Jewish man stabbed by attacker shouting ‘Free Palestine’ and antisemitic slurs in NYC
An antisemitic thug allegedly yelled “Free Palestine” and stabbed a Jewish man in a hateful attack near the Chabad Headquarters in Crown Heights on Saturday morning, according to eyewitnesses.
The suspect allegedly approached Yechiel Dabrowskin around 2 a.m. near the Eastern Parkway and Kingston Avenue and shouted “Free Palestine” and “Do you want to die?” before knifing the victim, according to Yaacov Behrman, a spokesperson for Chabad-Lubavitch.
“It’s very, very painful,” Dabrowskin told Kan 11 News in Israel. “I had internal bleeding but thank God I had a miracle.”
He said he was part of a group that sat down to a peaceful dinner near the rebbe’s synagogue late Friday before the trouble broke out.
“At 2 a.m. they were saying that there was a person outside who was threatening children and teenagers,” Dabrowskin said. “I heard him say, ‘Free Palestine,’ ‘You want to die?’ [and] I asked him to leave.
“When you look at the footage you can see that me and a friend of mine were trying to distance him from us,” he continued. “All of a sudden he pulled out a knife.
“The knife went very close to my heart,” Dabrowskin added. “We all tackled him and we all called the police.”
Dabrowskin and his attacker, identified by police as 22-year-old Vincent Sumpter of Brooklyn, allegedly exchanged words before the shocking attack, Behrman wrote on X.
Dabrowskin was taken to the hospital and is expected to recover, Behrman added.
He was slashed in the stomach, the NYPD told The Post on Sunday.
Members of a neighborhood watch group were able to detain the attacker until police arrived to make an arrest, Behrman said.
Sumpter was charged with assault and criminal possession of a weapon.
Law enforcement sources said Sumpter does not have a prior criminal record in New York City.
One witness told Freedom News TV that the attacker was “looking for trouble” before the encounter.
“It does make me a bit worried, but at the same time I’m comfortable here,” the man said. “I do watch my back in general, but at the same time it’s making you just be more wary and make sure there’s nothing happening behind you and you suddenly turn around and there’s a guy about to stab you.
“You just watch your back, basically.”
Jewish community leaders also blasted the attack as just the latest assault on the Jewish community in New York following a rise of antisemitism since the Oct. 7 attack on Israel and subsquent war in Gaza.
Mark Treyger, the CEO of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, slammed the “abhorrent and abominable attack on a young Jewish person in Brooklyn,” noting the attack “cannot” be seen as an isolated incident.
“This is a dangerous escalation of the current climate we are in and it should outrage every New Yorker because it is an attack on every New Yorker,” he wrote on X.
“We need ACCOUNTABILITY and ACTION NOW!”
In July alone, the NYPD’s Hate Crimes Task Force investigated 30 anti-Jewish offenses, compared to only 10 during the same period last year.
Antisemitic hate crimes made up the majority of the 52 bias offenses investigated by the department last month, the data shows. The NYPD probed 48 hate crimes in July 2023.
So far this year, 229 anti-Semitic hate crimes have been reported to the NYPD through last Sunday, according to NYPD data.
By that time last year, 126 such incidents were reported.
The rise in antisemitic crimes has prompted Gov. Kathy Hochul to consider a partial mask ban for New York City’s subways, as hate crimes by mask protesters spike, including one recent incident in which masked protesters demanded that “Zionists” raise their hands on a crowded train.
It was not immediately clear what condition the victim, who has “long-standing ties to the community,” was in following the stabbing.
Video shared to X by Shmira Public Safety shows the confrontation unfolding in front of a group of about four other Jewish men who were walking together on the sidewalk. The Post has reached out to Shmira Public Safety for additional information.
A witness said that the attacker came out of the subway “looking for trouble.”
“He was provoking the Jews walking, yelling antisemitic slurs and ‘Free Palestine’ and stuff like that and they ignored him and he was looking for other people — he was looking for trouble basically — and he continued harassing other people passing by and physically threatened another group, yelling ‘ You wanna die’ and ‘Free Palestine’,” the witness said.
Moments later he withdrew a knife and stabbed one of the men, who he believed to be between 18 and 20 years old, the witness added.
The attacker then tried to stab another person before he was detained by Shmira, which is the neighborhood patrol, the witness said.
Elchonon Schagalov, 55, ran outside the nearby temple when he heard the attack unfolding outside, he told The Post on Sunday.
“He’s local. He’s originally from Israel. I see him all the time. He’s a nice kid. He has 2 brothers,” Schagalov said of the victim. “He’s not a provoking kid. He doesn’t speak extremely good English. English is his third or fourth language.”
Schagalov said the group of young men had just finished Shabbat dinner and were chatting outside when the attacker approached them talking about Palestinians, but none of them understood what he was saying since English is not their first language.
“They thought he was just joking. They didn’t think he was malicious. They weren’t expecting it,” Schagalov said.
The victim then allegedly asked the suspect “What do you want from us?” and he started yelling at them about Palestine before asking, “Do you want to die?” and slashing the victim in the stomach, Schagalov said.
“This pissed off a lot of people. That someone would come into our community just to provoke,” he added. “It’s definitely made the community more alert.”
The victim told Kan 11 that antisemitic harassment has become all too common since the sneak Hamas attack in the Gaza Strip on Oct. 7.
“Every time I go on the subway and walk on the street I hear the Palestinians curse out the Jews,” he said. “We prefer not to respond to them because I know if I respond I’m going to get beaten up. I prefer to keep my mouth shut.
“I’m not ashamed to hide my signs of being Jewish,” he added.
“I’m proud to be Israeli. But over the past few months, it’s gotten very scary to respond to them.”
