Frederick Krantz
Dec. 31, 2019
Amid rising concerns about the spread of antisemitic incidents in the United States, the tenth episode of a wave of attacks hit New York City, where anti-Jewish hate-crime incidents (214 as of Sunday) are up 18% in 2019.
Grafton E. Thomas, 37, was arrested in Harlem after allegedly fleeing from the scene of a machete attack on a Hanukkah party in a rabbi’s home, in the ultra-Orthodox community of Monsey, Rockland County, which wounded five people, one critically.
New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo on Sunday termed the attack “domestic terrorism”, by someone intending “to create mass harm, mass violence, generate fear based on race, color, creed”. It follows a week of antisemitic incidents and attacks in Manhattan and Brooklyn, several in and around the Crown Heights Hasidic community center associated with the late Lubavitch rebbe Menachem M. Schneerson.
These incidents have created a growing demand on the part of Jewish community spokespersons for enhanced police surveillance and protection. They follow the Tree of Life synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh, in which 11 worshippers were killed (the worst antisemitic attack in U.S. history), the death of the female rabbi and wounding of three people at Congregation Chabad in Poway, California (near San Diego), and the recent New Jersey kosher grocery store rampage , carried out by two assailants with alleged links to the antisemitic “Black Hebrew Israelites” movement, which killed six people.
New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio, who had been criticized for insufficient attention to earlier antisemitic incidents, announced enhanced NYPD foot and car patrols in three high-density Brooklyn Jewish neighborhoods, Crown Heights, Borough Park and Williamsburgh. “Anti-Semitism”, he said, “is an attack on the values of our city—and we will attack it head on”.
In Washington, President Donald J, Trump, who recently extended Title Six civil-rights protections against rising campus anti-Semitism, tweeted that “The anti-Semitic attack in Monsey, New York, on the 7th night of Hanukkah last night, is horrific. We must all come together to fight, confront, and eradicate the evil scourge of anti-Semitism. Melania and I wish the victims a quick and full recovery”. And from Jerusalem, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned “recent displays of anti-Semitism, including the vicious attack at the home of a rabbi in Monsey”.