(TJV NEWS) A Brooklyn man who screamed “Free Palestine” before brutally stabbing a Jewish-Israeli student near Chabad-Lubavitch headquarters in Crown Heights received what many are calling a lenient sentence — just five years in prison — for what was widely viewed as a violent hate crime.

Video footage published by the neighborhood watch group Crown Heights Shmira, cited by The Times of Israel, shows Vincent Sumpter confronting two Hasidic men before lunging forward multiple times, stabbing one of them in the chest. Police said Sumpter yelled “Free Palestine” and “Do you want to die?” as he attacked.

The victim, Yechiel Dabrowskin, an Israeli studying in a local yeshiva, later told Israel’s Kan public broadcaster that the attack occurred after he approached the suspect, who had been threatening children outside a Shabbat event. “I told him to go away,” Dabrowskin recalled from his hospital bed. “Suddenly, he pulled out a pocket knife.” Dabrowskin was stabbed just four centimeters from his heart and required emergency surgery.

Despite the severity of the assault, The Times of Israel noted that Sumpter’s punishment amounted to a mere five years — a slap on the wrist compared to the trauma inflicted and the clear hate-fueled motive. He had originally faced eight felony counts, including assault as a hate crime, yet ultimately secured a plea deal for attempted murder.

An online fundraiser for Dabrowskin raised over $20,000 in 24 hours, reflecting the community’s outrage and solidarity.

As The Times of Israel further reported, the stabbing came amid a wave of antisemitic violence in New York following the October 7, 2023 Hamas invasion of Israel. While NYPD data shows antisemitic incidents have dropped slightly in 2025, Jews remain the overwhelming majority of hate-crime victims — 57% of all hate crimes in the city this year.

The Times of Israel highlighted that the “Free Palestine” slogan has become increasingly linked with violent acts nationwide. Attackers invoking the same phrase have shot at synagogues, murdered Israeli diplomats, and firebombed pro-Israel rallies across the U.S.

In one December 2023 case, a man shouting “Free Palestine” fired a shotgun at a synagogue in Albany and received a 10-year sentence — twice as long as Sumpter’s. Similar rhetoric was used by suspects in Colorado, Washington, D.C., and Minnesota, underscoring what The Times of Israel described as a disturbing pattern of political slogans fueling hate-fueled violence.

Sumpter’s short sentence, despite clear antisemitic intent and near-fatal violence, has sparked outrage within the Jewish community and beyond — many seeing it, as The Times of Israel reported, as another case of the justice system going soft on violent antisemitism.