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New Yorkers hunt for man dubbed ‘The L Train Nazi’ who was caught drawing hate slogans on the subway
(New York Jewish Week) — While waiting for the L train at Union Square one Sunday earlier this month, a commuter named Liz spotted something — or rather someone — whose doings had bedeviled her and a few other New Yorkers for more than a year: A white man, wearing a leather jacket and a black hoodie, scrawling a neo-Nazi slogan in black marker on a support beam.
Liz snapped the man’s photo but he quickly ran away. Since then, she and other activists in the city have been searching for the man, whom they have dubbed “The L Train Nazi.” His graffiti of choice appears to be the number “1488,” a neo-Nazi code recognized as a hate symbol by the Anti-Defamation League.
“I actually saw someone doodling on the support column,” Liz told the New York Jewish Week. “Sure enough, he was writing ‘1488.’ I was like, ‘get some pictures.’ He looked at me and tried to ignore it [me] and act like nothing happened.”
Liz, like some other activists who spoke to the New York Jewish Week for this article, declined to give her full name or divulge many details about herself, for fear of being harmed by the same white supremacists she has spent the past few years trying to expose. As an anti-far-right activist, Liz said she has attended multiple far-right and neo-Nazi events in cities across the northeast. At these events, she said she has physically confronted rally-goers and has been arrested two times.
BREAKING: ‘L Train Nazi’ Caught in the Act
For years, people have been reporting typographically similar ‘1488’ tags (a Nazi slogan: https://t.co/mlPBKKSDWW) in the subway, most often along the L line.
As a result, the tagger was dubbed ‘the L train Nazi.’ pic.twitter.com/ssNnYaTzDC
— Talia Jane (@taliaotg) February 8, 2023
The recent encounter on the L train platform, Liz said, didn’t escalate into violence. “He didn’t want to get an assault charge, and I didn’t want to get an assault charge,” she said. “He stormed off and I forwarded the pictures.”
The number 1488, in neo-Nazi speak, stands for two separate things: The 14 stands for a 14-word white supremacist creed — “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children” — and 88 stands for “Heil Hitler,” as “h” is the eighth letter of the alphabet.
Beginning in November 2021, other Twitter users had taken photos of similar graffiti at subway stations on the L and M lines in downtown Manhattan and Brooklyn. This isn’t the first time hate symbols have plagued the L train: two trains were removed from the line in 2019 after MTA officials discovered anti-Nazi stickers (which nonetheless partially displayed swastikas) on the train.
Talia Jane, a Brooklyn-based freelance reporter of Jewish descent, collated some of the photos into a Twitter thread following Liz’s interactions. The tweets have been shared 1,300 times in the week since she posted them. The photos of the suspected “L Train Nazi” have been viewed nearly 800,000 times.
“People began to notice similar tags of a similar marker and similar handwriting style,” Jane told the New York Jewish Week. “It became assumed that there was one person behind these recurring tags.”
When asked by this reporter about the graffiti, the New York Police Department said “there is nothing on file” about these markings.
MTA spokesperson Kayla Shults told the New York Jewish Week in an emailed statement that “there is no place for acts of hate of any kind, including anti-Semitic vandalism, in the subway system.”
“When observed, offensive materials are rapidly removed,” Shults said. “The MTA continues to be at the forefront of public service campaigns that promote respect and tolerance for all riders.”
Efforts to find the person behind the graffiti have been coalescing offline as well. Elsa Waithe, 34, a comedian from East New York, first spotted the “1488” graffiti in November 2021 at the L train Livonia stop. Waithe covered it with a sticker, but kept seeing similar graffiti nearby. Now, Waithe is putting up flyers at stations across the L line that say “#SubwayNazi” and display the man’s face.
“Be on the lookout,” the flyer reads. “This man was recently caught writing Nazi tags in NYC subways.”
“I personally plan to put these posters up every weekend, at least for a month or two, just so he knows that people know him now,” Waithe told the New York Jewish Week. “My friend asked me what I was doing. I said, ‘Essentially, Nazi-hunting.’”
Waithe said they made it their “mission” to always cover up the “1488” tags with a sticker, but noticed that others began posting pictures of the tag at stations approaching Manhattan — including Myrtle-Wycoff, Grand Street and eventually Union Square.
Just left the Livonia L trains station and it looks like the same asshole from before has left another 1488 on the stairs. I’ll return after work to cover it up but if someone can get to it before me that would be nice. It’s on the Manhattan bound side. pic.twitter.com/bCpWBJTxnE
— Harriet Thugman (@elsajustelsa) November 15, 2021
“He was putting them in very obvious places,” Waithe said. “Livonia is right next to public housing. This is a Black neighborhood. It pissed me off that someone would threaten the community. That’s what this is, a threat.”
Waithe feels that coded numbers such as 1488 and 1352, a racist anti-Black slogan, allow the perpetrator to hide Nazi messaging in plain sight.
“If he had put a swastika, we all know what that is,” Waithe said. “This is just a coded swastika. It’s the same exact thing, it’s just not as widely known, so he can put it and be discreet, or say it means something else. There is some plausible deniability.”
According to the Anti-Defamation League, New York State ranked seventh nationally in the number of white supremacist propaganda incidents in 2021.
“No one wants a Nazi in their neighborhood,” Waithe said. “We all ride this train, we all live in this city. Is there a network [of activists]? No. It’s just concerned citizens.”
Sophie Ellman-Golan, spokesperson for the Jewish progressive group Jews For Racial and Economic Justice, commended the efforts of the people who are keeping “tabs on the subway Nazi.”
“This particular Nazi has spent years trying to make Jews, Black people and all marginalized groups feel uncomfortable and unwelcome on the subway,” Ellman-Golan told the New York Jewish Week. “But it’s Nazis who should feel uncomfortable and unwelcome — on the subway and in our city and state.”
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Adidas apologizes for campaign with Israeli veteran amputee after calls to boycott
(JTA) — Adidas has apologized for featuring an Israeli former soldier and amputee in a campaign advertising its service for people with missing legs, which sparked calls for a boycott.
Shalev Biton, who lost his left leg during the 2021 Israel-Gaza conflict, appeared in a promotional video for the sportswear company’s Single Shoe service. The program was introduced in Europe earlier this year to allow amputees to buy just one shoe.
The campaign, filmed in Hebrew, showed Biton trying on a single sneaker at a store in Israel and running outside. It did not mention his army service or how he lost his leg. Biton was in a military vehicle that was hit by a missile while on a protective patrol of villages on the Israeli side of the Gaza border, according to Israel’s Channel 12.
After the video circulated widely online, pro-Palestinian activists called for a boycott of Adidas, referencing Gaza’s high number of amputees created by Israeli attacks since October 2023.
Adidas apologized for the campaign on Monday in a statement on the Adidas Arabia Instagram account.
“We recognize that an image used in a recent local activation has raised concerns and strong reactions,” the company said. “It was never our intent to cause offence, and we apologize for anyone affected. We acknowledge the concerns that have been raised and are taking the feedback seriously.”
The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), part of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, said the apology from Adidas was insufficient and demanded that the company “immediately remove the Israeli soldier from all Adidas promotional material and channels.”
“Those ‘affected’ are millions of Palestinians living under Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, its illegal military occupation of Palestinian territory, and its decades long settler-colonial apartheid regime,” PACBI said in a statement.
Biton said on his Instagram account that he received “an insane wave of hate” over recent days. In an appeal for support, he told viewers, “I want to feel that you are here with me.”
Gaza has recorded over 5,000 limb amputations due to traumatic injuries, according to a May report from the World Health Organization. The United Nations reports that it has the highest number of child amputees per capita in the world.
Adidas weathered another controversy in 2024 for advertising sneakers based on a model first released during the 1972 Munich Olympics, when 11 Israeli athletes were killed by a Palestinian terrorist group. The company faced backlash from Israel and various Jewish groups for choosing Bella Hadid, a Palestinian-American model and vocal pro-Palestinian advocate, to front the campaign. Adidas subsequently dropped Hadid, prompting criticism from pro-Palestinian voices.
Adidas and Biton could not immediately be reached for further details.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Adidas apologizes for campaign with Israeli veteran amputee after calls to boycott appeared first on The Forward.
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Did Netanyahu ignore Oct. 7 warning? An independent inquiry could cost him re-election.
Israel’s election campaign effectively begins today, as political parties submit their list of candidates who will contest the Oct. 27 election. It is difficult to imagine a more politically explosive moment for the publication of a new investigation into the failures surrounding Oct. 7.
Today’s report in the Haaretz newspaper alleges that Benjamin Netanyahu received an extraordinary personal warning from UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed roughly a week and a half before the Hamas attack. According to the report, bin Zayed told Netanyahu during a 45-minute telephone conversation that Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar was preparing a major operation against Israel that could cause bloodshed and destabilize the region.
Netanyahu reportedly replied that he believed Hamas was focused on the West Bank and assured the Emirati leader that Israel was prepared. The Haaretz report cites multiple senior foreign sources reportedly briefed on the conversation and an adviser to bin Zayed who was present for the call.
Even more consequentially, the investigation says Netanyahu did not pass this specific warning to the heads of the Shin Bet, Mossad or Israel Defense Forces. Former Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar and former IDF chief Herzi Halevi, for their part, told Haaretz that they had not been informed of such a warning, while the UAE president did not respond to the news organization.
Haaretz traces the warning to an earlier chain of intelligence in which Sinwar himself had spoken ominously of an approaching “earthquake” – an enormous operation. That warning reached the Shin Bet on September 15 and produced high-level discussions in which Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar warned that Israel was moving toward confrontation.
Veteran journalist Shlomi Eldar, the co-author of the report, said bin Zayed concluded Israel had not heeded such signals – but Netanyahu “tried to convince bin Zayed that we are fine with Gaza.”
Netanyahu denies the central allegation completely. “There was no such warning,” his spokesman Topaz Luk said on Israel Radio. “I think this is another effort to distort the truth ahead of elections.”
The question of who is telling the truth leads directly to a democratic mechanism that has repeatedly been called upon at moments of national trauma throughout Israel’s history: a commission of inquiry.
That very mechanism was employed in response to the catastrophic failures surrounding the 1973 Yom Kippur War, when the Agranat Commission investigated the conduct of the military and government. State commissions of inquiry have likewise examined the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre and the killing of Arab citizens by police in October 2000.
Oct. 7 was the greatest security failure in Israel’s history, leaving more than 1,000 people dead, hundreds taken hostage, communities overrun and the country plunged into years of war.
Netanyahu has resisted all calls to establish an independent state commission – trying instead to set up an inquiry in which the opposition and coalition politicians would have equal say, guaranteeing any findings would be politicized. He has also attempted to deflect all blame onto the security establishment – making the issue a central one in the election campaign.
“You knew, you ignored it, you failed and you are guilty,” said opposition politician Yair Golan Tuesday, addressing his comments to Netanyahu. “We will set up a state inquiry that will expose the truth and those guilty will have to face justice .. for negligence that caused a massacre.”
Under the Commissions of Inquiry Law adopted in 1968, once the government establishes a state commission, its members are appointed by the president of the Supreme Court, and its chairman must be a serving or retired judge. The arrangement is intended to give the investigation independence from the political figures and institutions whose decisions it may ultimately have to judge.
And therein lies a rather extraordinary convergence. Netanyahu and his government have spent years attacking the legitimacy of precisely the institution entrusted by law with ensuring the independence of such an investigation: the Supreme Court. The campaign to weaken the judiciary that tore Israel apart before Oct. 7 has since provided a convenient argument against using the established mechanism for investigating Oct. 7 itself.
Netanyahu argues that a commission whose members are selected by the Supreme Court president cannot command broad public confidence. His opponents argue that a bespoke “political commission” may sound superficially balanced, but conclusions associated with coalition appointees would inevitably be dismissed by Netanyahu’s opponents as an attempt to protect him. Meanwhile findings associated with opposition appointees would be portrayed by his supporters as an attempt to destroy him. Israel would begin with two political camps choosing investigators and almost certainly end with two political camps accepting different versions of the truth.
The opposition has therefore refused to participate, arguing that the proposal would allow Netanyahu to influence the investigation of his own government. The stalemate has produced an outcome that is increasingly difficult to view as accidental: there is no agreed commission, no authoritative account of what happened and an ever-expanding vacuum in which every faction is free to construct its own version of Oct. 7.
Into that vacuum has flowed something far more disturbing than an ordinary argument over political responsibility. Netanyahu has worked relentlessly to shift responsibility toward the intelligence chiefs, the generals and especially the Shin Bet. Around him has grown an increasingly elaborate conspiracy theory that Oct. 7 may have involved something more sinister than incompetence and catastrophic misjudgment: an internal betrayal designed to damage Netanyahu politically.
What the Haaretz report provides is another powerful indication of how much remains unresolved, along with a potentially devastating explanation for Netanyahu’s determination to keep the established investigative mechanism from examining it. If the report is substantially correct — if Netanyahu personally received another serious warning before Oct. 7, misunderstood its significance, failed to circulate it to the security chiefs and then spent years attempting to redirect responsibility toward those same institutions — his resistance to a genuinely independent inquiry is clearly a political calculation..
“It’s like a knife in the stomach,” said Merav Svirsky, whose parents were killed in Kibbutz Be’eri, one of the communities hardest hit on Oct. 7, and whose brother was kidnapped and killed in Gaza. “My father and mother could have been alive. My brother would not have been kidnapped and would be alive. And while others resigned, Netanyahu clings to his seat.”
The post Did Netanyahu ignore Oct. 7 warning? An independent inquiry could cost him re-election. appeared first on The Forward.
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Tidbits: New German textbooks about the Jewish religion
Tidbits is a Forverts feature of easy news briefs in Yiddish that you can listen to or read, or both! If you read the article and don’t know a word, just click on it and the translation appears. Listen to the report here:
צום ערשטן מאָל זינט דעם חורבן האָבן די דײַטשישע עפֿנטלעכע שולן באַקומען לערנביכער געווידמעט דער ייִדישער רעליגיע, כּדי די לערערס זאָלן קענען זיי ניצן ווי אַ טייל פֿונעם קוריקולום.
די סעריע פֿון אַכט בענד, „דעת הדורות“ (דאָס וויסן פֿון די דורות), וועט לערנען תּלמידים צווישן 10 און 16 יאָר אַלט אויף דײַטש וועגן דער תּורה, דעם תּנך, די תּפֿילות, ייִדישער עטיק, הלכה, יום־טובֿים, דעם ייִדישן לעבנס־ציקל און דער ייִדישער געשיכטע.
דער ערשטער באַנד, וואָס קאָנצענטרירט זיך אויף דער תּורה, וועט מען אָנהייבן ניצן אינעם נײַעם שוליאָר.
די ביכער, וואָס זענען צונויפֿגעשטעלט געוואָרן דורכן „צענטראַל-ראַט פֿון די ייִדן אין דײַטשלאַנד“ בשותּפֿות מיטן „ערנסט קלעט פֿאַרלאַג“, ווערן געצילעוועט סײַ אויף פּריוואַטע ייִדישע שולן סײַ אויף מלוכישע שולן איבער גאַנץ דײַטשלאַנד.
דער ציל איז צו באַקענען די תּלמידים מיט דער ייִדישער רעליגיע און טראַדיציעס אין אַ צײַט וואָס עס וואַקסט דער אַנטיסעמיטיזם איבערן לאַנד.
ביז איצט האָבן די לערער פֿון רעליגיעזע ייִדישע לימודים נישט געהאַט קיין מאָדערנע לערנביכער וועגן יהדות אין הסכּם מיטן קוריקולום, אַזוי ווי ס׳האָבן געהאַט די לערער פֿון קריסטלעכע רעליגיעזע לימודים. צוליב דעם בלויז האָבן די לערער פֿון דער ייִדישער רעליגיע געמוזט אַליין צונויפֿשטעלן אַרבעט־בויגנס און אַנדערע מאַטעריאַלן, וואָס זיי האָבן איבערגעזעצט פֿון אַנדערע שפּראַכן.
אין אַ מעלדונג האָט שילה ערלבוים, די אָנפֿירערין פֿונעם אָפּטייל פֿון פּאָליטיק און רעליגיע בײַם ייִדישן צענטראַל־ראַט, געזאָגט: „מיר האָבן טאַקע געדאַרפֿט אַ סיסטעמאַטישן לערן־רעסורס, וואָס באַזאָרגט די קינדער נישט בלויז מיט לערן־מאַטעריאַל, אָבער מוטיקט זיי זיך אַקטיוו צו באַטייליקן,“ האָט זי געזאָגט.
„דורך ׳דעת הדורות׳ קענען זיי לייזן בילדער־רעטענישן; זיך דערוויסן וועגן די געשעענישן פֿון משה רבינוס לעבן דורך אַ ווערפֿל־שפּיל, אָדער אויספּרוּוון זייער וויסן פֿון ייִדישע טערמינען דורך דער מאָבילקע אָדער אַ „גיכענטפֿער קאָד“ (QR code),“ האָט ערלבוים געזאָגט.
יאָזעף שוסטער, דער פּרעזידענט פֿונעם ייִדישן צענטראַל־ראַט, האַלט אַז די לערנביכער זענען אַ וויכטיקער אויפֿטו. „אַ דאַנק דעם פּראָיעקט וועט די ייִדישע רעליגיעזע בילדונג איצט זײַן גלײַך מיט די קריסטלעכע רעליגיעזע לימודים,“ האָט ער געזאָגט.
צו לייענען וועגן דעם אויף ענגליש גיט אַ קוועטש דאָ.
To read about this in English click here.
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