(New York Jewish Week) – The NYPD’s hate crimes unit is investigating and the Anti-Defamation League expressed alarm after security camera footage appeared to show two Jewish children being assaulted on the street in Williamsburg on Sunday night.
The video of the incident, posted by local news account Williamsburg365, is grainy and without sound, but shows a man dismounting from a Citibike near a group of children on a sidewalk and, seconds later, striking one of the children in the head. The child falls to the ground, then walks away while holding his head.
The attacker then throws a second child to the ground, and appears to stomp on the boy and kick him in the torso. The assailant then gets back on his bicycle and continues down the street while the child runs from the scene.
A spokesperson for Williamsburg Shomrim, a Jewish neighborhood watch group that coordinates with police, told the New York Jewish Week that the children were Jewish and that the incident occurred on Franklin Ave. in the Brooklyn neighborhood on Sunday night.
The Shomrim representative said one of the children suffered a concussion and the other had back pain following the attack. Shomrim was in communication with the NYPD’s 79th precinct and the police’s Hate Crimes Task Force, which is investigating the incident, the spokesperson said, urging anyone with information to come forward.
A police spokesperson confirmed that the Hate Crimes Task Force is investigating.
The Anti-Defamation League said it was “very alarmed” by the incident.
The incident comes amid a surge in antisemitic hate crimes in New York City since Hamas’ Oct. 7 invasion of Israel and the ensuing war in Gaza.
There have been 285 antisemitic incidents reported to police since the start of October, far higher than the 153 incidents during the same period last year, according to preliminary police data. Jewish security groups say many attacks likely go unreported.
Jews are consistently targeted in hate crimes more than any other group in New York City, including before Oct. 7. Between the start of October and the end of March, Jews were the victims of 62% of all hate crimes, according to NYPD data.
Recent years have seen waves of street harassment of Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn. According to the ADL’s audit of antisemitic incidents last year, “visibly Orthodox” Jews were targeted in 31 out of the 51 antisemitic assaults the group recorded in New York City.
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