The Big Apple has seen a spike in hate crimes since Hamas’ attack on Israel earlier this month — with nearly 60% of the heinous acts targeting the Jewish community, an NYPD official said Tuesday.
At least 51 hate crimes have been reported in the city since Oct. 9 — two days after the terrorist group’s unprecedented raid — and 30 of them were against Jewish victims, NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said at a press briefing.
“Of those 51 incidents, 30 of them were anti-Jewish. So, that’s where our increase over the last period is sitting,” Kenny said.
During the same period in 2022, only six anti-Jewish incidents were reported, he told reporters.
Reports of hate crimes had been on the decline so far in 2023 compared to last year – but that number has been on the rise as the conflict rages in the Middle East, according to the police official.
“So for lack of a better term, we are seeing an increase in our decrease,” Kenny said.
“Hate crime is still down, but since the incident in Gaza, there’s been an uptick.”
The majority of the recent antisemitic acts have been related to graffiti, criminal mischief and aggravated harassment — “basically almost bordering on free speech where people are yelling back and forth at each other until it takes a weird turn,” Kenny said.
A small amount of assaults have been reported, he added.
“We’re seeing a lot of people getting slapped and getting pushed,” Kenny said.
While cops have seen increases in hate crimes in Jewish communities including in south Brooklyn and Forest Hills, Queens, Kenny said overall, a lot of the hateful acts “seem to be chance encounters with people going through their day and they happen to come across someone that feels the need to say something or attack.”
The press briefing came as police on Tuesday announced an arrest in a recent antisemitic attack on the subway system.
Christopher N D’Aguiar, 28, was charged with assault as a hate crime, aggravated harassment, assault and harassment for allegedly clobbering a 29-year-old woman inside the No. 7 train passageway at the 42nd Street and Lexington Avenue station at around 11:30 p.m. on Oct. 14 — exactly a week after Hamas’ bloody sneak attack.
When the shocked victim asked her attacker why he had randomly slugged her without provocation, he allegedly responded it was because “you are Jewish” before running off, according to police.
Earlier that week, a Columbia University student was beaten with a stick in an antisemitic attack on the Ivy League’s Morningside Heights campus.
Maxwell Friedman, 19 – who uses she/her pronouns – was slapped with hate crime charges for allegedly striking the 24-year-old man with a wooden stick after he confronted her for tearing down flyers related to Israelis killed or kidnapped by Hamas, prosecutors said.
Last week, the iconic Jewish-owned 2nd Avenue Deli on the Upper East Side was defaced with a swastika.
Similar sickening vandalism was later found across the street.
A hateful vandal also scrawled the abhorrent message, “Kill the Jews” on the wall of the 34th Street-Herald Square station last week, authorities said.
In an anti-Palestinian hate crime earlier this month, two brothers were busted for allegedly beating three people in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn while shouting, “F–k Palestine! F–k Islam!” along with other suspects, police and sources said.
Gabi Zaibak, 28, and his sibling, Eddie Zaibak, 26, were charged with assault as a hate crime, aggravated harassment as a hate crime and menacing as a hate crime, the NYPD said.
The same neighborhood was home to Saturday’s “Flood Brooklyn for Palestine” demonstration, where scores of protesters blocked traffic, with some flooding a street for hours and clashing with police.
A total of 19 people were busted during the raucous rally, including three teens – ages 14, 15 and 17, cops said.
The massive demonstration came one day after nearly 150 pro-Palestinian protesters were arrested for blocking traffic in Manhattan at a protest sponsored by the Democratic Socialists of America.
Kenny said Tuesday that the recent hate crime incidents do not appear to stem from these rallies.
“They seem to be individual acts being committed,” Kenny said.
“Some of them random people just happen to cross paths on the subway. Or on a bus. We don’t see anything that’s really planned. Protests obviously are planned events. We haven’t seen any sort of hate crime attached to a protest.”
The police official attributed the recent numbers to an increase in reporting sparked by meetings between cops and the Jewish community amid the heightened tensions.
“They’re reporting more because we’re asking them to. It’s obviously getting a lot of attention,” the police official said, citing a community meeting where “over 500 members of the Jewish community” attended.
“Our message to them was, ‘If you see something, say something,’” Kenny said.
“So a lot of the calls we’re getting are 911 calls for suspicious vehicles, for suspicious people. We go and investigate each one of those individually.”
“Sometimes they do lead to a report being taken, which can be deemed a hate crime,” he added. “The swastika incidents, the graffiti, the criminal mischief, things of that nature, the words being said to people that are derogatory in nature — some of them are being deemed to be hate crimes, and that’s showing our increase.”
“We’re asking for the public’s help and, quite frankly, we’re getting it,” the chief said.