Suspect charged with hate crime for attack on Jews in Brooklyn with metal shears
Footage of assault in Crown Heights shows man lunging at pedestrians, the latest in a series of antisemitic incidents reported in the city in recent days
Luke Tress is The Times of Israel's New York correspondent.
NEW YORK — A man has been charged with a hate crime for allegedly attacking Jewish men with cutting shears in New York City on Saturday.
Kareem Govan, 47, was charged with assault in the second degree as a hate crime, a felony, the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office said on Monday.
The NYPD said the suspect approached a group of men on Saturday afternoon, during Shabbat, “with metal cutting shears” in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, the home base of the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic movement.
“The individual threatened to stab the group of males and attacked a 47-year-old male as he attempted to flee, causing minor injuries,” the NYPD told The Times of Israel.
The victim was treated on the scene, the NYPD said.
Rabbi Yaacov Behrman, a community organizer and Chabad spokesperson, shared a video of the incident on X.
The footage showed a man approaching the group from behind, lunging over the head of one man, and stabbing at the face of another, who fell to the pavement.
Behrman told The Times of Israel that the targets of the attack were all Jewish.
Shocking video footage of the incident. https://t.co/ykq8vUAvt2 pic.twitter.com/BKOPOVyboT
— Yaacov Behrman (@ChabadLubavitch) February 9, 2025
Govan was not initially charged with a hate crime. The NYPD said on Sunday that he had been charged with seven counts including assault, menacing, and harassment. The Brooklyn District Attorney’s office confirmed Monday that the top count was now the hate crime charge.
The attack was the latest in a series of antisemitic incidents reported in New York City in recent days.
A woman was charged with aggravated harassment as a hate crime for an incident in Manhattan on Thursday. Footage showed the suspect lunging and shouting at a Jewish man in the lobby of a building.
“Fuck the Jew. Fuck the Zionists,” she said. “I demand jihad. I want ISIS to kill all of you. I’m conspiring with Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and ISIS.”
The suspect was identified as an employee of the Council of American-Islamic Relations, which denied the claim that she was a current employee.
“This person has not worked with our CAIR-KY chapter in FIVE years. She has no role at our civil rights group,” CAIR said on X.
This is a lie. This person has not worked with our CAIR-KY chapter in FIVE years. She has no role at our civil rights group. We condemn and reject the antisemitic comments in the video, just as we condemn and reject anti-Palestinian racism and anti-Muslim hate. Racism is wrong,… https://t.co/pdJV4GZUiD
— CAIR National (@CAIRNational) February 7, 2025
On Friday, the NYPD said it was searching for another suspect involved in an antisemitic hate crime last month. The suspect approached his target at a subway station in Queens, made antisemitic statements, and assaulted the victim.
Jews are targeted in hate crimes more often than any group in New York City, according to NYPD data. Last year, Jews were targeted in 345 incidents, more than all other groups combined, as antisemitic crimes surged following the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel.
There were 18 antisemitic hate crimes reported to police in January, a decrease from the same month last year.
The figures are preliminary and subject to change if, for example, an incident that had initially appeared antisemitic turns out to have been motivated by other factors.
