{"id":221521,"date":"2026-05-06T03:07:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T03:07:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/221521\/"},"modified":"2026-05-06T03:07:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T03:07:11","slug":"queens-antisemitic-vandalism-community-demands-action-after-swastikas-found-in-forest-hills-rego-park","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/221521\/","title":{"rendered":"Queens antisemitic vandalism: Community demands action after swastikas found in Forest Hills, Rego Park"},"content":{"rendered":"

FOREST HILLS, Queens (WABC) — A community in Queens is demanding action following a spree of antisemitic vandalism<\/a> across the borough on Monday morning.<\/p>\n

Jewish leaders and powerful allies gathered for a show of unity Tuesday evening outside a synagogue that was defaced during the hate-fueled rampage.<\/p>\n

Among those who gathered was City Council Speaker Julie Menin, who herself is a daughter and granddaughter of holocaust survivors.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

“I’m here today to tell you that the safety of the Jewish community-and all communities in New York. But it is the Jewish community that is experiencing 53% of all hate crimes, and yet, the Jewish community is a little less than 12% of the New York City population. Those are the facts,” Menin said.<\/p>\n

She backed a program at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in Lower Manhattan offering free guided tours to 8thgrade public school students.<\/p>\n

“Why? Because studies show that 34% of young people believe the holocaust was a myth. Or was exaggerated,” Menin said.<\/p>\n

Some of the leading experts on antisemitism say the apparent hate crime is shocking. Swastikas found in Forest Hills and Rego Park, Queens did not spare people’s homes, or their cars.<\/p>\n

“It’s on a synagogue, a house of worship, where nursery school kids are going,” said Scott Richman, the Anti-Defamation League New York\/New Jersey regional director. “But it’s also on homes, and that, I think, is pretty rare. Usually, it’s institutions that end up with graffiti, not private homes.”<\/p>\n

Yossi Aliev says the largest swastika was scrawled on the home of his elderly parents on 110th Street in Forest Hills.<\/p>\n

“I saw a lot of graffiti. This was, like, really big,” he said. “You could say the size was, like, five by four-it’s big. It’s upsetting that this neighborhood is getting into such, you know, something like that.”<\/p>\n

It happened late Sunday night. Aliev says surveillance video shows four young people wandering the neighborhood that night. At one point, he says, they ran up to his parents’ home, then ran off. Another video appears to show a separate incident in the same neighborhood.<\/p>\n

Five locations, in all, were targeted, including Congregation Machane Chodosh in Forest Hills and the Rego Park Jewish Center.<\/p>\n

“This would have been reprehensible if it was done anywhere in New York City, anywhere in the world, but it was done here in central Queens,” New York City Comptroller Mark Levine said. “Rego Park, Forest Hills, Kew Garden Hills, which is known as a refuge of Jews fleeing oppression.”<\/p>\n

Mayor Zohran Mamdani has condemned the incidents as antisemitic hate crimes.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, NYPD detectives canvased the streets around Forest Hills High School, as the investigation intensified in the afternoon.<\/p>\n

It all comes less than four months after dozens of swastikas were discovered in a Brooklyn playground<\/a>. Two teenagers were arrested on hate crimes charges.<\/p>\n

“While this symbol is offensive to the Jewish community, the truth is it should be offensive to every community,” Richman said. “This is the symbol of the Nazis. This country went to war against what that stood for.”<\/p>\n

———-<\/p>\n

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Copyright \u00a9 2026 WABC-TV. All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FOREST HILLS, Queens (WABC) — A community in Queens is demanding action following a spree of antisemitic vandalism…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":221522,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[87268,9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":["post-221521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-87268","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221521","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=221521"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221521\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/221522"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=221521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=221521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=221521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}