NEW YORK — An assailant was convicted on Monday of an antisemitic hate crime for attacking an Israeli man in New York City in the aftermath of the October 7, 2023, Hamas invasion of Israel.
The case came as a series of antisemitic and Israel-related crimes dating to the upheaval in the city in 2023 and 2024 were resolved in New York City courts, and marked a relatively rare conviction for an antisemitic hate crime.
Yehia Amin pleaded guilty to assault as a hate crime in the third degree in Manhattan’s New York Supreme Criminal Court. He cannot appeal.
Amin is expected to be sentenced in May to 90 days’ imprisonment, followed by five years of probation.
He was released after Monday’s hearing on his own recognizance, but had to surrender his passport to ensure he does not flee abroad.
Get The Times of Israel’s Daily Edition
by email and never miss our top stories
By signing up, you agree to the terms
The judge in the case warned Amin that, if he is arrested before beginning to serve out his prison term in May, he could be sentenced to up to three years in prison, a Jewish community courtroom observer told The Times of Israel.
The judge at Monday’s hearing communicated with Amin in Arabic through an interpreter, and Amin stated that he was a US citizen.
Illustrative: Police protect Jewish students during an anti-Israel protest outside Columbia University in New York City, February 2, 2024. (Luke Tress/Times of Israel)
On October 18, 2023, shortly after the Hamas invasion of Israel, Amin stalked and punched a 23-year-old Jewish Israeli near Times Square, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office said in an indictment after the incident.
The man was with four friends, all of whom were wearing kippahs, when they walked by Amin, who recognized them as Jewish and pursued them.
Amin, who was 28 at the time of the attack, taunted the group, telling them, “Hamas should kill more of you,” “May Allah kill all the Jews,” and “All Jews should die,” according to the District Attorney’s Office. While Amin pursued the Israelis, he blasted music from a speaker that he later described as “Hamas music.”
The group tried to report Amin to a security guard, then headed to a train station to leave Times Square, but Amin continued to follow them, saying, “All Jews are crybabies,” and “I want to kill you for Gaza.” After around 10 minutes of harassment, Amin ran up behind the victim and punched him in the back of the head, causing substantial pain and minor injuries.
Amin fled the scene and the Israeli tourist and his friends followed him. A police officer joined the pursuit, caught Amin and arrested him. While under arrest, Amin continued to shout antisemitic statements, including, “God kill all the Jewish people,” the District Attorney’s Office said.
The attack was one of 69 antisemitic incidents reported to police in October 2023, more than double the total of the preceding two months combined.
The vandalization of the residence of Brooklyn Museum director Anne Pasternak on June 12, 2024. (Matt Kane)
In a separate case, a woman who vandalized the home of the Brooklyn Museum’s Jewish director in June 2024, who had been charged with a hate crime, had her felony dismissed on Friday.
Taylor Pelton pleaded guilty in December to criminal mischief in the third degree, a felony, and was ordered to complete a month of community service.
After completing the community service, the felony was dismissed on Friday and Pelton pleaded guilty to criminal mischief in the fourth degree, a misdemeanor.
She was sentenced to conditional discharge, under the condition that she stay out of legal trouble for a year, a spokesperson for the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office said.
Pelton was one of three suspects charged with “making a terroristic threat as a hate crime,” a felony, for vandalizing the home of Anne Pasternak, the Jewish director of the museum, with inverted red triangles, the symbols Hamas uses in videos to denote Israeli targets that have become popular among anti-Zionist activists.
The vandals also splattered red paint and wrote the words “blood on your hands” on Pasternak’s home, along with hanging a banner calling her a “white-supremacist Zionist.”
Illustrative: Anti-Israel demonstrators protest outside the Brooklyn Museum in Brooklyn, New York on May 31, 2024. (Leonardo Munoz/AFP)
The act came amid a campaign against the museum led by the hardline anti-Zionist activist group Within Our Lifetime, which had accused the museum of complicity in “Zionist genocide.”
The protests against the museum sparked widespread outrage at the time, drawing condemnation from political leaders, including US Senator Chuck Schumer and then-mayor Eric Adams.
The attacks came amid an increase in antisemitic hate crimes in New York City in 2023 and 2024. The rate of reported antisemitic incidents started to decrease last year, with slightly fewer monthly attacks in 2025 compared to 2024, but Jews are still targeted in the city more than all other groups combined.
In 2025, Jews were targeted in 57 percent of hate crimes, despite making up about 10% of the city’s population. Overall, reports of antisemitic crimes have trended upward in recent years, while attacks on other groups have declined.
There were 323 antisemitic incidents reported to the NYPD in 2023 and 345 in 2024, but convictions for hate crimes are uncommon.
Under New York law, hate crime enhancements that allow for harsher penalties are added to an underlying offense if prosecutors can prove the perpetrator was motivated by the victim’s identity. The crimes are viewed as more severe because they target and impact an entire group, not just the individual. Convictions are rare because proving intent is a high legal bar.
First-time offenders, like Pelton, are typically granted more lenient sentences. Amin’s case stood out because of his explicit anti-Jewish animus during the attack and because it was a physical assault.
You appreciate our wartime journalism
You clearly find our careful reporting of the Iran war valuable, at a time when facts are often distorted and news coverage often lacks context.
Your support is essential to continue our work. We want to continue delivering the professional journalism you value, even as the demands on our newsroom have grown dramatically during this ongoing conflict.
So today, please consider joining our reader support group, The Times of Israel Community. For as little as $6 a month you’ll become our partners while enjoying The Times of Israel AD-FREE, as well as accessing exclusive content available only to Times of Israel Community members.
Thank you,
David Horovitz, Founding Editor of The Times of Israel