New York mayor decries recent assaults against Jews
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
By Rudy Malcom February 14, 2022
A Hasidic Jewish teenager was attacked in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn on Friday, and a Hasidic man said he was targeted by the same man minutes before. The attacks, which are being investigated by the police department’s Hate Crime Task Force, follow a string of antisemitic assaults in the borough over the past month.
Videos of the first assault shared by the Flatbush Shomrim Safety Patrol show an unidentified man following the 22-year-old victim and then slapping him in the face before running off and jumping into a passing van.
@NYPDHateCrimes is investigating this attack, and make no mistake an attack on our Jewish community is an attack on every New Yorker. We will catch the perpetrators of this assault.
Please contact the NYPD with any information. https://t.co/Z5eNveEOVW
— Mayor Eric Adams (@NYCMayor) February 13, 2022
The incident took place around 10:30 p.m., Yeshiva World reported. A second victim, 14, said he was approached by the same man a few blocks away but was able to escape unhurt after the man tried to punch him.
In both cases, a second man was seen filming the attack from inside the van.
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New York City Mayor Eric Adams issued a statement on Twitter Saturday, saying that “an attack on our Jewish community is an attack on every New Yorker. We will catch the perpetrators of this assault.”
Also recently, a crossing guard was removed from her post after allegedly spewing antisemitic slurs at parents and their children, including Rabbi Erica Gerson and her 9-year-old daughter, in January.
“She called us ‘nasty people, now we know why there’s no peace in the Middle East,’ and along with that, she cursed a kosher establishment,” Gerson told ABC7 New York. “The whole thing was totally surreal.”
NYPD statistics released earlier this month show a 275% increase in attacks targeting Jewish people —- 15 reported incidents — in the first month of 2022 compared to the previous January.
Antisemitic incidents accounted for 37% of hate crime incidents in New York City in 2021, an increase of more than 50% over the previous year. Police last year made 58 arrests in cases of anti-Jewish crimes.
In 2020, New York state led the nation with the most documented antisemitic incidents —- 336 of the 2,024 documented nationally —- according to an audit published by the Anti-Defamation League.
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