An Israeli-Jewish student has been subjected to harrowing anti-Semitic abuse on the New York subway just a few days after an anti-Semitic attack on a Jersey City kosher supermarket left four dead.
Lihi Aharon was riding the train from Manhattan to Brooklyn when a fellow passenger began hurling racist abuse.
‘Allahu akbar,’ she shouted at Aharon, ‘It’s in the Quran, where they curse the serpent Jew, you wouldn’t believe. You f***ing nasty a** Jew … you f***ing stinking a** Jew.’
Aharon also claims that the suspect physically attacked her and praised the December 10 attack on a Jewish supermarket, in New Jersey, that killed four and is now being investigated as an act of domestic terrorism.
Aharon alleges that the woman grabbed hold of her faces and scratched her, though this is not seen in footage of the incident
The woman can be seen making intimidating faces at Aharon while uttering foul anti-Semitic abuse
Aharon, who was returning from a college induction ceremony, said the abuse began when she asked if the woman could move her belongings as she was taking up additional seats on the subway.
Aharon was sitting beside a Jewish man who she alleges was also abused by the woman
When the suspect reportedly refused, Aharon says she took a seat opposite, next to a Jewish man who was wearing the yarmulke (kippah).
As soon as she sat down, Aharon alleges the woman began cursing at the man in the yarmulke about being a Jew and so she took out her phone to start filming.
The footage shows that the woman then turned her attention to Aharon.
Aharon alleges that the camera was knocked out of her hands and that the woman then scratched her face.
The unnamed suspect allegedly began hurling anti-Semitic abuse at her, before knocking the camera out of Aharon’s hands, grabbing her face and scratching her cheek.
Photographs appear to show a laceration on the right side of Aharon’s face, although physical violence is not seen in the footage.
The suspect can be seen seated on steps watched over by an NYPD officer after Lihi Aharon said she got off the train and raised the alarm
The woman can be seen making faces at Aharon while seated opposite her on the subway
The assailant was later seen seated on steps as a police officer stands over her after Aharon got off the carriage and pulled the emergency alarm.
It is not clear how the police officer dealt with the woman.
Aharon concludes her video by urging Jewish people to fight back against hate.
The racist attack comes just days after David Anderson, 47, and Francine Graham, 50, went on a rampage at a kosher market.
The pair killed a police officer near a cemetery, three people in Jersey City Kosher Supermarket and then died in an hours-long gun battle with police on December 10.
The attackers had expressed interest in a fringe religious group called the Black Hebrew Israelites, whose members often rail against Jews and whites, but there was no evidence so far that they were members and they are believed to have acted alone, Attorney General Gurbir Grewal said.
The two shot and killed Jersey City Detective Joseph Seals in Bay View Cemetery, then killed Mindel Ferencz, 31, who owned the grocery with her husband; 24-year-old Moshe Deutsch, a rabbinical student from Brooklyn who was shopping there; and store employee Douglas Miguel Rodriguez, 49, Grewal said.
A fourth person in the store was shot and wounded but managed to escape, authorities said.
On Tuesday, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy joined Jersey City’s mayor in calling for a school board member to quit over comments she made about the shooting at a kosher market, referring to Jews as ‘brutes’ and questioning whether the shooters had a point to make in attacking Jews.
Murphy, a Democrat, tweeted hours after Jersey City Democratic Mayor Steven Fulop said that Board of Education member Joan Terrell Paige’s comments on the social media platform from the weekend ‘has no place in our schools.’
‘My opinion is she should resign,’ Fulop said in his Tuesday tweet. ‘That type of language has no place in our schools and no place amongst elected officials.’