Arutz Sheva spoke with Aron Spielman, Co-Founder of the Orthodox Jewish Public Affairs Council (OJ PAC), about the Saturday night stabbing at a rabbi's home in Monsey.

The stabbing, which injured five people, occurred at the home of Rabbi Rottenburg, just after the Hanukkah candles had been lit.

"The incident happened at 9:50, it was right after the rabbi finished lighting the menorah," Spielman began. "A guy came in, he was wearing a mask, some people inside he was an African American guy but that's not confirmed yet. He came in, starting slashing people, one of the guys was trying to tackle down the guy."

According to Spielman, the defender "went into the kitchen and the suspect ran after him and slashed him as well, he was injured as well. So we have two patients critically injured, one of them is in critical condition in the hospital, he's intubated, on life support, it is expected a full recovery hopefully."

When asked how the residents are handling the attack, Spielman explained: "The feeling is obviously everybody's pretty afraid, there's still confusion as well because we don't know yet what the motives were."

"We don't have to be that smart to know that this guy you know, after all he targeted a synagogue with only hasidic people inside, Jewish people inside," he added. "We don't know yet from where this guy comes from, he literally targeted that place, he came here, walked inside, and did what he did."

Spielman also said that the attack was not a surprise, either to his organization or to the community at large.

"We at OJ PAC, the organization was founded a few years ago to condemn anti-Semitism online, we have been screaming about that for years now, there's so many platforms, on social media, Facebook pages... There's a page...they have every single morning hit pieces, negative reporting against Orthodox Jews every single day, they have like over 12,000 people there. And the biggest issue is when you have elected officials, whether the county executive or other elected officials, who are affiliated actually with the founder of the space, and they will never condemn. They themselves will comment on that page and they're actively involved in the conversations on that page and they are pushing their agenda.

"So we were waiting for that to happen, I mean unfortunately we knew that when you have a page like that obsessed with one specific community...not just a Rockland County, whenever there is a hasidic Jew involved they have negative reporting of the hasidic Jew.

"There's an obsession with Orthodox Jews," he emphasized.

"For the past few years the tensions are very high, very high. Every day with a different attack on Orthodox Jews. And when this such a thing happens, such a terrible horrible attack happens...everybody's like, you know we were waiting for this to happen unfortunately, we knew this was going to happen. It wasn't a question if it's going to happen, it's a question of when, and now it happened, unfortunately.

"Again we don't know exactly his motives but as I said obviously he specifically targeted a synagogue with 50-60 hasidic people inside. So thank G-d that this guy was caught in the city, he's under arrest, there's an investigation going on, and we'll wait for the outcome of the investigation to know exactly what exactly is on his mind."

In the meantime, he said, "everybody is going on with their lives."