New York man charged with hate crime after antisemitic attack on father and son
Rachel Schilke
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A New York man has been arrested for an alleged antisemitic attack on a father and son on Tuesday.
Jason Kish, 25, of Staten Island, allegedly fired a BB gun at a Jewish father, 32, and his son, 7, when they were grocery shopping on Sunday afternoon.
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Kish has been charged with assault as a hate crime, endangering the welfare of a child, reckless endangerment, and assault in connection with the incident.
Video footage shared by the Staten Island Shomrim Safety Patrol showed the father and his son wearing yarmulkes pushing a grocery cart outside Island Kosher supermarket when a black Ford Mustang came by and they were hit by BB pellets.
The boy can be seen grabbing his ear after being struck with a pellet.
The footage showed at least one window rolled down, but it is unclear if Kish was the driver or passenger. No one else has been arrested in connection to the incident.
The New York City Police Department’s 121st Precinct tweeted an announcement that the suspect wanted for the BB gun attack was apprehended, giving credit to the department’s Hate Crimes division officers.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams said during a press conference that he feared the young boy targeted would “never walk that street again without thinking about that incident.”
He acknowledged that there is a “substantial increase” in antisemitic hate crimes across the city, which he said has the largest Jewish population outside of Israel, and the country.
“We need to stop what’s happening on social media,” Adams said. “We need to stop the spreading of this hate. We need to combat it in a very real way.”
Antisemitic messages and attacks have been attracting national attention in recent weeks after rapper Kanye West, known legally as Ye, began sprouting a line of violent messages across his social media and in interviews and met with white nationalist Nick Fuentes.
During an interview on Alex Jones’s InfoWars show last week, Ye said people needed to stop “dissing the Nazis” and that there were “good things” about Adolf Hitler. He later posted an image of a swastika to his Twitter.
Several political figures have spoken out against West’s comments, including President Joe Biden. He wrote on Twitter that he wanted to make “a few things clear.”
“The Holocaust happened,” Biden said. “Hitler was a demonic figure. And instead of giving it a platform, our political leaders should be calling out and rejecting antisemitism wherever it hides. Silence is complicity.”
On Wednesday, second gentleman Doug Emhoff held a roundtable with Jewish leaders on a rise in antisemitism.
He said during the roundtable that “there is an epidemic of hate facing our country” and people need to understand that words matter.
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“I will not remain silent,” Emhoff said. “I am proud to be Jewish. I’m proud to live openly as a Jew. I am not afraid. I refuse to be afraid.”
“We cannot normalize it,” he continued. “We all have an obligation to condemn the violence…. There is no either/or on this one. There’s no both sides of this one. There’s only one side.”