HATE AND THE CITY
Jews targeted in 24 of 43 attacks last month 2nd Muslim assaulted on subway in past week
Hate crimes against Jews and Muslims, including NYPD’s Aml Elsokary (r.), have spiked since election of Donald Trump.
THE CITY’S growing hate epidemic spread Monday when for the second time in a week, a Muslim woman was taunted on a train and accused of being a terrorist.
Soha Salama, an MTA worker, was wearing her uniform and a hijab when a passenger harassed her around 7 a.m. aboard a Manhattan-bound 7 train.
“You’re a terrorist!” the passenger shouted at her,” according to cops. “You shouldn’t be working for the city. Go back to your country!”
When the 45-year-old Astoria, Queens, woman exited the train at Grand Central, the passenger followed her — then pushed her as she was walking up a flight of stairs, authorities said.
The assailant is described as an Hispanic man. Cops were looking for him.
Last Thursday, Yasmin Seweid, 18, was taunted on a 6 train by several drunken men shouting “Donald Trump” who called her a terrorist and told her to take the “rag” off her head.
Seweid, who is Muslim, was also wearing a hijab.
The crimes were part of a growing number of hate-inspired offenses that have plagued New York in the weeks since Donald Trump’s election.
According to police statistics, hate crimes in the city more than doubled last month — with more than 43 cases, compared with just 20 in November 2015.
Jews were targeted in 24 of the 43 incidents last month, officials said.
For the same month, the number of hate crimes targeting Muslims went from two in 2015 to four this year.
“We do not allow intolerance or fear to divide us because we know diversity is our strength, and we are at our best when we stand united,” Gov. Cuomo said in a statement Monday.
Last month, state Sen. Brad Hoylman (D-Manhattan) encountered anti-Semitic hate in three incidents.
Hoylman, who represents Chelsea, Greenwich Village, the East Village and the Lower East Side, notified authorities last Tuesday night after a staffer at his district office opened an email containing threats that he and his family be burned alive.
On Nov. 19, a pamphlet featuring a masked figure with a sword slashing through symbols of Islam, peace, the gay and lesbian community and Judaism was sent to his home.
Days earlier, on Nov. 15, a vandal carved two swastikas on a service door in Hoylman’s Greenwich Village building along Fifth Ave. near Washington Square Park.
No one has been arrested for any of the incidents.
“New York will continue to set the example for the nation — safeguarding our diversity and our differences, and rooting out bigotry and hatred wherever it exists.”
Mayor de Blasio blamed the President-elect directly for the climate that has given rise to bigoted attacks.
De Blasio shared his concern as he sat next to a city cop, Aml Elsokary, a Muslim who was off duty when a man threatened to kill her after she confronted him over pushing her 16-year-old son on a Bay Ridge streetcorner Saturday.
Elsokary was wearing her hijab when Christopher Nelson allegedly cursed at her.
“You guys think this is a joke,” Nelson said, according to a criminal complaint. “I’ll slit your throat, you ISIS (expletive).”
Police said he then sicced his pit bull on them — but the dog did not attack.
“Do I blame Donald Trump for using hate speech during his campaign?” de Blasio said. “Absolutely. He did. It’s a fact. He said horrible things about Muslims, horrible things about Mexican-Americans.”