New York City Police Investigate Antisemitic Subway Assault

The New York City Police Department (NYPD) is investigating an antisemitic incident in which an African American male assaulted a Jewish public transit commuter on the subway, according to local reports.

The victim, Jeremy Garrett, told an ABC affiliate that he was reading a psalm on Monday morning when the assailant struck him on the head, knocking off his kippah in the process. Garrett later received treatment at a local hospital, WABC-TV reported.

“I thought the window of the subway fell on me,” Garrett recalled. “We tussled a bit, I was trying to hold him on the train, and then the doors closed, and they opened the doors again, and he ran off … it’s horrible because it happened on Purim, you know, right before the holiday.”

Garret added, “I still want justice, but I do forgive the man … They keep coming for us. We still keep living, so we’re not going to stop.”

New York City has seen similar incidents in recent months. In January, a woman was punched in the face while riding the New York City subway for wearing a hat that said “F—k Antisemitism,” according to a local report.

“F—k Jews,” the suspect, described as a “Black man in his 40s,” allegedly said to her before striking the blow, the New York Daily News reported, citing local law enforcement.

The victim then “fled” the railcar at the 116th St. – Columbia University subway station in Morningside Heights, Manhattan, while the assailant remained on board, the News added. She was reportedly not seriously injured, as medics did not treat her following the incident’s being reported to law enforcement.

Just last month, a 17-year-old student who attended the Renaissance Charter School in the Jackson Heights section of the Queens borough called on his classmates to “rise up and kill the Jews.”

Antisemitic hate crimes in New York City have seen a dramatic rise in recent years. The latest NYPD hate crime statistics show a 182 percent increase in January 2026, Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s first month in office, compared to the same period last year.

Mamdani, a far-left democratic socialist who has made anti-Israel activism a cornerstone of his political career, has repeatedly accused Israel of “apartheid” and refused to recognize its right to exist as a Jewish state.

Such positions have raised alarm bells among not only New York’s Jewish community but also Israeli business owners and investors, who fear a hostile climate under Mamdani’s leadership.

Jews were targeted in the majority (54 percent) of all hate crimes perpetrated in New York City in 2024, according to other data issued by the NYPD.

A recent report released in December by the Mayor’s Office to Combat Antisemitism noted that figure rose to a staggering 62 percent in the first quarter of 2025, despite Jewish New Yorkers comprising a small minority of the city’s population.

As The Algemeiner has previously reported, antisemitism in New York City has eroded the quality of life of the city’s Orthodox Jewish community, which is the target in many antisemitic incidents.

In just eight days between the end of October and the beginning of November 2024, three Hasidim, including children, were brutally assaulted in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn. In one instance, an Orthodox man was accosted by two assailants, one masked, who “chased and beat him” after he refused to surrender his cellphone in compliance with what appeared to have been an attempted robbery. In another incident, an African American male smacked a 13-year-old Jewish boy who was commuting to school on his bike in the heavily Jewish neighborhood. Less than a week earlier, an assailant slashed a visibly Jewish man in the face as he was walking in Brooklyn.

In 2025, New Yorkers have seen organized antisemitic harassment. In November, hundreds of people amassed outside a prominent New York City synagogue and clamored for violence against Jews.

“The Jewish community is filled with anxiety and trepidation. We know that it’s open season,” Rabbi Mark Schneier, president of the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding, said in a statement to NY1 in February. “We’ve encountered these kinds of threats for the last 2,500 years, but if anything, there’s never been a greater time to be alive as a Jew than today.”

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.