As Mary blogged earlier this week, New York City has seen an alarming rise in anti-Semitic attacks. The most recent is a horrifying machete attack in Monsey, a town about an hour north of New York City, that left five people wounded.
The attack occurred during a Hanukkah celebration in a rabbi’s home. New York governor Andrew Cuomo has called the incident an “act of domestic terrorism.”
Authorities say five people were stabbed at a rabbi’s home late Saturday night in Monsey, New York, the latest and most violent in a string of anti-Semitic attacks in the greater New York City area in the last few days.Ramapo Police Chief Brad Weidel said the suspected attacker entered the residence around 10 p.m. armed with a knife. Saturday was the seventh night of Hanukkah and was being widely observed in Monsey, a hamlet that is home to thousands of Orthodox Jews. There were as many as 70 people in the rabbi’s home at the time of the attack.The Hasidic organization Chabad, citing sources in the community and witnesses at the scene, said someone in the home threw a table at the attacker, chasing him off. He then allegedly tried to gain access to the synagogue next door, but the occupants barricaded themselves inside. The assailant then fled the scene in a silver sedan, according to witnesses.
The suspect has been apprehended, though it’s not yet clear how long he will be detained.
The man accused of entering the home of a New York rabbi and stabbing five people with a machete in a horrifying anti-Semitic attack on Saturday night was taken into police custody hours after the attack.Ramapo Police Chief Brad Weidel said on Sunday the suspect – identified as Grafton E. Thomas, 37, of Greenwood Lake, New York – will face five counts of attempted murder and one count of burglary.Police said Thomas entered the home of Rabbi Chaim Rottenberg in Monsey, a suburb north of New York City, during a Hanukkah celebration – the latest in a string of anti-Semitic incidents in recent weeks that including beatings of Jewish people in the streets of New York City and a massacre at a kosher grocery store in Jersey City, N.J.Police said Thomas fled the scene of the stabbing but was later captured in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City.
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