A view of lower Manhattan, from The Green-Wood Cemetery, during the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in the Brooklyn borough of New York City, May 27, 2020. Photo: Reuters / Brendan McDermid

Police in New York City have opened a hate crime investigation in response to reports of a violent assault in Midtown Manhattan on Monday afternoon against an Israeli man following the theft and desecration of his kippah.

Near the Mr. Broadway kosher restaurant, an unknown man reportedly saw Rami Glickstein, pointed to his head covering, and instructed him to “tell me what your religion is.”

The 58-year-old from Ofra — north of Jerusalem in the West Bank — ignored the provocation, which in turn led to further escalation. The man — described as in his 20s or 30s — grabbed Glickstein’s kippah, threw it on the ground, and spat on it. When Glickstein knelt to retrieve the violated symbol of his Jewish identity, his attacker punched him in the face and ran, according to multiple reports.

Witnesses on the scene around 6:30 pm on West 38th Street called an ambulance for Glickstein which then took him to the Mount Sinai Beth Israel hospital, where he was treated for injuries to his face.

“My pride as an Israeli was wounded more than my body,” Glickstein said of the incident, according to local news outlet 5TownsCentral. “I froze — I’ve never encountered hatred like this in my life.”

Ofir Akunis, the consul general of Israel in New York, released a statement following the hate crime.

“The attack is a direct result of the daily incitement worldwide, including in the United States, against Jews and Israel,” Akunis said. “Lies, verbal violence, calls to carry out another Oct. 7 massacre, and blood libels that are spread without any restraint — such as the false blood libel about Gaza — influence many, some of whom do not hesitate to attack physically.”

New York City has experienced a surge in anti-Jewish hate crimes since the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, amid the ensuing war in Gaza. The US as a whole and several other countries around the world have reported similar spikes in antisemitic activity, with many incidents against Jews or Jewish institutions invoking Israel and the Gaza conflict.

Akunis called for “all US public leaders” to “immediately and forcefully condemn the attack and the calls for violence such as to ‘globalize the intifada.'”

Glickstein, an educator who works as a lecturer for the Israel Defense Forces speaking on the topics of Jewish history and resilience, declared that “my Israeli pride was hurt,” adding that “it pains me that I couldn’t fight back, and I regret that deeply.”

Responding to the attack, the Combat Antisemitism Movement posted on X that “the rise in antisemitism in New York has become unbearable.”

On Wednesday, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) released research about antisemitic crime in New York City in 2024, recording 976 incidents. Of New York’s boroughs, the ADL identified Manhattan as possessing the highest number with a count of 587, followed by Brooklyn with 253 and Queens at 85. The researchers reported 24 in Staten Island and 27 in the Bronx.

The ADL described the figures as “the highest count in any US city last year and the highest count in any US city since ADL has been tracking such incidents.”

According to the ADL’s researchers, last year over 50 percent of the anti-Jewish physical attacks in the city “targeted Orthodox Jewish victims (36 out of 69 total), though this group makes up only about one-fifth of New York City’s total Jewish population. Observant Jewish people often wear visible markers of their Judaism, such as [kippahs], making them vulnerable to random antisemitic attacks in public, which we fear have become increasingly normalized.”