NYPD: Jewish man stabbed in Manhattan by attacker yelling ‘Allahu Akbar’

JTA – An assailant on Thursday stabbed two victims, one of whom was visibly Jewish, in an area of Manhattan’s Upper West Side known for its Jewish institutions. 

Police said two male victims, aged 57 and 50, were in stable condition and being treated for stab wounds to the torso. One was Jewish and one was Asian, police said. 

New York Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch announced on Thursday evening that the force had arrested 51-year-old Raul Morales in connection with both assaults and that he had yelled “Allahu Akbar” during both attacks, according to multiple witnesses and a victim. 

“The NYPD [New York Police Department] is currently evaluating whether this is a potential hate crime,” Tisch said. “Detectives are continuing to work the case and determine motive.” No other assailants are being sought. 

Rabbi Allen Schwartz of the neighbourhood’s Congregation Ohab Zedek told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) that one of the victims was a congregant who is visibly Jewish and wears a kippah. 

Schwartz, who is in Israel, said he spoke to the congregant on the phone and that he is “alert”. 

“He may go home before Shabbos,” Schwartz said. He said the victim, who was traumatised, didn’t remember the assailant yelling “Allahu Akbar”. 

Mayor Zohran Mamdani called the stabbings “horrifying” in a statement on Thursday evening, noting that the perpetrator allegedly yelled “Allahu Akbar” during both attacks. 

Nava Silton told JTA she had been with the victim Schwartz had spoken to at the Jewish Center, an Orthodox synagogue on 86th street, for afternoon prayers. 

Minutes after the victim left the synagogue, Silton said she heard there was an attack, but by the time she got to the scene, the victims had been taken to hospital. 

She said the victim didn’t want his name published. 

Silton visited the victim in hospital. He told her that a screwdriver had been plunged into the right side of his chest and he had pulled it out himself, afraid that he’d keel over and fall onto it. “He’s just praying that his medical condition doesn’t get worse,” Silton said. 

Though police haven’t determined a motive, Governor Kathy Hochul wrote that the stabbing “appears to be another senseless attack on New Yorkers simply because they’re Jewish”. 

City Council Speaker Julie Menin wrote that she is “absolutely sickened and furious by what appears to be an antisemitic stabbing” on Thursday. 

In her statement, Tisch wrote that “the initial investigation suggests that mental health may have been a factor”, though the alleged perpetrator “has no known mental health history with the NYPD”. 

Meanwhile, some critics of Mamdani have tied the attack to the New York City mayor’s sharp criticism of Israel and its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. 

“This comes a day after Mamdani incited more violence against NYC’s Jews,” wrote Republican City Council member Inna Vernikov, who is Jewish. “@NYCMayor you got blood on your hands!” 

Vernikov initially wrote to the mayor, “F– YOU!” She deleted the expletive in a since-edited version of the post. 

Gideon Sa’ar, Israel’s minister of foreign affairs, wrote that the attacks “did not happen in a vacuum”. 

“Months of incitement against the Jewish State from Mamdani have helped create a climate in which Jews are targeted,” Sa’ar said. 

Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, charged Mamdani with “putting Jewish lives in danger in New York”. 

Meanwhile, philanthropy organisation UJA-Federation of New York also explicitly called out Mamdani, whom it said “used his official platform to viciously attack Israel, the only Jewish State”. UJA is a funder of 70 Faces Media, the parent company of New York Jewish Week. 

“We cannot ignore the dangerous climate created when elected leaders relentlessly portray Israel ‒ and, by extension, the many Jewish New Yorkers who feel a deep connection to it ‒ as uniquely evil and illegitimate,” the group wrote.