The New York Police Department’s (NYPD) Hate Crimes Task Force is helping investigate a violent anti-Semitic attack last Friday on a Jewish man in Brooklyn, N.Y., announced Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
The Flatbush Shomrim Safety Patrol posted a surveillance video on Twitter that shows two people physically assault a Jewish man who was on his way to a synagogue on July 19. The victim’s tefillin were also stolen; Shomrim volunteers later recovered the religious items.
According to the NYPD, the 41-year-old visibly Jewish man reported that he was walking when two men approached him from behind and “repeatedly punched him in the face with a closed fist causing pain and a laceration.” The victim refused medical treatment at the scene of the crime and was not taken to a hospital.
“Yet another sickening anti-Semitic attack, this time in Flatbush. It’s outrageous,” Cuomo said on Saturday in a statement posted on Twitter. “To our Jewish community—I know this is exhausting. No one should have to worry about being attacked for their religious beliefs, ever. We will continue to fight against hate in all its forms.”
Police noted that “the incident has been deemed possible bias.” No arrests have yet been made.
Shomrim is offering $1,000 for information leading to an arrest in the case. Republican mayoral candidate Curtis Sliwa added $5,000 on top of the reward.
“This is a continuation of anti-Semitic attacks that are occurring in New York City in addition to the many crimes against Asians,” Sliwa, founder of the Guardian Angels, said at a Sunday afternoon press conference near the scene of the crime.
Source: Cleveland Jewish News
Also Read: Ohio man pleads guilty to anti-Semitic harassement of Jewish neighbors
“This is a continuation of anti-Semitic attacks that are occurring in New York City in addition to the many crimes against Asians,” Sliwa, founder of the Guardian Angels, said at a Sunday afternoon press conference near the scene of the crime. Task Force
Wesley Charles Martines, 32, of Los Gatos, was arraigned on July 13 and is being held in Elmwood men’s jail after he was arrested July 9 in connection with possession of assault weapons, multiple silencers, drugs and the making of a pipe bomb.
Campbell, CA police found him “prowling outside a business,” the Santa Clara District Attorney’s Office said in a July 15 news release.
“Once again, law enforcement saved lives before the blood and tears flowed,” Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen said in a statement. “All of us have a role in stopping the next mass shooting, suicide, or domestic violence murder. Please call law enforcement if you know that someone is armed and dangerous.”
Campbell police responded to a call about the suspect just after midnight on July 9, when a business owner notified Campbell police about a man, who he could see on his security camera, looking into vehicles on a car lot and into a storage shed.
Police responded quickly and stopped a truck driven by the suspect. Inside the truck, law enforcement discovered weapons, body armor, ammunition inscribed with messages including “To a widow from the Grim Reaper,” drugs, a pipe bomb filled with pellets but no explosive material inside and a journal containing the anti-Semitic and racist writings as well as a plot to go to a sporting goods store, dress as an employee and tie everyone up, according to the District Attorney’s office.
Joanna Mendelson, associate director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) Center on Extremism, said her organization was still learning about the specifics of the case at the time of the interview, but the suspect’s behavior reflected a trend of extremist actors for whom specific groups are the targets of their ire.
“While there’s more information that needs to come to light in regards to this particular case, it underscores the grave danger those motivated by hatred pose to our society,” Mendelson said.
Source: Forward
Also Read: Canadian Jewish leaders raise alarm after string of anti-Semitic assaults in Toronto
Anti-Jewish Anti-Jewish
The surveillance video captures a brutal scene: A woman is thrown down a flight of stairs and smacks into the subway platform violently enough to fracture a bone in her face. It was May 28, and the woman, in her 60s, was among dozens of people attacked during a spate of anti-Asian violence this year.
It may not even have been the first such attack by the suspect, John Chappell, a law enforcement official said. Two months earlier, Mr. Chappell, who had dozens of prior arrests, had been suspected of lighting an Asian woman’s backpack on fire, the official said. He was released just days after his arrest in May.
Six months into a series of brutal attacks on people of Asian descent across the city, Mr. Chappell’s case underscores the challenges the police and prosecutors have faced in both preventing the violence and punishing those responsible.
Many of the attacks are unpredictable and carried out by people in the throes of mental health episodes, seemingly at random. Officials say they doubt many of the hate crime charges related to the attacks will stick in court, and those arrested are often released quickly. And the Police Department appears to have scaled back its efforts to stop them: An undercover unit intended to prevent anti-Asian attacks has not been active since May after officers faced threats of violence themselves.
But the attacks have continued, and anxiety and trauma still grip many pockets of the city’s Asian communities, where the violence feels fresh even as the spotlight on it has dimmed.
“There’s still this fear that permeates throughout the community,” said Chung Seto, a community leader and political strategist in Chinatown. For many, she said, the fear feels like a continuation of the darkest days of 2020, when city residents were afraid of going outside because of the coronavirus.
Source: NY Times
Also Read: NYC Chinatown museum reopens with anti-Asian racism exhibit
A Toronto man with a swastika tattoo on his chest was arrested for assault on a Jewish man and ticketed for other offenses aimed at the Jewish community during the past week.
Michael Park, 32, was first arrested on Saturday after police responded to a report of an assault of a 33-year-old man.
Days later, on Tuesday, police were called to Stanley Park “in regards to a man with a swastika tattoo on his chest yelling racial slurs towards an individual.” They identified Park and ticketed him for “interfering with use and enjoyment of the park by others” and using “profane/abusive language.”
An additional charge of assault with a weapon was added after police learned Park allegedly threw an object at the caller who first alerted police to Park’s behavior.
The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) and UJA Federation of Greater Toronto expressed their appreciation for the Toronto Police Service’s response to the most recent anti-Semitic incidents.
“Like all members of society, Jews should be able to walk down the street with confidence in our safety and security. We are grateful for the immediate response of the Toronto Police Service to these incidents,” the two groups said in a joint statement. “Anti-Semitism is a scourge that is quickly spreading throughout Canada and around the world. Over the past few months, Jewish Canadians—already the most targeted religious minority in this country, according to Statistics Canada—have witnessed an alarming rise in hate-motivated harassment, vandalism and assault.”
While neither assault case filed against Park has been officially stated as hate crimes as of yet, the Toronto Police Service explained, “When suspected hate-motivated offenses are reported to police, the investigation will be led by a divisional investigator. The Hate Crime Unit will be made aware and specialized officers from that unit will support the investigation as needed.”
Source: Cleveland Jewish News
Also Read: Ohio man pleads guilty to anti-Semitic harassement of Jewish neighbors
Communities where Black Lives Matter protests have been held in recent years saw a subsequent drop in the number of police homicides, by as much as 15 to 20 percent, or roughly 300 fewer deaths at the hands of authorities, recent research from UMass Amherst shows.
The findings were first released in February and updated last month in “Black Lives Matter’s Effect on Police Lethal Use-of-Force” by Travis Campbell, a graduate student in UMass Amherst’s Economics Department.
Campbell said despite the national attention and discourse the protest movement has generated over the years, he was surprised to learn little research actually exists regarding its impact on law enforcement.
Also surprising was the result of his research, which is now being peer-reviewed, he said.
“Growing up, we’re always told that protests don’t do anything,” Campbell, 26, told Boston.com. “But there’s a pretty sizable literature showing that they actually do.”
The key findings
According to Campbell’s research, the decreases were recorded between 2014, when unarmed Black teenager Michael Brown was shot and killed by police in Ferguson, Missouri, and 2019.
Campbell opted not to include 2020 in his data set due to the unusual set of circumstances the COVID-19 pandemic presented. (Protests and COVID-related shutdowns, he said, were likely more probable in Democratic-leaning cities. Lockdowns could have also resulted in fewer interactions between the public and police than in a typical year, he added.)
The result of protesting appears to be striking, his paper notes.
“The payoff for protesting is substantial; around every 5 of the 1,724 protests in the sample corresponds with approximately one less person killed by the police over the following years, depending on specification,” Campbell writes. “The police killed around one less person for every twelve hundred participants.”
Read the complete article at: Boston.com
Also read: N.J. cop called Black Lives Matter protesters terrorists. How the comments got her fired.
A Columbus, Ohio man who was facing a federal hate crime charge for allegedly harassing his Jewish neighbors by shouting anti-Semitic slurs and threats has pleaded guilty in federal court to criminally interfering with their right to fair housing.
Douglas G. Schifer, 66, of the Olde Towne East district of Columbus, was accused of repeatedly yelling anti-Semitic obscenities at his Jewish neighbors Nick and Tiffany Kinney in November 2020. The couple had recently moved into the neighborhood from California.
In a previous court appearance, they testified that he screamed “Hitler should have gassed you” and “That’s why he put you people in furnaces,” among other vulgarities.
That night as they were watching TV, Schifer threw rocks at their patio door and windows, shattering both. The incident was recorded on a doorbell camera.
Plea documents also detailed that Schifer threatened to poison the couple’s dog.
“I will poison your dog if it comes back to the fence,” he said.
He also admitted to threatening to shoot their dog and threatening to “burn to the ground” their garage that they were renovating into an apartment.
In January, Schifer refused to cooperate with an FBI investigation. His lawyer, Sam Shamansky, said at the time that his client planned to plead not guilty, stating that Schifer had not intended to offend his neighbors.
Schifer faces up to one year in prison and a fine of up to $100,000.
Source: Israel National News
Also read: Germany sees 20% rise in anti-Semitic crime in 2018, blames far right
He also admitted to threatening to shoot their dog and threatening to “burn to the ground” their garage that they were renovating into an apartment. In January, Schifer refused to cooperate with an FBI investigation. His lawyer, Sam Shamansky, said at the time that his client planned to plead not guilty, stating that Schifer had not intended to offend his neighbors.
A monthly record number of reports of anti-Semitic incidents were recorded following the 11-day conflict between Israel and the Palestinians in May, a charity says. So how does it feel to be Jewish in the UK?
Rabbi Nicky Liss had been preparing to give a midnight talk at a north London synagogue last month, when he began to feel nervous.
A rabbi of 13 years, he was used to giving speeches. This one, to mark the start of the Jewish festival of Shavuot on 16 May, should not, on the face of it, have been any different.
But that afternoon, events built to what he describes as a “crescendo”.
He’d learned that his good friend and fellow rabbi, Rafi Goodwin, had been attacked outside his synagogue in Chigwell, in Essex – allegedly struck over the head with a brick.
Two men have denied causing grievous bodily harm, robbery and religiously aggravated criminal damage and are due to appear at Chelmsford Crown Court for trial in November.
In a separate incident that afternoon, a man was filmed apparently using a megaphone to shout anti-Semitic abuse from a convoy of cars with Palestinian flags that travelled through St John’s Wood in north-west London – an area that is home to a Jewish community. Four men were arrested and remain on bail until mid-July.
Over the next few hours, worried phone calls and messages buzzed through Mr Liss’s community. Some feared the situation in north London could become “very threatening” by the evening.
Orthodox Jews do not use cars on religious holidays or the Sabbath, so Mr Liss had planned to walk the 25 minutes from his home on-site at Highgate synagogue to the synagogue in Hampstead Garden Suburb.
But the day’s events left Mr Liss with an agonising dilemma over whether he should go ahead with his talk – and what, as chair of United Synagogue’s rabbinical council, he should advise concerned colleagues to do.
Read the complete article at: BBC
Also Read: PM Johnson vows support for UK Jewish community after rise in anti-Semitic incidents
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Authorities in Winthrop, Mass., are investigating whether a white man who shot and killed two Black people on Saturday as a possible hate crime.
A retired Massachusetts State Police trooper and a U.S. Air Force veteran were shot and killed by a man, who was later fatally shot by police, after he crashed a stolen work truck into a building, according to authorities.
Suffolk County District Attorney Rachael Rollins said that David L. Green and 60-year-old Ramona Cooper were “executed” by 28-year-old Nathan Allen Saturday afternoon.
The shootings are being investigated as possible hate crimes because Rollins said “troubling white supremacist rhetoric” in Allen’s handwriting was discovered by investigators. That handwriting contained anti-Semitic statements and racist statements against Black people, according to Rollins.
“He walked by several other people that were not Black and they are alive,” Rollins said. “They were not harmed. … They are alive and these two visible people of color are not.”
Winthrop police Chief Terence Delehanty said his department received a call shortly before 2:45 p.m. Saturday about the crash involving the stolen truck that leveled a building. He confirmed that no one was inside the building at the time of the crash.
After the crash, authorities said Allen exited the vehicle and proceeded to flee on foot. At some point shortly thereafter, Allen is believed to have shot Cooper and Green. Green was pronounced dead at the scene, while Cooper was transported to Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, where she was later pronounced dead.
Delehanty said one victim, later identified as Cooper, was found by Winthrop police on Shirley Street, about a half-block away from the scene of the crash. Green, meanwhile, was engaged by the suspect in an alleyway between two houses that was further down the street.
According to Rollins, Cooper was shot three times in the back and Green was shot four times in the head and three times in his torso.
Read the complete article at: wbal
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The United States and Germany launched a new initiative Thursday to stem an alarming rise in anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial around the world.
The two governments announced the start of a U.S.-Germany Holocaust Dialogue that seeks to reverse the trend that gained traction during the coronavirus pandemic amid a surge in political populism across Europe and the U.S. The dialogue creates a way to develop educational and messaging tools to teach youth and others about the crimes of Nazis and their collaborators.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas and several Holocaust survivors were present for the launch at the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin. All cited links between Holocaust denial, revisionism and ignorance to growing anti-Semitism as well as to broader discrimination against minorities.
“Holocaust denial and other forms of anti-Semitism often go hand in hand with homophobia, xenophobia, racism, other hatred,” said Blinken, who is the step-son of a Holocaust survivor. “It’s also a rallying cry for those who seek to tear down our democracies, which we’ve seen in both our countries, (and) often a precursor to violence.”
Maas echoed Blinken’s comments, underscoring the importance of Germany — “the country of the perpetrators,” he said — taking in a leading role in the project.
“In recent years, we have seen anti-Semitism and racism eating into our society,” Maas said. “Just think of the Yellow Star badge as seen at demonstrations against COVID measures, of the torrent of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories on the Internet, of the attacks on synagogues and on Jewish people living in our countries, of the rioters in front of the Bundestag or the rampaging mob in the U.S. capital.”
Read the complete article at: New York Post
Also Read: Angela Merkel condemns anti-Semitism heard at Gaza protest in Germany
Police have made another arrest in the anti-Semitic attack on a Jewish man during protests in Manhattan.
Mahmoud Musa, 23, is the third person arrested in the gang assault on 29-year-old Joe Borgen as he was on his way to a pro-Israel protest in Times Square in May.
Police have made another arrest in the anti-Semitic attack on a Jewish man during protests in Manhattan.
Mahmoud Musa, 23, is the third person arrested in the gang assault on 29-year-old Joe Borgen as he was on his way to a pro-Israel protest in Times Square in May.
Borgen was wearing a yarmulke when he was jumped outside 1604 Broadway.
“They were just wailing on my head, beating on me, I’m like, just literally counting for cover,” he told Eyewitness News reporter NJ Burkett. “I think that’s why my wrist hurts, because I was (protecting myself) and they beat me in the head.”
The group punched, kicked, pepper sprayed, and beat him with crutches. Some made anti-Semitic statements including “(expletive) Jews” and “(expletive) Israel.”
“This shouldn’t happen to anyone, let alone the Jewish, white, Black, whatever skin color, ethnicity you are,” Borgen said. “I mean, the hatred that’s taking place these days is just mind boggling to me.”
He also spoke of fear among his friends, including those of Asian descent.
“I have coworkers of Asian descent in this city, and they’re afraid to go on the subway at night because they’re afraid they’re going to get attack,” he said. “Forget me for a second, that shouldn’t happen to anyone in New York City. I’ve been blown away. It’s just shocking to me.”
Source: ABC 7 NY
He also spoke of fear among his friends, including those of Asian descent.
