Antisemitic incidents accounted for a striking 65 percent of all felony hate crime incidents in New York City last year.
A visibly Jewish man was slashed in the face as he was walking through downtown Brooklyn, New York on Tuesday morning.
The victim, a resident of Crown Heights in his late 20s, was approached by a black male in a ski mask who stabbed him without any provocation, according to a report from COLlive.com, an Orthodox Jewish news outlet. The victim survived and was taken to a local hospital in serious but stable condition.
“This is a very serious incident, and the Jewish Future Alliance is deeply concerned about it,” said Yaacov Berman, a liaison for Chabad Headquarters, on X/Twitter.
“Witnesses at the scene testified that it was unprovoked. I just spoke to the family; he is hospitalized and requires surgery. The attacker allegedly yelled hateful rhetoric.”
Crown Heights Shmira, a public safety organization, is assisting the New York City Police Department (NYPD) in making sure the perpetrator is apprehended, according to COLlive.
Tuesday’s attack came two months after New York state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli released an analysis showing that antisemitic incidents accounted for a striking 65 percent of all felony hate crime incidents in New York City last year.
Across the entire state, meanwhile, nearly 44 percent of all recorded hate crime incidents and 88 percent of religious-based hate crimes targeted Jewish victims.
The surge in antisemitism in New York was also seen nationwide.
Anti-Jewish hate crimes in the US spiked to a record high last year, and American Jews were the most targeted of any religious group in the country, according to a report published by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) last month.
Other reports have shown most of the antisemitic outrages occurred after the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel last Oct. 7, amid the ensuing war in Gaza.