Another weekend goes by, another anti-Semitic incident to report.
Over the weekend, a car filled with hooligans hurled anti-Semitic insults at two Jewish teenagers who were walking through Brooklyn’s Borough Park neighborhood. As reported by the NY Post, the 13-year-old and 16-year-old boys, dressed in traditional Orthodox Jewish clothing, were walking by 51st Street and 12th Avenue sometime between 1 and 1:30 a.m. on Saturday. According to the police, the boys heard people from a car shouting, “Allahu Akbar!” and, “Do you know Hitler? We love him, he did a good job!” The car then drove away. The boys informed the police, saying they saw four people in the car. The police have yet to confirm the number of people in the car. The NYPD’s Hate Crimes Task Force is looking into the incident.
The news no longer invokes shock. A little over a week ago, an Orthodox Jewish man was punched in the head by a stranger on the streets of the same Williamsburg neighborhood, near Rodney Street and Marcy Avenue. Three days prior to that attack, there was a different occurrence in Williamsburg, in which a group of men punched a 42-year-old wearing religious attire in the face while screaming anti-Semitic profanity.
In the beginning of May, the NY police department reported an 82 percent increase in anti-Semitic hate crimes in the Big Apple this year. There were 82 incidents reported to police from January 2019 till the end of April, versus 45 incidents during the same time frame last year. Overall index crime in NYC is lower by 6.7 percent this year compared to last year. Anti-Semitic incidents now account for over half of the overall hate crimes reported this year. “When you drill down on the anti-Semitic hate crimes we are seeing approximately 80 percent are drawing of swastikas in some way, shape or fashion throughout New York City,” said NYPD Chief of Detectives Dermot Shea.
The data “should serve as an important reminder to all of us that we must continue to be vigilant in the face of hate,” said Evan Bernstein, the NY/NJ Regional Director for the Anti-Defamation League. “No one should ever have to live in fear that they will be attacked, harassed or targeted because of their faith. New York is no place for hate.”
“While the scourge of anti-Semitism is growing at an alarming rate across the country and around the world, we must face the reality that here at home in New York City we have a serious problem of anti-Semitic attacks on identifiably Jewish members of our community,” said Rabbi David Niederman, President of the UJO of Williamsburg. “People merely walking on the streets here feel like sitting ducks, worrying that they must look over their shoulder in fear of being hurt because of their faith.”