Man charged with hate crime in Times Square attack on Israeli tourist

A Queens man was charged Tuesday with several hate crimes in an October attack on an Israeli tourist in Times Square who was hit in the head by an attacker who invoked Hamas, the Manhattan district attorney said.

The hate crime charges against the man, Yehia Amin, were among the latest to arise from a spate of partisan incidents in New York City over the past two months amid the war between Hamas and Israel.

In the case of 28-year-old Amin, prosecutors said he followed the tourist and four friends, all five wearing yarmulkes, as they visited Times Square.

Mr. Amin, prosecutors said, played what he said was “Hamas music” through a Bluetooth speaker as he followed them for several blocks and made anti-Semitic comments, including “Hamas should kill more of you” and “All Jews should die’.

After following the men for 10 minutes, Mr. Amin, according to prosecutors, sprinted after one of them, a 23-year-old, and punched him in the back of the head before running off. Police caught him shortly after he fled and he continued to shout anti-Semitic slurs during his arrest, prosecutors said.

Mr. Amin was charged with three counts of stalking as a hate crime, one count of assault as a hate crime and one count of aggravated harassment.

“Violence motivated by hatred and discrimination will not be tolerated in Manhattan,” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg said in a statement announcing the charges.

The number of bias incidents investigated by the police Hate Crime Task Force this year was down 6 percent through November, compared to the same period last year, but the number of such incidents in November was up 33 percent compared to last November, department data shows.

In October, in the wake of Hamas’s surprise attack on Israel on October 7, the number of partisan incidents investigated by police increased by 124 percent compared to October 2022, and the number of anti-Semitic incidents increased by 214 percent, data from the police.

Other recent incidents that have resulted in hate crimes include a Nov. 7 incident in which a woman threw her cell phone and a cup of hot coffee at a man in a Brooklyn park while making anti-Muslim statements. The victim was not injured, officials said.

Hadasa Bozakkaravani, 48, was subsequently arrested in the attack and charged with several crimes, including assault as a hate crime, intimidation and menacing.

Last Friday, two 14-year-olds and a 13-year-old were charged with three counts of assault as a hate crime and two counts of assault after a series of incidents in November in which, officials said, they attacked people near a Brooklyn neighborhood. synagogue, punching and kicking the victims and causing minor injuries.