The NYPD Hate Crime Task Force is investigating two assaults on Jews which took place in Williamsburg on Friday night.
According to Hamodia, in one incident, captured on surveillance footage, an assailant walked up behind a 24-year-old Jewish man on Marcy Avenue and Stockton Street at 10:25 p.m. and punched him in the face, knocking off his shtreimel.
Another similar incident occurred nearby a few minutes earlier, though surveillance footage is not yet available. At 10:15 p.m., at Marcy Avenue and Myrtle Avenue, an assailant hit a 44-year-old Jewish man on the ear.
It is not yet known whether both attacks were committed by the same assailant.
The Anti-Defamation League has announced it is offering a $7,500 reward for information on the attacks.
“Attacks against visibly identifiable Jews here in New York and New Jersey have become practically a weekly occurrence,” said Scott Richman, the ADL’s regional director for the New York and New Jersey area.
“The Jewish community is on extreme edge and this violence has got to stop. It is becoming normalized, and we simply cannot accept that as a state of affairs,” he added.
The assaults are the latest examples of antisemitic incidents in Brooklyn. Several days ago, the New York Police Department’s Hate Crimes Task Force arrested a man accused of punching a Hasidic man in the nose early on Saturday, January 22 in Crown Heights.
The arrest followed the apprehension of a suspect in another high-profile antisemitic incident in Brooklyn in January.
On January 14, a woman approached three Jewish children in Marine Park neighborhood, spat on one child and told them: “Hitler should have killed you all.”
The following week, the NYPD’s Hate Crimes Task Force arrested Christina Darling, 21. She faces charges of menacing and aggravated harassment — both hate crimes — as well as acting in a manner injurious to a child.
Days later, a man waving a machete in Borough Park, New York was arrested for making threats against the Brooklyn Jewish community.