On Wednesday, New York police said they were looking for a woman who on January 14 approached three Jewish children, made anti-Semitic comments and spat at them outside a Brooklyn synagogue.
“Hitler should have killed you all. I will kill you and find out where you live,” she said, according to the children’s father.
According to New York police, the suspect is a white woman in her twenties. She is wanted for aggravated harassment.
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Video released by police shows her approaching children on a sidewalk outside a synagogue in the Marine Park neighborhood. She briefly confronts them, then heads back in the direction she came from.
????WANTED for AGGRAVATED HARASSMENT: Do you know her? On 1/14/22 at approx. 12:35, in front of 4017 Avenue P in Brooklyn, the suspect approached an 8-year-old and two other children, made anti-Jewish statements, then spat on the them. Any info? DM @NYPDTips, or call 800-577-TIPS. pic.twitter.com/MNG6kgcsBD
— NYPD NEWS (@NYPDnews) January 19, 2022
The three children, aged 2, 7 and 8, were siblings. The woman spat in the face of the 8-year-old boy.
The children’s father, Aryeh Fried, told CBS New York “hope she understands the gravity of what she did”.
“Doing this to anyone is obviously problematic, but for an adult to do this to a child is just beyond madness,” he added.
According to him, the woman yelled at the children as she walked past them, the 8-year-old boy responding that he would protect his little sister, prompting her to turn around and accost them.
Neighborhood residents put up posters around the neighborhood with the woman’s picture so she could be found.
According to official statistics, Jews are more victims of hate crimes in New York than other communities, and it’s only growing.
Most of the attacks are physical assaults on identifiable Jewish New Yorkers and acts of vandalism against Jewish institutions.
New York police have counted 536 hate crimes against Jews since 2019 out of a total of 1,210 incidents, by far the highest tally of any community.
In the United States, Jews are the main victims of religiously motivated hate crimes, according to figures released by the FBI.
Over the past week, Jewish leaders have urged authorities to step up efforts to tackle anti-Semitism, after a gunman stormed a Texas synagogue and took worshipers and a rabbi hostage for ten hours on Saturday.
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