Suspect in stabbing of Jewish man in NYC charged with attempted murder as hate crime

NEW YORK — A man who allegedly stabbed two people, including a Jewish man, in New York City last week was charged with hate crimes in his first court appearance on Friday.

Raul Morales, 51, was charged with two counts of second-degree attempted murder, one count of first degree assault, second degree assault, and attempted first-degree assault, all as hate crimes, court filings showed.

Morales is being held without bail and faces up to 40 years in prison. He pleaded not guilty to all charges.

Morales allegedly stabbed his first victim, who is Asian and not Jewish, in the back with a knife, a prosecutor told the court, according to The New York Post.

He then walked several blocks to an Orthodox synagogue, “shouted, ‘Justice for Islam’ and, ‘allahu akbar,’” before stabbing the Jewish victim with a screwdriver half a block away, the prosecutor said.

The synagogue has American and Israeli flags above its entrance.

Morales will appear in court next on Thursday.

Police have said that mental health issues may have played a role in the attacks.

Police executed a search warrant of Morales’s apartment, recovering books including a Quran, a biography of far-left Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara, and writing by the Communist philosopher Karl Marx, The New York Post reported.

Jewish community members protested at the scene of the Jewish man’s stabbing on Sunday in a rally organized by the EndJewHatred activist group.

The rally focused on New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, whose anti-Israel rhetoric some Jewish community leaders have linked to hatred against Jews in the city.

Mamdani released a video the day before the stabbing acknowledging that the city could not arrest Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, despite Mamdani’s repeated promises to do so.

Before saying he could not arrest Netanyahu, Mamdani listed a litany of alleged offenses by Israel in Gaza. The video has been viewed hundreds of millions of times.

“Mamdani continues to incite violence against us. Mamdani continues to send a message to us, to isolate us, to divide us,” Jewish community activist Moshe Spern said at a Sunday rally.

Mamdani has repeatedly rejected accusations that his anti-Israel rhetoric has stoked tensions in the city.

“When I make criticisms of Prime Minister Netanyahu, they are criticisms of Prime Minister Netanyahu, and what I shared were not even, frankly, personal assessments, they were objective facts,” Mamdani said at a Monday press conference.

In Mamdani’s video last week, he said that Netanyahu was a “war criminal” guilty of orchestrating “genocide.” Netanyahu has been charged but not been convicted of war crimes, international courts have not said Israel committed genocide, and the genocide charge he is highly contested.

“My responsibility as a New Yorker and as a mayor of this city is a responsibility to take care of each and every person who calls this city their home and that is not based upon whether or not they agree with me,” he said.

Jews are targeted in hate crimes far more than any other group in New York.

There have been 178 confirmed antisemitic hate crimes in the city between January and the end of June, which account for 55 percent of all hate crimes in the city, according to the NYPD. Jews constitute around 10% of the city population.