Illustrative. An NYPD car on patrol. Photo: Reuters / Lucas Jackson.

The New York City Police Department (NYPD) Hate Crimes Division is investigating an assault that took place early Saturday morning in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn as an antisemitic assault.

According to the NYPD, on July 8 near Troy Avenue and Union Street, a 22-year-old Israeli Yeshiva student, who was identifiably Orthodox and visiting New York City for the summer holiday, was stabbed with a screwdriver by one of two men who attacked him after asking whether he is Jewish and had any money. The other punched him in the face.

“The subjects fled the location to parts unknown,” a NYPD spokesperson told The Algemeiner. “There are no arrests and the investigation remains ongoing by NYPD’s Hate Crimes Task Force.”

The NYPD added that the victim was taken to New York Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital and treated “for minor injuries.”

The attack comes amid a surge of antisemitic assaults throughout the US and New York, which, according to the Anti-Defamation League, had more antisemitic incidents in 2022 than any other state in the union, with 416.

Antisemitic hate crimes throughout New York City increased by 41 percent in 2022, based on an analysis of crime data conducted by The Algemeiner.

There were 293 total antisemitic incidents in 2022, rising from 207 overall in 2021. 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, a spree of shootings with gel guns on Orthodox Jews in Williamsburg, and the uncovering of a plot to attack synagogues in Manhattan.

Hasidic and Orthodox Jews in New York City are the minority group most victimized by hate crimes in the city, according to a report Americans Against Antisemitism (AAA), a US based group founded in 2019 to raise awareness of rising antisemitism, issued in December. Their data, drawn from statistics published 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 added, 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.

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.