ISIS doesn’t stand a chance against da Bronx!
A single dad from Sound View credits his hard-scrabble New York upbringing with inspiring him to fight against terrorists in Syria.
Now, instead of overhead rumblings of the No. 6 train, Robert Rose Jr., 25, is used to the sounds of war while on his second tour in the city of Hasakah, where he’s fighting with the Kurdish militia group “Lions of Rojava.”
“Give ‘em hell!” his father, Robert Rose Sr., 61, advised his son from his Bronx home Monday.
“My son would always champion the cause of the down-trodden,” the elder man told The Post.
As a kid, Rose Jr. got off to a rough start, joining a street gang and dropping out of high school.
But he got his act together after he was wounded in a drive-by shooting in 2007.
“He was hardcore with the street thing, but after he got shot, he turned around,” Rose Sr. said.
Rob Jr., or Robby, as his family calls him, tried joining the US Army but couldn’t enlist because of the steel rod in his leg from the shooting, his family said.
So he opted to become a “Western fighter” with the “Lions” and made fast friends with his fellow soldiers.
“When he was there, they made him feel like family,” Rose’s 18-year-old sister, Tyla, said of spending her brother’s first tour in Syria with the Kurds in January 2014. “They trained him. They are like brothers.”
Rose told NBC News he recently went back for a second tour after learning many of his friends were killed by ISIS militants.
“It’s, like, a personal thing now,” he said. “I always wanted a chance to come and fight against terrorists. This was my only chance to come.”
In his second tour, Rose Jr. got knocked off his feet when a suicide bomber blew up in front of him after hitting a mine set up by YPG, the Kurdish armed forces.
“It threw me on my back,” he told NBC. But right after, “The fight was on again.”
Rose Jr., who works as a Duane Reade security guard, took his 8-year-old son Jonathan to a Yankee game last month and explained to the little boy that he was going off to “fight bad people and help innocent people,” he told NBC.
“I told him, ‘You know what a terrorist is like? He’s like, no,’” Rose said. “He understands that much.”
Jonathan told The Post he misses his hero dad every day.
“I’m proud of him that he’s going to get the bad people and get the terrorists,” the boys said.
Tyla said she has no doubt her brother’s tough Bronx upbringing gives him an advantage on the front line.
“I’m pretty sure it helps him not to be afraid,” she said. “I’m really proud of him. He has come a long way.”
Additional reporting by David K. Li