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New York Police Arrest Shirtless Man After Wig Theft, Child Attack, Knife Threats Against Jews in Crown Heights
The headquarters of the worldwide Chabad-Lubavitch movement in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, NY. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
Law enforcement in New York City arrested an unnamed individual alleged to have terrorized multiple Jewish residents in the heavily Jewish neighborhood of Crown Heights in Brooklyn.
Photos from the scene on Wednesday morning showed New York City Police Department (NYPD) officers leading away a skinny, shirtless man whose pants sagged down just above his knees. The images showed him handcuffed with bare feet and a report described him as riding a bicycle.
The man allegedly approached a Jewish mother and her children before stealing her wig (worn for religious observance) and hitting one of her children. He also reportedly yelled antisemitic slurs, punched a Jewish man, and threatened him with a knife before the NYPD and Crown Heights Shmira, a nonprofit Jewish security agency, arrested him.
The attacks came amidst a surge of antisemitic hate crimes in New York City following the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led terror attacks across southern Israel. Earlier this year, the NYPD released a report showing that for 2024, it counted 641 total hate crimes with 345 targeting Jews — an increase of 7 percent from 2023 and a staggering 54 percent of all hate crimes.
Antisemitic criminals in New York City have often chosen Crown Heights as their hunting ground for harassing or even assaulting Jews.
In November, for example, three men who hid their faces behind hoods and ski masks chose to stalk and rob a Hasidic man. Yaacov Behrman, liaison of Chabad Headquarters and founder of the Jewish Future Alliance (JFA) nonprofit, said following the crime that his organization was “deeply concerned not only about the increase in crime but also the fact that, once again, the perpetrators were wearing masks. We need to reinstate mask laws.”
Other antisemitic attacks against Crown Heights Jews in 2024 included a failed robbery which devolved into a beating instead, an assault on a 13-year-old Jewish boy biking to school, a kidnapping attempt, and a stabbing.
Many of the incidents — including the most recent Wednesday attacks — have been acts of Black-on-Jewish crime, straining cross-cultural relations in the multi-ethnic New York borough. A 2022 report by Americans Against Antisemitism (AAA) identified Orthodox Jews as the group most targeted for hate crimes in the city with 69 percent of their attackers African American.
In an interview about the crime surge, former New York Assemblyman Dov Hikind (D) asked The Algemeiner in November, “Shouldn’t there be a plan for how we’re going to deal with it? What’s the answer? Education? We’ve been educating everybody forever for God’s sake, and things are just getting worse.”
May 25 also saw an antisemitic protest led by an African American activist named Terrell Harper — also known as “Relly Rebel” — described by the Jewish security service Shomrim as “a known antisemitic agitator, accompanied by approximately 30 cohorts.” The group targeted the Chabad-Lubavitch World Headquarters during a ceremony to commemorate the anniversary of the death of Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky, a prominent Hasidic leader. They waved signs attempting to link the Israel Defense Forces with the 2020 police death of George Floyd and broader indifference to global Black suffering. Law enforcement soon intervened to block off the protesters from the Jews attending the service.
While in previous decades fringe Black nationalist figures such as Nation of Islam head Louis Farrakhan fueled Black-Jewish antisemitism, today such celebrities as rapper and former billionaire Kanye West and his friend, far-right podcaster Candace Owens, have used their much larger platforms to promote radical ideologies and conspiracy theories targeting the Jewish people. In a June 24 interview with Piers Morgan, Owens declared, “I’d want my kids to go to jail before they fought for Israel.”
Another clash between protesters and law enforcement in Crown Heights occurred on April 28. A planned anti-Israel march through the neighborhood inspired a robust police counter-presence with officers dispersed among the activists.
Chabad-Lubavitch spokesperson Rabbi Motti Seligson described on X how others had come out to support their Jewish neighbors. “It was heartening to see scores of people, some Jewish and some not, who came to Crown Heights to protect the residents. These people weren’t looking for a fight. Some gathered in front of the synagogue at 770, others stood at strategic corners. Clearly this was not 1991,” he wrote.
Seligson concluded in reference to the Crown Heights race riot which took place from Aug. 19-21, 1991, and which EJewishPhilanthropy described as “widely considered the worst antisemitic riot in American history.”
The post New York Police Arrest Shirtless Man After Wig Theft, Child Attack, Knife Threats Against Jews in Crown Heights first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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After False Dawns, Gazans Hope Trump Will Force End to Two-Year-Old War
Palestinians walk past a residential building destroyed in previous Israeli strikes, after Hamas agreed to release hostages and accept some other terms in a US plan to end the war, in Nuseirat, central Gaza Strip October 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mahmoud Issa
Exhausted Palestinians in Gaza clung to hopes on Saturday that US President Donald Trump would keep up pressure on Israel to end a two-year-old war that has killed tens of thousands and displaced the entire population of more than two million.
Hamas’ declaration that it was ready to hand over hostages and accept some terms of Trump’s plan to end the conflict while calling for more talks on several key issues was greeted with relief in the enclave, where most homes are now in ruins.
“It’s happy news, it saves those who are still alive,” said 32-year-old Saoud Qarneyta, reacting to Hamas’ response and Trump’s intervention. “This is enough. Houses have been damaged, everything has been damaged, what is left? Nothing.”
GAZAN RESIDENT HOPES ‘WE WILL BE DONE WITH WARS’
Ismail Zayda, 40, a father of three, displaced from a suburb in northern Gaza City where Israel launched a full-scale ground operation last month, said: “We want President Trump to keep pushing for an end to the war, if this chance is lost, it means that Gaza City will be destroyed by Israel and we might not survive.
“Enough, two years of bombardment, death and starvation. Enough,” he told Reuters on a social media chat.
“God willing this will be the last war. We will hopefully be done with the wars,” said 59-year-old Ali Ahmad, speaking in one of the tented camps where most Palestinians now live.
“We urge all sides not to backtrack. Every day of delay costs lives in Gaza, it is not just time wasted, lives get wasted too,” said Tamer Al-Burai, a Gaza City businessman displaced with members of his family in central Gaza Strip.
After two previous ceasefires — one near the start of the war and another earlier this year — lasted only a few weeks, he said; “I am very optimistic this time, maybe Trump’s seeking to be remembered as a man of peace, will bring us real peace this time.”
RESIDENT WORRIES THAT NETANYAHU WILL ‘SABOTAGE’ DEAL
Some voiced hopes of returning to their homes, but the Israeli military issued a fresh warning to Gazans on Saturday to stay out of Gaza City, describing it as a “dangerous combat zone.”
Gazans have faced previous false dawns during the past two years, when Trump and others declared at several points during on-off negotiations between Hamas, Israel and Arab and US mediators that a deal was close, only for war to rage on.
“Will it happen? Can we trust Trump? Maybe we trust Trump, but will Netanyahu abide this time? He has always sabotaged everything and continued the war. I hope he ends it now,” said Aya, 31, who was displaced with her family to Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip.
She added: “Maybe there is a chance the war ends at October 7, two years after it began.”
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Mass Rally in Rome on Fourth Day of Italy’s Pro-Palestinian Protests
A Pro-Palestinian demonstrator waves a Palestinian flag during a national protest for Gaza in Rome, Italy, October 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Claudia Greco
Large crowds assembled in central Rome on Saturday for the fourth straight day of protests in Italy since Israel intercepted an international flotilla trying to deliver aid to Gaza, and detained its activists.
People holding banners and Palestinian flags, chanting “Free Palestine” and other slogans, filed past the Colosseum, taking part in a march that organizers hoped would attract at least 1 million people.
“I’m here with a lot of other friends because I think it is important for us all to mobilize individually,” Francesco Galtieri, a 65-year-old musician from Rome, said. “If we don’t all mobilize, then nothing will change.”
Since Israel started blocking the flotilla late on Wednesday, protests have sprung up across Europe and in other parts of the world, but in Italy they have been a daily occurrence, in multiple cities.
On Friday, unions called a general strike in support of the flotilla, with demonstrations across the country that attracted more than 2 million, according to organizers. The interior ministry estimated attendance at around 400,000.
Italy’s right-wing government has been critical of the protests, with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni suggesting that people would skip work for Gaza just as an excuse for a longer weekend break.
On Saturday, Meloni blamed protesters for insulting graffiti that appeared on a statue of the late Pope John Paul II outside Rome’s main train station, where Pro-Palestinian groups have been holding a protest picket.
“They say they are taking to the streets for peace, but then they insult the memory of a man who was a true defender and builder of peace. A shameful act committed by people blinded by ideology,” she said in a statement.
Israel launched its Gaza offensive after Hamas terrorists staged a cross border attack on October 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 people hostage.
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Hamas Says It Agrees to Release All Israeli Hostages Under Trump Gaza Plan
Smoke rises during an Israeli military operation in Gaza City, as seen from the central Gaza Strip, October 2, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Dawoud Abu Alkas
Hamas said on Friday it had agreed to release all Israeli hostages, alive or dead, under the terms of US President Donald Trump’s Gaza proposal, and signaled readiness to immediately enter mediated negotiations to discuss the details.