Image of teens who assaulted two Jewish boys in Crown Heights. Photo: Twitter.

A Jewish neighborhood watch group based in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, New York, is seeking information about an assault on two Jewish boys on Monday.

The 10 and 12-year-olds were attacked on Albany Avenue by four African-American teens on Sunday evening, according to Crown Heights Shomrim, which shared surveillance footage and photographs of the incident.

Antisemitic hate crimes in New York City are becoming increasingly more common. In 2022, there were 41 percent more such incidents compared to the previous year.

Notable attacks included the shooting of a Jewish man and his seven year old son with a BB gun outside a kosher market in Staten Island, an attack on three yeshiva students who were walking home in the Midwood section of Brooklyn, and a spree of shootings with gel guns on Orthodox Jews in Williamsburg.

The problem is not just localized to New York. Antisemitic incidents in the US in 2021 occurred at the highest numbers ever recorded, according to the latest annual audit by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) carried out in April, which began collecting data on them in 1979. Substantial increases in physical assaults were recorded, as well as over 1,500 incidents of harassment and vandalism.

Hasidic and Orthodox Jews in New York City are the minority group most victimized by hate crimes in the city, according to a Dec. 28 report by Americans Against Antisemitism (AAA), a US based group founded in 2019 to raise awareness of rising antisemitism.

The report, titled “The Hate Crime Accountability Project” and based on data provided by the New York City Police Department (NYPD), said that Orthodox Jews were victims in 94 percent of the 194 antisemitic assaults that occurred between 2018 and 2022. 97 percent were committed by members of other minority groups, it added, and nearly a quarter by teenagers.

Over two-thirds, 69 percent, of the assailants were African American, the report continued, with most attacks, 77 percent, taking place in predominantly Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods in Brooklyn. Of all assaults that prompted criminal proceedings just two resulted in convictions.

The New York City Police Department has not responded to The Algemeiner’s request for comment on this story.