The suspect in Monsey stabbing on Saturday which left five people dead on the evening of the Jewish festival of Hanukkah, appeared in a New York court on Sunday charged with five counts of attempted murder.
The latest in a spate of attacks on Jewish targets, Grafton Thomas, 37, allegedly entered the property in Monsey, Rockland County, during celebrations on Saturday evening, knifing several people with a machete before fleeing. He was ordered held in custody after appearing in Ramapo Town Court, where he denied the charges. The attack was quickly condemned as another incident underscoring growing anti-Semitic violence in the United States. President Donald Trump tweeted that Americans “must all come together to fight, confront, and eradicate the evil scourge of anti-Semitism.”
The anti-Semitic attack in Monsey, New York, on the 7th night of Hanukkah last night is horrific. We must all come together to fight, confront, and eradicate the evil scourge of anti-Semitism. Melania and I wish the victims a quick and full recovery.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 29, 2019
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo told reporters at the scene on Sunday that “these are people who intend to create mass harm, mass violence generate fear based on race, color, creed.”
Thomas was reportedly arrested in his car about 50 kilometers away, two hours after the attack. One witness told how the weapon had a big handle and the attacker “swung it back and forth.”
“Everyone was screaming and panicking and shouting ‘out out out.’ It was chaos,” Joseph Gluck, 30, told reporters. Last year a white supremacist walked into a Pittsburgh synagogue and shot dead 11 people the deadliest attack against the Jewish community in the United States.
And earlier this month six people, including the two attackers, were killed in a shooting at a kosher deli in Jersey City, New Jersey, which authorities said was fueled in part by anti-Semitism.
A report in April from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) stated that the number of anti-Semitic attacks in 2018 was close to the record of 2017, with 1,879 incidents.
Yossi Gestetner, of the Orthodox Jewish Public Affairs Council (OJPAC), told The New York Times that one of the victims was the son of the rabbi. “The house had many dozens of people in there,” Gestetner said. “It was a Hanukkah celebration.”
Rockland has the largest Jewish population per capita of any US county, with 31.4 percent, or 90,000 Jewish residents. In response to the recent surge in hate crimes in New York, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced on Friday that the NYPD was stepping up patrols and increasing visits to places of worship.
A hate crime is more than an attack on one community— it’s an attack on all of us. It’s an attempt to undermine our strength and take all of us backwards. It is imperative that we take action NOW.
And we need every New Yorker to be a part of confronting this reckless hatred.
— Mayor Bill de Blasio (@NYCMayor) December 29, 2019
After Saturday’s attack, the mayor tweeted that he had recently spoken to longtime Jewish friends who were fearful of outwardly showing their faith. “We will NOT allow this to become the new normal,” he wrote. “We’ll use every tool we have to stop these attacks once and for all.”
In Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the country “strongly condemns the recent displays of anti-Semitism including the vicious attack at the home of a rabbi in Monsey, New York.”
Israel strongly condemns the recent displays of antisemitism including the vicious attack at the home of a rabbi in Monsey, New York, during Chanukah.
— Benjamin Netanyahu (@netanyahu) December 29, 2019
The attack happened at about 10:00 pm on Saturday, the seventh night of Hanukkah, with about 100 people gathered for a candle-lighting ceremony.
“It’s a wave and a trend of hate-filled violence that is sweeping the country, not just NY State,” tweeted Maya Wiley, a civil rights activist and senior vice president for social justice at the New School private university in New York. “We have to stand together to keep our neighbors safe.”
At Thomas’s court appearance, bail was set at $5 million and he was then taken in handcuffs to a police vehicle and driven to Rockland County Jail.
(With inputs from AFP)