Charges: Suspect in stabbings of Jews searched online for ‘Hitler,’ ‘temples’
In his journal, prosecutors said, he referred to Hitler and “Nazi culture.” On his phone, he searched online at least four times for “why did Hitler hate the Jews” and looked for “prominent companies founded by Jews in America.”
Those details emerged as federal prosecutors filed hate crime charges Monday against the man accused of stabbing five Jewish people at a Hanukkah celebration over the weekend in the New York suburbs.
In recent weeks, the criminal complaint said, the man, Grafton E. Thomas, searched for “German Jewish Temples near me,” and “Zionist Temples” in Elizabeth, N.J., and in Staten Island.
It said Thomas had made online queries suggesting anti-Semitic views as early as Nov. 9.
The attack Saturday at the home of a rabbi, coming after a slew of recent anti-Semitic incidents, has rattled the region’s Jewish population. The authorities have boosted police patrols in ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods and bolstered security at area synagogues and yeshivas.
Anxiety in these neighborhoods has mounted all year as anti-Semitic hate crimes around the country have risen. In its most recent audit, in 2018, the Anti-Defamation League recorded the third-highest total of anti-Semitic incidents since the group started publishing the information 40 years ago.
In an interview Monday morning on NPR, the public radio network, Mayor Bill de Blasio said of the recent attacks: “We consider this a crisis. Really, there is a growing anti-Semitism problem in this whole country. It has taken a more and more violent form.”
As of Sunday, New York City had seen a 23 percent rise in antiSemitic hate crimes this year, according to police data.
Since a mass shooting in Jersey
City, N.J., that targeted a kosher supermarket and eventually left six people, including two Hasidic Jews, dead earlier this month, the New York Police Department has been deploying more officers to protect synagogues, Police Commissioner Dermot F. Shea said.
After subsequent anti-Semitic incidents, including the stabbings in Monsey, the department has also stepped up patrols in some Brooklyn neighborhoods.
The five victims of the attack at the home of the rabbi, Chaim Rottenberg, were taken to the hospital. Several were treated there and released. At least one victim remained in the hospital Monday with a skull fracture, officials said.