JTA \u2013 An assailant on Thursday stabbed two victims, one of whom was visibly Jewish, in an area of Manhattan\u2019s Upper West Side known for its Jewish institutions.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Police said two male victims, aged 57 and 50, were in stable condition and being treated for stab wounds to the torso. One was Jewish and one was Asian, police said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
New York Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch announced\u00a0on\u00a0Thursday evening that the force had arrested 51-year-old Raul Morales in connection with both assaults and that he had yelled \u201cAllahu Akbar\u201d during both attacks, according to multiple witnesses and a victim.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe NYPD\u00a0[New York Police Department]\u00a0is currently evaluating whether this is a potential hate crime,\u201d Tisch said.\u00a0\u201cDetectives are continuing to work the case and determine motive.\u201d No other assailants are being\u00a0sought.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Rabbi Allen Schwartz of the neighbourhood\u2019s Congregation Ohab Zedek told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency\u00a0(JTA)\u00a0that one of the victims was a congregant who is visibly Jewish and wears a kippah.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Schwartz, who is in Israel, said he spoke to the congregant on the phone and that he is \u201calert\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cHe may go home before Shabbos,\u201d Schwartz said. He said the victim, who was traumatised,\u00a0didn\u2019t\u00a0remember the assailant yelling \u201cAllahu Akbar\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mayor Zohran Mamdani called the stabbings \u201chorrifying\u201d in a statement on Thursday evening, noting that the perpetrator allegedly yelled \u201cAllahu\u00a0Akbar\u201d during both attacks.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Nava Silton told JTA she\u00a0had been\u00a0with the victim Schwartz had spoken to at the Jewish\u00a0Center, an Orthodox synagogue on 86th street, for afternoon prayers.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Minutes after the victim left the synagogue, Silton said she heard there was an attack, but by the time she got to the scene, the victims had been taken to hospital.\u00a0<\/p>\n
She said the victim\u00a0didn\u2019t\u00a0want his name published.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Silton visited the victim in hospital. He told her that a screwdriver had been plunged into the right side of his chest and he\u00a0had\u00a0pulled it out himself, afraid that\u00a0he\u2019d\u00a0keel over and fall onto it. \u201cHe\u2019s just praying that his medical condition doesn\u2019t\u00a0get worse,\u201d Silton said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Though police\u00a0haven\u2019t\u00a0determined a motive, Governor\u00a0Kathy Hochul wrote that the stabbing \u201cappears to be another senseless attack on New Yorkers simply because they\u2019re Jewish\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n
City Council Speaker Julie Menin wrote that she is \u201cabsolutely sickened and furious by what appears to be an antisemitic stabbing\u201d on Thursday.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In her statement, Tisch wrote that \u201cthe initial investigation suggests that mental health may have been a factor\u201d,\u00a0though the alleged perpetrator \u201chas no known mental health history with the NYPD\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, some critics of Mamdani have tied the attack to the New York City mayor\u2019s sharp criticism of Israel and its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThis comes a day after Mamdani incited more violence against NYC\u2019s Jews,\u201d wrote Republican City\u00a0Council member Inna Vernikov, who is Jewish. \u201c@NYCMayor\u00a0you got blood on your hands!\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Vernikov initially wrote to the mayor, \u201cF\u2013 YOU!\u201d She\u00a0deleted\u00a0the expletive in a since-edited version of the post.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Gideon Sa\u2019ar, Israel\u2019s minister of foreign affairs, wrote that the attacks \u201cdid not happen in a vacuum\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cMonths of incitement against the Jewish\u00a0State from Mamdani have helped create a climate in which Jews are targeted,\u201d Sa\u2019ar said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Israel\u2019s ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, charged Mamdani with \u201cputting Jewish lives in danger in New York\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Meanwhile,\u00a0philanthropy organisation\u00a0UJA-Federation of New York also explicitly called out Mamdani, whom it\u00a0said\u00a0\u201cused his official platform to viciously attack Israel, the only Jewish\u00a0State\u201d.\u00a0UJA is a\u00a0funder\u00a0of 70 Faces Media, the parent company of\u00a0New York Jewish Week.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe cannot ignore the dangerous climate created when elected leaders relentlessly portray Israel\u00a0\u2012\u00a0and, by extension, the many Jewish New Yorkers who feel a deep connection to it\u00a0\u2012\u00a0as uniquely evil and illegitimate,\u201d the group wrote.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JTA \u2013 An assailant on Thursday stabbed two victims, one of whom was visibly Jewish, in an area…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":304829,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[68482,75,84,83,9,24,63,260],"class_list":["post-304828","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-jta","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-stabbing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304828","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=304828"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304828\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/304829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=304828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=304828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=304828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}