3 min read
Open antisemitism was already surging in the US before October 7, but it has only grown bolder and more widespread, regardless of Israel’s current ceasefire. Exhibit A of this new normal is New York City, a city of eight million with nearly a million Jews.
NYPD recorded 671 hate crimes in calendar year 2023, 323 – or 48 per cent – of which targeted Jews. Last year, 345 – or 54 per cent – of the 641 recorded hate crimes targeted Jews. So while hate crimes in New York City declined 4 per cent overall between 2023 and 2024, hate crimes targeting Jews increased by 7 per cent.
New York’s Port Authority police apprehended a Utah man heading into Manhattan on February 14. According to ABC News, he is “accused of making online threats to shoot up a prominent Manhattan synagogue”. Five days later, an Oregon man pleaded guilty in a Brooklyn federal courtroom. The local prosecutor said this man had been calling “Jewish hospitals and care centres . . . with bomb threats” since at least the spring of 2021. According to the US Department of Justice, he now “faces up to 15 years in prison”.
Ending less neatly, though, was a protest outside a synagogue in the Chasidic Brooklyn neighbourhood of Boro Park on the evening of February 18. A man was arrested and charged with assault, according to the NYPD, after punching the face of a 61-year-old man. Dov Hikind, founder of Americans Against Antisemitism and a former state assemblyman for this area, who was there, confirmed there was also an attempted stabbing and an attempted car ramming.
This came after a pressure group Pal-Awda encouraged people on X to “Flood Boro Park to Stop the Sale of Palestinian Land!!” Beyond the menacing reference to October 7, it’s worth noting the Israeli real estate fair they opposed showcased options inside Israel’s Green Line, according to Hikind, who recalled “people looking at plans in” Tiberias, Tzfat, and Israel’s south. In short, the protest group doesn’t recognise Israel. Hikind recounted heading outside the real estate fair about 6.45pm and seeing “about 150 maybe to 200 (protesters) plus at least 50 Neturei Karta with our enemies. But across the street from this group was a magnificent group of Jews, mainly Chasidim from the neighborhood and others who came to show support. We sang Am Yisrael Chai.”
Hikind estimated that the Jewish counter-protest was “a good couple hundred” people strong and noted “the police were out in force". Hikind added: “People came with Israeli (and American) flags. Everyone was united… to me it was beautiful to see this outpouring of support for Israel. I found it interesting, since Boro Park isn’t exactly (political) ‘Zionist’ territory… it was clear to me it wasn’t about Zionism. It was about Jews.”
Meanwhile, the mostly masked protesters chanted “vicious anti-Israel stuff”, Hikind said. In a video MEMRI translated and posted on X from that night, a bare-faced young man says into a microphone, “Oh Allah, annihilate the plundering Zionists. Oh Allah, annihilate the criminal Zionists. Oh Allah, kill them one by one… and do not leave a single one of them.” This is definitely not the stuff of peaceful protest.
It would appear that the crowd that “flooded” Boro Park came to intimidate and – at least in some cases – literally harm Jews.
Yet, Hikind considered it a win that local Jews turned out, after communal leaders had considered cancelling the real estate fair at the second, scheduled venue for safety reasons: “Antisemitic things happen in Boro Park even without a real estate fair. Things happen everywhere these days, but to capitulate to our enemies, that affects every Jewish community when one community does it.”
Hikind is more concerned that the Jewish community doesn’t “have a plan how to deal with the out-of-control Jew-hatred”. More than 500 days after 10/7, that’s a problem, since it’s clear antisemitism won’t naturally return to pre-10/7 levels, which were already elevated.
In a statement, the End Jew Hatred movement urged the possible deployment of “the National Guard to keep us safe on city streets… (and) transparent investigations and prosecutions of terrorist supporters”. Beyond that, Hikind says it’s important Jews show up in solidarity, when Jews are targeted, especially in Jewish neighbourhoods. American Jews must also better identify their true friends, as revealed by 10/7. The only way through the potentially challenging years ahead will be together.