As the conflict in the Gaza strip has slowed following a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, violence appears to be ratcheting up in the streets of New York City, Los Angeles, and Florida. A social media campaign urging TikTok users to record and post video footage of themselves beating up Jewish people may have spread across the Atlantic.
The violence began in Israel, according to the UK-based magazine The Spectator. “In Israel last month, a video on the social media platform TikTok encouraged users to film themselves assaulting Orthodox Jews,”
reported James Ball.
Last month, Israeli officials
arrested two Arab teenagers who slapped two ultra-Orthodox Haredi Jews on a train in East Jerusalem and
uploaded video of the incident to TikTok.
“Why would any ordinary person get pleasure from assault?” Ball wrote. “‘There is a competition for likes and views,’ a 15-year-old victim told an Israeli news organisation. ‘A video of an Arab slapping an ultra-Orthodox man will get you both.’”
As the Israel-Gaza conflict intensified this past week, so did attacks on American Jews — many of them recorded and shared widely on social media. Multiple alleged assaults against Jewish people took place nationwide during the Middle Eastern conflicts, often featuring large groups of people said to be Palestinian rights activists.
Two attacks took place late Tuesday night in the same vicinity of Los Angeles. A roving gang of Palestinians were reportedly cruising L.A.’s Beverly Grove neighborhood, yelling anti-Zionist epithets. Eyewitnesses said the men pulled up to the Sushi Fumi restaurant and asked, “Who’s Jewish?” before commencing to attack Jewish men in a violent incident police in Los Angeles are investigating as a potential hate crime.
Footage of another incident was reportedly “shared by the perpetrators themselves, along with security footage.”
“The Zionist flipped us off for supporting Palestine. We went after him,” the video
states.
New York City — already home to dozens of anti-semitic attacks this year — also experienced anti-semitic violence throughout the week. As two demonstrations supporting different sides of the conflict converged in Times Square on Thursday night, a truckload of people flying a Palestinian flag reportedly threw two commercial
fireworks into the pro-Israeli gathering of mostly Jewish people. The blasts injured a 55-year-old woman, according to the New York Post. A freelance reporter named Oliya Scootercaster
uploaded video footage of the altercation, which took place near Manhattan’s Diamond District.
The same evening, in the Diamond District, a crowd of Palestinian supporters surrounded a Jewish man, knocked him to the ground, and beat him in the face with a crutch. “My whole face… felt like it was on fire for hours,” the victim, 29-year-old Joseph Borgen,
told local media. Borgen said he “wore my yarmulke, wore my kippah,” but “I never made it to the rally.” He “saw someone start chasing me from behind, and next thing you know, … I was surrounded by a crowd.”
Video of that horrifying incident also made social media.
“The chronology of the two videos is unclear,”
reported The Times of Israel.
On Friday, the video may have helped land the perpetrator. “23-year-old Waseem Awawdeh was arrested for using a crutch to assault a man in front of 1604 Broadway,” the NYPD Hate Crimes Task Force
announced May 21 on Twitter. “He’s been charged with hate crime assault 2, gang assault 2, menacing, and criminal possession of a weapon.”…
