For the second time in less than a week, a young Jewish man has been attacked in the heart of the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn.
This time the incident took place in broad daylight, on Kingston Avenue near Union Street in the heart of the Chabad-Lubavitch shopping district.
A Jewish man in his 20s was punched in the chest by a black man who reportedly then kept on walking in an unprovoked attack at around 8 am, according to the COLLive website.
This is the third such attack by non-Jews against Jews in the neighborhood in the past two weeks.
Security camera video footage from a nearby business showed the perpetrator approaching the victim and repeatedly striking him. He nearly knocked him over, in fact.
Calls were made by the victim and passersby to the Shomrim volunteer civil patrol, who then called police. NYPD Hate Crimes detectives are investigating the incident.
“What’s wrong with our society?” asked Rabbi Yaacov Behrman, head of the Jewish Future Alliance. “What’s wrong with Crown Heights that innocents are being beaten in the streets? Is there an atmosphere that is encouraging violence or anti-Semitism?”
Earlier this month, on Jan 3, a Jewish woman was punched in the face in an unprovoked assault. The woman was left stunned, and transported to the hospital with minor facial injuries. The assault happened around 3 pm on Crown Street, between Troy and Schenectady Ave.
“We condemn these cowardly attacks on innocent civilians,” Behrman told JewishPress.com. “But instead of hosting another news conference and focusing on whether the word “hate crime” should be attached to these attacks, we ask whether someone is out there preaching hate.
“What educational initiatives can we launch in the schools to address the issues of violence and hate?”