26 THE QUEENS COURIER • JUNE 6, 2019 FOR BREAKING NEWS VISIT WWW.QNS.COM
Anti-Semitism still rising across Brooklyn and Queens
A QUEENS COURIER AND
BROOKLYN PAPER SPECIAL
Th is story was written by Mark Hallum,
Kevin Duggan and Colin Mixson, and
edited by Robert Pozarycki
New York City may be the safest big
city in the America, according to the
mayor and police commissioner — but it
is not immune from the troubling wave of
anti-Semitism across the country.
As anti-Semitic hate crimes remain on
the rise, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced
the launch of the Offi ce of the Prevention
of Hate Crimes to put a cap on the number
of attack and ultimately uphold the
city’s new status as the safest big city in
America.
Chief of Detectives Dermot Shea said
the highest number of incidents were
in precincts outside of Queens, but the
“World’s Borough” has had its share of
hate crimes in recent months.
“We defi nitely see some precincts spiking
and taking a disproportionate share
of those crimes such as the 71st Precinct
and 94th Precinct in Brooklyn. We also
see it on the Upper East Side in the
19th Precinct,” Shea said. “So, there are
hotspots, if you will, where we see a disproportionate
share but that’s not to say
that it’s confi ned solely to that. We see
small instances spread throughout the
city.”
In November, a 16-year-old yeshiva student
was attacked outside of a kosher deli
in Forest Hills on 108th Street aft er school
had let out.
Police attributed the attack as a case of
mistaken identity, in which the attackers
mistook the Bukharian teen, David
Paltielov, 16, for a student at Forest Hills
High School.
Paltielov was sent to the hospital where
he was temporarily in a coma, but made a
full recovery.
Cops from the 112th Precinct were hesitant
to charge the two males arrested with
a hate crime, despite the claims by many in
the community that the group had belted
anti-Semitic insults during the beat-down.
Neighborhood Coordination Offi cers from
the precinct described the attack as a “beef”
between some of Russian Jewish kids and
the Hispanic and black kids at FHHS.
In February, swastikas and other anti-Semitic
markings were scrawled on the playground
of P.S. 139 in Rego Park.
Bigots rampage in Brooklyn
Brooklyn has been among the areas of
the city hardest hit by anti-Semitic hate
crimes. One of the more recent incidents
occurred on May 30, when a bigot left an
anti-Semitic Post-it note that read “Hitler
is coming” on a billboard outside the
Jewish Children’s Museum.
Witnesses reportedly saw a teenage girl
writing the note on the wall — where the
organization has invited passersby to leave
Post-its describing how they would transform
the world. Onlookers
put up a search for the vandal,
but she had already
left the scene, according to
the local Jewish news site
Collive.com.
Earlier in May,
anti-Semites targeted the
Williamsburg area particularly
hard.
On May 4, a group of
men attacked a 42-yearold
man wearing religious
garb on Lynch Street
near Broadway, shouting
anti-Semitic slurs, before
socking him in the face,
according to police.
Th ree days later, a teenager
snuck up behind an
Orthodox Jewish man
on Marcy Avenue near
Rodney Street on May 7,
when he brutally sucker
punched the man, before
fl eeing, cops said.
Police arrested a 16-yearold
boy in connection
with the May 7 attack
Wednesday morning,
charging with him assault
as a hate crime, according
to police.
The incidents rattled
members of the neighborhood’s
Orthodox Jewish
Photo courtesy of Brooklyn Paper
community.
“People merely walking on the streets
here feel like sitting ducks, worrying that
they must look over their shoulder in fear
of being hurt because of their faith,” said
Rabbi David Niederman, executive director
of the United Jewish Organization of
Williamsburg.
Th e ongoing measles epidemic also
fueled anti-Semitic incidents in Brooklyn.
In April, a Jewish man accused an MTA
bus driver of attempting to refuse him service
on the B57 line in Williamsburg, and
then shouting about the measles aft er he
was able to run down and board the bus.
United against hate
During a June 4 press conference, de
Blasio and NYPD top brass discusses the
initiative to prevent hate crimes through
early education as well as hotbeds of violent
incidents throughout the city.
Th ough the mayor was cautious to attribute
the rise in anti-Semitic hate crimes
to fi ery rhetoric across the country, but
admitted that nationwide discourse is an
underlying cause.
“Over the last three years something
very dangerous is happening in this country
with the rise of white supremacist voices
and white supremacist organizations.
And what I am trying to help get across is
that that threatens so many diff erent people
in this country,” de Blasio said.
NYPD reported that as of May, anti-Semitic
hate crimes had gone up by 60 percent
over the same time the year before
with 110 incidents in 2018 over 58 in
2018.
“It’s creating a unity of purpose that
I don’t think we’ve ever seen on this
level before in the history of New York
City. And that is made vivid today by
the community leaders who are joining
us shoulder-to-shoulder with the
NYPD to fi ght all crime and particularly
to fi ght hate crimes,” O’Neill said. “Th is is
how we defeat hate crimes and this is how
we defeat hatred.”
Read more on QNS.com and
BrooklynPaper.com.
The Transform the World Exhibit at the Brooklyn Children's Museum was marred by a hateful vandal last month.
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