New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio on Thursday spoke out against anti-Semitism and said that actions must be taken against it.

"Something is wrong and it must be addressed," the mayor said at a city-sponsored rally against anti-Semitism, according to Patch.com. "It must be addressed in every part of our society. In our schools, in our neighborhoods, in our homes, we have to make sure that everyone hears a message of mutual respect and that voices of hate are confronted."

"To anyone who has hatred in their heart, and they're thinking of going out and scrawling something on a subway or a front door, they're thinking of attacking an individual because of what they're wearing or because of the language they speak — if you do that, we will find you, we will arrest you and you will go to prison, period," he added.

The mayor also made a strong statement in support of Israel and denounced the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

"Maybe some people don't realize it, but when they support the BDS movement, they are affronting the right of Israel to exist and that is unacceptable," de Blasio said.

The comments came after NYPD Chief of Patrol Rodney Harrison said that anti-Semitism has continued to fuel a spike in hate crimes around New York City this year.

Some 49 hate crimes had been reported in 2019 as of Tuesday, an 81 percent increase from the same period last year. Nearly two thirds of those crimes were anti-Semitic, Harrison said.

In 2018, New York saw more hate crimes against Jews than all other targeted groups combined. Anti-Semitic incidents rose by 22 percent from 2017 and, of the 352 hate crimes that year, 183 were anti-Semitic incidents.

There have been several anti-Semitic incidents in New York in the last few months alone. Earlier this month, three men were charged with hate crimes for attacks on identifiably Jewish men in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn.

One of the assaults captured by a surveillance camera shows three assailants knocking over a Hasidic Jewish man before punching and kicking him. The victim, 51, required hospitalization for his injuries.

A 22-year-old yeshiva student from Australia was the second victim.

In December of 2018, at least three large swastikas were spray-painted in a Brooklyn neighborhood.

The swastikas were painted within a block of each other. Two were accompanied by the letters “WP,” which stands for White Power.

Also that month, a man ran up to a group of Hasidic Jews standing on the sidewalk, punched one of them in the head and ran off. He was later arrested.

A week earlier, an assailant punched a Jewish boy walking in Williamsburg, knocking the boy onto the pavement before running off. Just half an hour later several blocks away, according to the New York Post, a group of men approached a Jewish boy in Williamsburg, shoving him to the pavement and punching him before fleeing the scene.