The New York City Police Department is probing an assault that took place at 12:48 p.m. on Monday in front of the kosher eatery Mr. Broadway in midtown Manhattan as a potential hate crime, the department told JNS.
Responding to a 911 call, NYPD officers saw a man with “injuries to the right side of his face.” The victim was subsequently taken to Mount Sinai Beth Israel in stable condition, the department said. “There is no arrest, and the investigation remains ongoing by the NYPD Hate Crimes Task Force.”
Rivi Ben Noon Glickstein told JNS that the attacker noticed her husband’s kippah and shouted at him, “What is your religion? What is your religion?” When he ignored the assailant and kept walking, the man threw his kippah to the ground and spat on it, she told JNS.
After her husband, Rami Glickstein, 58, picked his kippah up from the ground, the other man began punching him “a lot, very, very strongly,” said Rivi Glickstein. “My husband couldn’t fight against him.”
Bystanders came over to help, and the police were called. Her husband was hospitalized, and doctors found “blood in the brain” and a broken nose, she told JNS.
Rivi Glickstein said her husband was released and though he “wasn’t feeling so well” on Tuesday, they decided to go to a restaurant in New York City, which the Israeli couple has been visiting as part of a nine-day trip. The couple plans to return to Israel in two days.
Having been to New York City several times, it felt “so strange” that such an antisemitic act could occur in the city and in the country, Rivi Glickstein told JNS. “For me, it’s like 1939.”
Ofir Akunis, consul general of Israel in New York, said that he spoke with the couple on Monday, wishing the victim a speedy recovery and telling the two that the “Israeli consulate in New York stands fully at their disposal.”
“This attack is a direct result of the daily incitement taking place around the world, including in the United States, against Jews and against Israel,” Akunis stated. “Lies, verbal violence, calls for another Oct. 7 massacre, and the unrestricted spread of blood libels, such as the false Gaza narrative, influence many people, some of whom do not hesitate to commit physical attacks.”
“All public leaders in the United States, at both the national and local levels, must immediately and firmly condemn this assault and the calls for violence such as the so-called ‘global intifada,’” Akunis said.
