\By: Fern Sidman – Jewish Voice News

The most chilling aspect of the viral video posted by Staten Island esthetician Eman Masoud is not merely its overt cruelty but the casual self-satisfaction with which she narrates it. Masoud, the founder of the organic skincare company Pure with Nature, filmed herself boasting about humiliating a Jewish couple who had simply asked for help paying for parking—a mundane, everyday request elevated into an ideological test of loyalty. As The New York Post reported on Saturday, in the aftermath of the video’s spread, her now-deleted TikTok became a disturbing distillation of the toxic social-media culture in which performative cruelty is lauded as political courage and antisemitism is repackaged as justice-oriented activism.

BREAKING: Iman Masoud — a New York–based licensed esthetician and owner of “Pure with Nature” — posted a video bragging about humiliating Jewish Americans who asked her for help.

Why is she even in this country?

pic.twitter.com/RvVUmmKHjz

— Eyal Yakoby (@EYakoby) November 29, 2025

The incident unfolded in what would otherwise have been a forgettable moment in a Staten Island parking lot. Masoud recounted that she encountered the couple—whom she insisted she would allow viewers to “guess” the identity of based on context, an unmistakable insinuation repeated with theatrical smugness—while standing at a parking kiosk. The couple, unable to navigate the machine, offered her cash if she could simply pay their ticket on their behalf. As The New York Post report noted, this is hardly an unusual request in the city’s labyrinth of malfunctioning meters and confusing pay-station interfaces. But rather than accept or decline politely, Masoud decided to weaponize the interaction.

“I’ll do it if you say ‘Free Palestine,’” she recounted gleefully in the video, as reported by The New York Post and amplified by the watchdog group StopAntisemitism. According to her own telling, the woman fell silent, visibly stunned, while her husband—shocked at the bizarre demand imposed on a straightforward request—responded, “Excuse me.” Masoud pressed again, savoring the moment, and then taunted them further after the man replied with the Arabic word for “no,” prompting her to deride him for “even taking our language.”

Her demeaning mockery escalated from there. Masoud, appearing in the video wearing a hijab, presented her refusal not as a momentary lapse in decency but as a triumph of ideological retaliation, a kind of vigilante purity test. She sneered that the couple had “the audacity” to approach her at all, declaring that although not all Jews are Zionists, she presumed they were and thus did not deserve the most basic gesture of help. As The New York Post report detailed, she castigated them for “knowing who you are…based on what you look like,” and concluded her tirade with the crudely triumphant injunction: “Go screw yourself.”

The ease with which she publicly boasted about humiliating strangers reveals the deeper problem, one that The New York Post has chronicled with increasing urgency: the alarming normalization of antisemitic hostility, dressed up as political righteousness, permeating social-media ecosystems. Masoud’s video was not framed as confession or satire or provocation. It was intended as moral performance art—a premeditated celebration of cruelty toward Jews, posted for applause.

It is this self-promotional relish that struck many commentators as the darkest element of the episode. One user on X, quoted by The New York Post, cut through the façade of political justification. “Humiliating Jews in a parking lot does nothing to help Palestinians,” the commenter observed, noting that Masoud’s response reflected not solidarity but spite. Another pointedly remarked on the perverse expectation that Jews should not approach strangers in public for assistance, as if their very existence—and their request for help—were an affront to be broadcast as a punchline.

These reactions underscored a broader sentiment that The New York Post has identified in its coverage of rising antisemitic incidents: the transformation of the phrase “Free Palestine” from a political slogan into a shibboleth of exclusion, a verbal cudgel used to degrade or test the humanity of Jewish individuals in everyday settings. While the phrase itself has complex political meanings in various contexts, Masoud’s weaponization of it was unmistakably malicious. It was deployed not as expression of belief but as extortion: perform my politics or you do not deserve help; voice my slogan or accept contempt as your due.

The rapid spread of the video—and its nearly as rapid deletion once public backlash mounted—highlights the new dynamics of accountability in the digital age. Masoud, who boasts more than 13,000 TikTok followers, likely expected admiration from her echo chamber. Instead, she encountered something she had not anticipated: widespread public condemnation beyond the performative activism spheres she occupies. The New York Post reported that Masoud did not respond to its request for comment, an omission that speaks volumes about the asymmetry between the bravado of her video and the reticence that followed scrutiny.

The fact that this encounter occurred in New York City—a place that prides itself on pluralism, tolerance, and coexistence—makes the episode all the more unsettling. In a metropolis where Jewish and Palestinian communities live, work, commute, and socialize in close proximity, Masoud’s behavior represents a dangerous erosion of civic norms. Her refusal to offer a minimal courtesy to strangers based solely on perceived identity mirrors a broader trend in which political symbols are substituted for personal character and where antipathy toward Jews is camouflaged as political expression.

Indeed, as The New York Post report emphasized, the phenomenon is not isolated. Across the country, incidents in which ordinary Jewish citizens are harassed, interrogated, or ostracized based on their appearance or presumed political beliefs have surged. The collapse of social boundaries—fueled in part by algorithm-driven outrage culture—encourages individuals like Masoud to act as self-appointed arbiters of ideological purity in mundane settings. Rather than resist this cultural coarsening, many lean into it, adopting cruelty as a form of public branding.

The specific language Masoud used in her video reveals a deeper ideological incoherence. She asserted that she did not want to assume all Jews are Zionists, yet her entire behavior hinged on precisely that assumption. She projected onto the couple a political identity they had neither expressed nor implied and then held them morally hostage to a slogan. Her claim that the husband had “taken our language” because he responded with the Arabic word for “no” exposes a parochial, tribalistic worldview in which even shared linguistic elements become evidence of theft or intrusion.

What makes the episode particularly corrosive is the way Masoud recast a mundane interaction—help with a malfunctioning parking kiosk—into a chance to mete out collective punishment. This is the logic of prejudice, not politics. And as The New York Post reported, her willingness to broadcast her behavior publicly suggests she viewed this humiliation not only as justified but as commendable.

The video’s viral spread, however, also exposed the limits of this worldview. As the backlash intensified, the narrative shifted away from Masoud’s triumphant self-presentation and toward the broader implications of her actions. Commentators across platforms noted that such incidents further fray the social trust essential to urban life. Strangers in New York rely on each other constantly: to hold a door, provide directions, translate a sign, navigate a kiosk. When basic civility becomes contingent on political allegiance, civic life collapses.

Moreover, as The New York Post report detailed, Masoud’s posture drew scrutiny not only for its cruelty but for its hypocrisy. If her ostensible aim is to advocate for Palestinian rights, humiliating a random Jewish couple whose political views she did not know serves no moral or strategic purpose. It does not advance justice; it does not build solidarity; it does not educate or persuade. It merely broadcasts animosity, reinforcing the perception—expressed quietly by some, candidly by others—that the slogan “Free Palestine” has been appropriated in many corners as a socially permissible vessel for antisemitic sentiment.

The transformation of political language into tools of interpersonal hostility represents one of the most disturbing cultural shifts of the moment. In the case of Masoud, the abstraction of political grievance into personalized cruelty reveals how dehumanizing rhetoric can penetrate the most banal spheres of civic interaction. The episode is emblematic of a broader trend in which social-media activism encourages individuals to treat everyday encounters not as opportunities for kindness or cooperation but as stages upon which to perform ideological allegiance.

The viral outrage that followed Masoud’s video will likely provoke further debate about the responsibilities of influencers, the deterioration of civil discourse, and the weaponization of political slogans in routine public interactions. But one conclusion is already clear: the normalization of antisemitism under the guise of activism poses a serious threat to the social fabric not only of New York but of the nation.

In this sense, the incident is more than an isolated act of malice caught on video. It is a cautionary tale about the corrosive effects of identity-based hostility, the moral hazards of performative activism, and the urgent need for a renewed commitment to basic human decency.

When strangers ask for help at a parking kiosk, New Yorkers should not have to perform a political ritual to receive it. And no person—Jewish or otherwise—should be subjected to humiliation as the price of a parking ticket.