Anti-Semitic Backlash
Suspected in 5 Attacks

By ALICE McQUILLAN, FRANK LOMBARDI and BOB LIFF
Daily News Staff Writers

The Police Department is investigating five alleged incidents of anti-Semitic violence that New York's Jewish leaders fear were prompted by the dispute raging in the Middle East.

Police officials said yesterday they are looking at the incidents as possible bias crimes, and Mayor Giuliani promised that cops would step up patrols in the Brooklyn and Queens neighborhoods where the acts occurred.

"We're just not going to accept or tolerate this kind of behavior," the mayor said.

In Brooklyn, police said an Orthodox Jewish man returning from synagogue in Borough Park on Sunday was slashed above the eye by a man who identified himself as a Palestinian.

On Monday, a man on a Brooklyn subway train was kicked by a group of young men claiming to be Palestinian who were carrying a Palestinian flag and spouting anti-Semitic rhetoric, police said.

Yesterday morning, graffiti was discovered at a synagogue on Ninth St., police said.

In Queens, authorities said they were investigating anti-Semitic graffiti found on a Jewish war memorial in Far Rockaway and in the Linden Hills Jewish Cemetery on Metropolitan Ave.

Assemblyman Dov Hikind (D-Brooklyn) said his office had received complaints of six bias incidents in which the victims were all "identifiably Jewish men," dressed in Hasidic garb or wearing yarmulkes.

Hikind, who was joined at his Borough Park office by several local rabbis and other legislators, cited the torching of a yeshiva school bus another potential bias attack.

"The tragedy in the Middle East should not be brought to New York," he said.

Police officials said they were investigating the bus fire, which they believe may be linked to an unrelated local dispute, but they were not familiar with other incidents referred to by Hikind.

The NYPD is setting up a temporary command post in the 66th Precinct to handle bias reports in the Brooklyn South command area until the Jewish holiday season is over, officials said.

The mayor also made an appeal for calm. He urged New Yorkers to avoid "group blame" aimed at Jews or Palestinians.

"Whatever is happening in any other part of the world should not reflect itself in any viciousness or nastiness happening in the city of New York," Giuliani said.

Original Publication Date: 10/4/00