit a protest and instead had a flaming, smoking jar full of metal hardware land at their feet?

Did they think about the Upper East Side mom who told Gothamist she was watching from her balcony, confused, asking herself, "What is happening here?"

They didn't think about any of them. They didn't care. They came with a plan, and the plan involved throwing homemade devices packed with potential shrapnel into a crowd of people, and the only reason we're not writing about casualties right now is that the devices didn't fully function.

That's not a protest. That's not counter-protest. That's attempted mass harm, and we got saved by a malfunction and the courage of cops who ran the wrong direction.

FRIDAY NIGHT: "DEATH TO AMERICA" IN WASHINGTON SQUARE PARK

You can't understand Saturday without Friday.

Around 5 PM on March 6, activists set up a memorial to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei under the Washington Square Park arch. Khamenei – Iran's Supreme Leader for 36 years, the world's foremost state sponsor of terrorism, the man who funded Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, who praised the October 7 massacre, who brutalized his own people – was killed on February 28 by an Israeli airstrike during Operation Epic Fury. The U.S. and Israel have been at war with Iran for a week. Over 1,200 Iranians are dead. At least six American soldiers have been killed.

The vigil featured Khamenei's photo surrounded by flowers and candles, Iranian flags, photos of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, a copy of the Quran, and pamphlets including one titled "Zionism and Racist Landlords: Abuse From Hasidic Sects in Brooklyn." The organizers described his death as an "assassination by U.S. government forces." They chanted "marg barg Amrika" -- death to America -- and "death to Israel" in Farsi. One participant performed a Nazi salute when counter-protesters called him a terrorist.

About 60 counter-protesters showed up across a police barricade with American, Israeli, and pre-1979 Iranian flags. Many were Iranian-Americans who'd fled the regime. They chanted "Khamenei's dead!" An Iranian woman told reporters, "My family is in Iran, but all of them are fighting against the regime. They're happy about this. This war is not about the Iranian people. This war is against the Islamic Republic."

Then Rami Even-Esh showed up. Even-Esh, an American-Israeli rapper who performs as Kosha Dillz and regularly stands with the Jewish community, walked up to the Khamenei memorial and pulled down the photo. "Take this down," he said.

He was immediately jumped. A man in a SpongeBob sweatshirt punched him in the face. He went down. Multiple people kicked him on the ground. NYPD pulled him out with blood streaming down his face. "He's a terrorist who's killed American soldiers," Even-Esh said as police led him away in cuffs. "I think it was insane that there was a vigil for him. I felt that was the right thing to do."

Even-Esh later said on social media that he was arrested. Three people total were taken into custody Friday. All received criminal court summonses and were released the same night.

In the middle of Manhattan. During an active U.S.-Iran war. A shrine to the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism. "Death to America." A man beaten bloody for pulling down the photo. Everyone walked.

SATURDAY: THE FULL TIMELINE

11:30 AM: Lang arrived at York Avenue and 89th Street in a U-Haul, wearing green camouflage, with about 20 supporters and the goat. His event was called "Stop the Islamic Takeover of New York City. Stop New York City Public Muslim Prayer." He staged a pig roast at a cafe on East 88th Street -- a deliberate provocation targeting Islamic dietary law during Ramadan.

11:30 AM - 12:00 PM: Lang and his group marched slowly toward Gracie Mansion, flanked by NYPD, through a sea of over 125 counter-protesters chanting "no more Nazis." Officers separated the groups with barricades at East End Avenue and 87th Street.

12:15 PM: Someone from Lang's group pepper-sprayed counter-protesters. An eyewitness said children were standing nearby. The suspect was arrested.

12:38 PM: Balat lit and threw the first device. It struck a barricade feet from officers. He ran, got the second device from Nikk, lit it, dropped it. Officers tackled both men.

The bomb squad was called. K-9 units swept the area. Manual canvassing of surrounding blocks began and continued into the evening. No additional devices were found.

Lang tried to leave in the U-Haul. Counter-protesters swarmed the vehicle. He eventually got away and immediately posted on X claiming he'd survived an "assassination attempt by two Muslim men."

2:00 PM: Lang and his group left the area.

Six arrests total: Balat and Nikk for the devices, one from Lang's group for pepper spray, three for disorderly conduct, and obstructing traffic were wrongfully arrested.

WHO'S TALKING. WHO ISN'T.

Mayor Mamdani's press secretary Joe Calvello issued a statement calling Lang's protest "despicable and Islamophobic" and labeling him "a vile white supremacist." Calvello said the mayor and First Lady Rama Duwaji were safe. NBC News later reported that Mamdani was actually inside Gracie Mansion when the devices were thrown, correcting Tisch's earlier statement that she didn't believe he was home.

Governor Kathy Hochul posted on X: "New York respects the right to peaceful protest, but we have zero tolerance for hate or violence."

That's it. That's the elected response. Two statements, both laser-focused on condemning Lang.

Here's what no elected official in New York City or Albany has said as of this writing: Two young men from Pennsylvania traveled to New York and brought improvised devices packed with hardware commonly used as shrapnel to a political demonstration. Those devices were thrown at Jake Lang near the mayor's official residence. The FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force is investigating. The suspects have not been charged.

Nobody in city government has mentioned the "death to America" chants at the Khamenei vigil Friday night. Nobody has mentioned the shrine to a dead terrorist in Washington Square Park. Nobody has mentioned Kosha Dillz getting beaten bloody for pulling down the photo.

Every single statement from every single official focuses on Jake Lang. Lang is a provocateur. Everybody knows this. But Lang didn't build those devices. Lang didn't fill jars with nuts and bolts. Lang didn't travel from Pennsylvania to throw them at people.

The silence on everything else is deafening.

THE INTELLECTUAL ARCHITECTURE

Since we're in the business of following ideas to their source, it's worth noting what's in the background.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani's father is Mahmood Mamdani, the Herbert Lehman Professor of Government at Columbia University. A globally cited scholar, the elder Mamdani wrote in his 2004 book "Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror" that suicide bombing "needs to be understood as a feature of modern political violence rather than stigmatized as a mark of barbarism," and that "we need to recognize the suicide bomber, first and foremost, as a category of soldier."

Mahmood Mamdani sits on the advisory council of the Gaza Tribunal, an organization that accuses Israel of genocide and supports BDS. His son, the mayor, has supported BDS and during the 2025 campaign declined to say whether Israel has a right to exist. The mayor's wife, Rama Duwaji, has faced scrutiny over social media activity, including liking a post that called the investigation into October 7 sexual violence a "hoax."

None of this means the mayor endorsed what happened outside his home. But when a vigil for Khamenei in Washington Square Park features pamphlets about "Zionism and Racist Landlords" alongside chants of "death to America," that ideology didn't materialize from thin air. It has an academic pedigree. It has tenured professors. It has a reading list. And on Saturday, it may have had two teenagers from Pennsylvania with jars full of shrapnel.

The question of where those kids were radicalized, and by what ideas, is not Islamophobic. It's the single most important question in this story.

HOW LUCKY WE GOT

Commissioner Tisch said the first device emitted flames and smoke as it flew through the air. It struck a barricade and went out. If it had cleared the barricade. If the fuse had held. If there was functioning energetic material inside. If it had landed in the cluster of reporters. If an officer hadn't run toward it.

We wouldn't be writing about a "suspicious device." We'd be writing about a bombing.

What is also mind-boggling is that most journalists show up to a scene with the story already written in their heads. They point the camera where the narrative needs it and cut the footage to match. My fellow Ukrainian, Oliya Scootercaster of Freedom News TV, is not one of the most famous journalists. She's one of the last honest shooters in New York City.

She doesn't film a narrative. She films what's happening. When Kosha Dillz got jumped at the Khamenei vigil in Washington Square Park on Friday, Oliya's camera caught it. When the second suspect handed the device to Balat outside Gracie Mansion on Saturday, Oliya's camera caught that too.

When the NYPD identified both suspects and the contents of those devices, it was her footage that showed the country what actually went down. No editorial filter. No angle. Just the raw, uncut truth, posted while the legacy outlets were still workshopping their headlines about Jake Lang's goat. If you want to know what really happened this weekend, her feed (@ScooterCasterNY) is where you start.

I was supposed to be there. Reporters I know were there. Cops I respect were there. Residents who just wanted a quiet Saturday were there. And two teenagers decided that all of those lives were worth less than making a political point with a jar full of metal.

The bomb squad is still testing. The FBI is still investigating. Law enforcement is in Pennsylvania. No charges yet.

This story is just beginning. We'll be following the test results, the charging decisions, and whether a single elected official in New York finds the nerve to address what actually happened on Saturday instead of what was convenient to condemn.

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The Unredacted | Truth Without PermissionGene Goodwin

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