Two separate attacks took place on Jews in New York on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning. One Jewish man was stabbed in the back while the other was punched and abused.
In the first attack an Orthodox Jewish emergency-response worker was stabbed in New York in what local Jewish leaders say may have been a hate crime.
The assailant, who has not been identified or caught, was said to be wearing a Halloween mask. He fled the scene immediately after the stabbing.
The victim, 34, is hospitalised at Kings County Hospital in stable condition. His wounds are not life-threatening, according to police.
“He was out on an evening walk,” Binyomin Lifshitz, a member of the Shomrim Jewish volunteer security group was quoted as saying in the New York Daily News. “The guy passes by him and stabs him and flees toward Nostrand. It was a very deep and large laceration.”
The victim used his Hatzolah radio to call for aid, according to Lifshitz. Other reports say he was walking with friends at the time, and they treated him and called for help.
Police have not indicated whether the attack was believed to be a hate crime, but locals have speculated that it might be an attempt to copy recent Palestinian stabbing attacks against Israeli Jews.
In a separate incident, a Jewish man was assaulted while being subject to antisemitic insults on Wednesday morning in Crown Heights, Brooklyn just hours after the first incident, although they are thought to be unrelated.
According to local blog CrownHeights.info, the 49-year-old man was assaulted on his way to synagogue around 6:00 a.m. His attacker slapped the man’s cell phone out of his hands, and then punched him in the face, saying, “I am tired of the Jews.”
A neighbor who heard the commotion and ran outside to inspect the situation said he heard the attacker shouting about how he was “fed up with the Jews.”
Hatzalah rescue workers treated the man on site, saying he suffered a bloodied nose.
Cellphone video footage seen by CrownHeights.info showed police handcuffing a man who admitted to having slapped the cellphone out of his victim’s hands because he was “tired of all the Jews.”
A local Jewish leader told The Algemeiner newspaper that “people have to be very vigilant, there are no coincidences here.
“There are a lot of people that hate us and the haters are going to use every excuse they can to come after Jews,” Zaki Tamir, chairman of the board of the local Crown Heights Jewish Community Council, said. “I don’t know if it is a hate crime or mugging, but it’s hard to imagine it is an isolated incident.”
Sources: Times of Israel and The Algemeiner
