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In yet another disturbing act of antisemitic violence in New York City, a 72-year-old Jewish man was assaulted last week while hanging posters of Israeli hostages still being held in Gaza. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) is investigating the incident as a possible hate crime.
The victim, Amnon Shemi, was attacked Thursday at the corner of Lexington Avenue and East 68th Street on Manhattan’s Upper East Side — just blocks from his home. Shemi, who has been putting up flyers since Hamas’s October 7th massacre, said the assailants confronted him and shouted “Free Palestine” before one of them punched him in the face.
Shemi noted he was not surprised by the incident. “I’m surprised it didn’t happen sooner,” he remarked. “Probably the war in Gaza is escalating the whole situation — and antisemitism and all kinds of stuff.”
For Shemi and his wife Diane, the cause is deeply personal. They have a cousin among the hostages abducted by Hamas during the October 7 attacks.
“It’s a terrible feeling,” Diane said. “You wake up feeling and thinking about it, and you go to sleep feeling and thinking about it. It just kind of consumes you.”
Still, the couple refuses to be intimidated.
“I’ll keep doing it until everybody’s home,” Shemi said.
This attack is not an isolated incident. In recent months, the slogan “Free Palestine” has repeatedly accompanied acts of violence — from the shooting of a Jewish couple in Washington, D.C., to the firebombing of pro-Israel demonstrators in Boulder, Colorado.
What once masqueraded as political speech is now increasingly revealed as a rallying cry for open hatred. When chants of “Free Palestine” are shouted as Jewish people are assaulted in the streets, the message is unmistakable: these are not calls for justice — they are calls to harm Jews.
