Michigan Student Shoves Jewish Conservative, Screams She 'Should Have' Killed Her. Police Let Her Go.

A University of Michigan student shoved conservative commentator Liz Benichou to the ground on the Diag, the campus's central quad in Ann Arbor, around 5 p.m. Sunday. Campus police officers were already standing there. They watched it happen, wrestled the student to the ground and cuffed her.

Then, as officers walked her to the squad car, she told Benichou exactly what she was thinking: "I should have f***ing killed you while I had the f***ing chance."

Benichou is Jewish. She was on campus for a tour stop with the conservative youth group Liberty Under Fire USA, two days before a Michigan Senate election fought over Israel, Islam and Democrat Abdul El-Sayed. By Monday the student had been processed and released, and her case sat on a county prosecutor's desk.

What the camera caught

Independent reporter Cam Higby was filming. His video, posted that evening, opens mid-argument. Benichou turns to the crowd and asks: "Am I wrong? If she walked around like this in Iran, what would happen to her?"

The answer comes in about a second. The woman in front of her lunges with both hands and puts Benichou on the pavement. A young man pulls the attacker back. She keeps coming: "You wanna f***ing get over here? F***ing get over here, b****!"

Officers take her down. "Don't resist," one says. "Stop resisting." Moments later, from the ground, she asks the officer what he's going to do to her because she hit someone "in the face."

That was not a slip of the tongue. It was an admission on camera, in front of police.

What she said on the way to the car

The worst of it came after the cuffs. Being led away, the student shouted the kill line. When someone in the crowd told her to go to a mental hospital, she answered: "I've already been to a mental hospital, and I'll go again if it means killing her."

Benichou told the same story on Fox & Friends Monday morning. "She had said... that she wanted to kill me, that she had been in a mental institution before, and she would be happy to go back if it meant she got to kill me."

What the police statement leaves out

The University of Michigan Police Department put out its account Monday. Here it is in full, because what it doesn't say matters as much as what it does:

"University of Michigan Police Department officers responded to a noise complaint on the Diag on November 1, 2026, at approximately 5:00 p.m. Upon arrival, officers identified an unpermitted event held by Liberty Under Fire USA. As the group was packing up to leave, officers witnessed a University of Michigan student push a woman to the ground. The student was taken into custody, processed and released."

"The incident has been forwarded to the Washtenaw County Prosecutor's Office for review. The victim, who is not affiliated with the university, was later medically treated and released."

Read it twice. The first thing the university wants you to know is that the conservatives were noisy and had no permit. The attack comes third. The word "push" stands in for a takedown on video. And there is no mention at all of a student, in handcuffs, telling the woman she just knocked down that she should have killed her.

Police also have not released the student's name. Officers witnessed the shove themselves, so this is not a he-said, she-said case. Whatever the permit status, a missing permit is a reason to ask a group to pack up. It is not a license to put a woman on the ground.

What the prosecutor can charge

The case now goes to the Washtenaw County Prosecutor's Office, and the charge it picks will decide whether this was a scuffle or a crime with teeth. Michigan law gives it a wide range.

The floor is plain assault and battery, a misdemeanor under MCL 750.81 that carries up to 93 days in jail or a $500 fine. Think of it as the same charge a bar fight gets.

The ceiling is Michigan's own hate-crime law, MCL 750.147b. It makes using force against someone a felony worth up to five years when it's done "based in whole or in part" on a trait such as religion or ethnicity, "regardless of the existence of any other motivating factors." A "true threat" of violence for the same reasons is a felony worth up to two years, and the statute defines that as "a serious expression of an intent to commit an act of unlawful violence" against a particular person.

That is the open question. Benichou is a proud, outspoken Jewish woman, and the argument on tape was about Iran and how women are treated there. Prosecutors would have to prove the attack was tied to who she is, not just what she said. But a promise to kill, shouted in front of police, is about as clear an "expression of an intent" as a prosecutor will ever get on video.

The politics around it

The Liberty Under Fire USA statement, which Benichou posted Sunday night, says she was attacked by "a woman identified as a supporter of Abdul El-Sayed." Higby's caption called her a "Deranged Abdul Supporter." Neither the police nor the student has said anything about her politics, and we found no post from El-Sayed's own account addressing the attack as of Monday afternoon.

The timing is hard to miss. Michigan votes Tuesday in a Senate race where Republican Mike Rogers has hammered El-Sayed over the Muslim Brotherhood, and where Democratic Rep. Haley Stevens crossed party lines over the weekend to endorse Rogers. A Jewish conservative was knocked down on Michigan's flagship campus in the middle of it.

It also fits a pattern our readers have seen up close. Last week a man tackled a Utah College Republican at a campus table after saying Republicans should be shot in the street. And all of it plays out barely 14 months after Charlie Kirk was shot dead at a campus event at Utah Valley University. Conservatives setting up a table and asking questions on a quad is not a provocation. It is the oldest thing a campus is supposed to be for.

What happens next

Police say Benichou was treated and released. The Liberty Under Fire statement says she intends to pursue criminal charges "to the fullest extent of the law." In her statement she called herself "incredibly grateful" to the officers "who acted immediately to protect me," and added: "If the intention was to intimidate or silence me, it will not work."

The Washtenaw County Prosecutor's Office now decides what this was. The video is public, police were eyewitnesses, and the threat is on tape. If all that adds up to a 93-day misdemeanor, every conservative planning a campus table next semester will notice.