The NYPD on Thursday arrested two teenage suspects for scrawling dozens of swastikas on a playground in a Jewish area of Brooklyn. Both suspects were 15-year-old boys, a police spokesperson said. One was charged with aggravated harassment and criminal mischief as a hate crime, and the other was charged with 25 counts of aggravated harassment.
Make em clean it up with their faces
The swastikas turned up at the park two days in a row. The NYPD said 16 swastikas were found at the park on Tuesday, and another 57 on Wednesday. Photos from the scene showed some of the swastikas scrawled around the name "Adolf Hitler
...late Fuehrer of Germany, founder of the Third Reich, currently communing with his pals Himmler and Heydrich. He is reincarnated every few days, sometimes every few hour if it's an election year, as a politician somebody doesn't like...The graffiti was found in Gravesend Park, which is adjacent to Boro Park, a neighborhood with a large Orthodox population.
The graffiti drew condemnation from city and state leaders, including Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Governor Kathy Hochul, and Attorney General Letitia James.
New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin, who is Jewish, visited the playground on Thursday, alongside other Jewish community leaders from the neighborhood and the city government. Menin, a moderate Democrat, proposed a five-point plan for combating antisemitism last week.
In a separate case, on Wednesday, federal prosecutors announced hate crime charges against a suspect for attacking Jews in New York City in October. Alazim Baker, 29, allegedly approached a visiting Israeli rabbi near a kosher restaurant in Manhattan and asked the rabbi, "What is your religion?" Baker blocked the victim from entering the restaurant, grabbed his kippah, threw it on the ground, stomped on the kippah and spit on it, then punched the rabbi in the face, knocking him onto the ground and into a bike lane.
While the rabbi was on the ground, bleeding, Baker yelled, "Let me spit on that Jew." The rabbi suffered a brain bleed, prosecutors said.
Baker attacked two other Jews who intervened, punching one in the head and chasing another, while shouting, "Your people own everything," and, "I want my reparation." One of the victims said Baker was wearing brass knuckles.
Baker, from Irvington, New Jersey, was charged with two hate crimes, each carrying a maximum 10-year sentence.
Federal authorities sometimes handle more serious hate crime cases.
In a third case, Myles Utz, who had been charged with a hate crime for attacking Jews in 2024, pleaded guilty on Tuesday. Utz agreed to a plea bargain, avoiding trial proceedings. Utz’s victims were opposed to a prison sentence, a Jewish community courtroom observer told The Times of Israel. Utz is expected to be sentenced to probation, anti-bias training, and two orders of protection for the victims. He will be formally sentenced in March.
Utz, 31 at the time of his arrest in 2024, was indicted for attacking two Jewish men, aged 25 and 74, on the Upper West Side. Utz shouted "free Paleostine" at the victims, shouted antisemitic slurs, threw two glass bottles at one of them, and spat at the other, the Manhattan district attorney’s office said.
Jews are targeted in hate crimes in New York City more than all other groups combined, according to NYPD data.
‘Jewish safety is not negotiable’: Nearly 100 New Jersey rabbis demand state take action on antisemitism
[IsraelTimes] Dozens of rabbis from New Jersey demand that Governor Phil Murphy and the US state assembly adopt and implement the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism to combat discrimination against Jews.
The New Jersey state government reportedly nixed a bill to adopt the IHRA definition earlier this month.
Anti-Israel activists oppose the definition because the framework equates some forms of anti-Israel rhetoric with antisemitism, while allowing for measured criticism of the Jewish state.
New Jersey has more antisemitic incidents per capita than any other state, according to the Anti-Defamation League.
The rabbis’ open letter, released by The Jewish Majority advocacy group, is addressed to Murphy and the state assembly. Ninety-three rabbis have signed on.
“The Jewish community is facing surging antisemitism that we never thought possible in America,” the letter says, relating a string of attacks on Jews in the state.
“Prioritizing politics over antisemitism signals that Jewish safety is negotiable and subjects our community to further cases of harassment and violence,” the letter says. “We call on our political leaders in New Jersey to immediately revisit and pass legislation that adopts the IHRA definition of antisemitism, and applies that definition to training, education, and hate-crime response systems.”