NYPD Investigating 9th Anti-Semitic Attack Reported This Week

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — New information was released Saturday morning about another anti-Semitic incident in Brooklyn. It follows a series of anti-Semitic attacks this week and an increase in overall hate crimes around the city.

Emergency services at the scene in Monsey, Rockland County, New York

Mayor Bill de Blasio said that acts of hate shouldn’t be belittled or explained away when he toured the Chabad World Headquarters in Brooklyn on Friday. “We see exactly what’s happening, and we will not accept it,” he said.

He toured the location on the same day a man reportedly walked in and threatened to shoot the place up. No one has been arrested.

“It’s something that’s very alarming. We treat them very seriously, and we make sure that our investigators do their best to do what we can to bring these individuals to justice that commit these crimes,” NYPD Chief of Detectives Rodney Harrison said.

The attack took place at a rabbi's home during Hannukah

Friday’s incident was the latest in at least nine anti-Semitic attacks in New York City, all of them within less than a week.

“We can’t live under siege like that, our communities all over the city. This has to stop, and it’s not getting better, it’s actually getting worse,” Jewish activist Devorah Halberstram said.

Also on Friday, the same day as the Chabad incident, police arrested a 30-year-old woman for slapping three young Jewish women in Crown Heights while she yelled anti-Semitic slurs.

On Thursday, police arrested a 42-year-old homeless woman in Gravesend. She was accused of hitting a mother who was walking her 3-year-old child, also while yelling anti-Semitic slurs. Witnesses were able to follow the suspect until police made the arrest.

“Once I seen the kid go to the ground, I ran over and had to make sure that I stopped it,” witness Sean Lennon said.

Grafton E Thomas (L) is facing five counts of attempted murder, police say

Police released details Saturday about an incident that happened early Wednesday morning. They say a 40-year-old man dressed in traditional Jewish clothing was walking home in Borough Park when an unknown individual approached him and blocked his path. When the victim tried to walk around the man, the man allegedly punched the victim in the face then ran off.

Three anti-Semitic incidents were reported on Tuesday.

In one incident, an unknown individual struck the male victim in the face. The suspect was later apprehended.

In Crown Heights, a 56-year-old man was walking on Union Street when a group approached him and one person in the group punched him. No one was arrested.

That same day, a 25-year-old man was walking along Kingston Avenue in Crown Heights when a group of people allegedly began yelling anti-Semitic slurs at him. They also allegedly threw a beverage at the victim.

Two anti-Semitic incidents were reported on Monday. In Williamsburg, a group of teenagers allegedly attacked a 6-year-old boy and a 7-year-old boy in the lobby of a residential building. In Midtown, a 65-year-old man was allegedly punched and kicked by a man who also made anti-Semitic slurs. A Florida man was arrested in connection to that incident.

The NYPD is putting up more patrols around Hasidic neighborhoods in response. Also starting Sunday, the Guardian Angels, a non-profit volunteer organization aimed to prevent crime, will be starting patrols in Crown Heights to protect the community.

“The Guardian Angels will be there as long as necessary. Remember, even though we’ve had a spate of attacks recently, there’s been a steady series of attacks that have gone unaddressed,” Curtis Sliwa said.

Governor Cuomo sent out a statement Saturday, saying “the cowards responsible for these despicable attacks are trying to inject fear into our Jewish communities, but New Yorkers will always band together and categorically reject anti-Semitism whenever it rears its ugly head.”

The new Guardian Angels patrols will begin Sunday at noon and will also spread to Williamsburg and Borough Park.

40 years ago, as a brand new Christian, I told a pastor that the world would become more and more polarized against Christianity and Judaism. Antisemitism is increasing at a very disturbing rate in all western countries, as if we have already forgotten the incredible evil of the  Holocaust. 

AntiChristianity is also increasing in the west. It has always been substantial in eastern countries, but is growing rapidly in western countries, whether because of the influence of Muslim immigrants, or because of the left, far-left leanings of most countries. Few left-leaning people believe in God in any meaningful way (such as having a real relationship with Jesus Christ), but rather, they blame Christianity and Judaism for all the evils of the world.

Of course, they have it almost completely reversed, as Christopher Hitchens' brother, Peter, found out while living in Communist Moscow. John Lennon may have started the revolution against God - "God is dead!" "I'm more famous than Jesus Christ!" 'Imagine!' However, what the media completely ignores about John Lennon was that he became a born-again Christian in his last years. It's why Yoko Ono left him.

The rapid increase of antisemitism and antiChristianity is a sign that we are in the End Times. Persecution will get much, much worse for both Christians and Jews before Christ returns to put it all right.

Dead & Duct-Taped Saudi Sisters Found on Banks of Hudson Could Be… a Suicide?

The Farea sisters. © AFP / NYPD

Two Saudi sisters found dead and duct-taped together on the banks of New York’s Hudson River were seen praying near the water hours before their bodies were found, in a baffling case that police say shows no signs of foul play.

The sisters, Rotana Farea (22) and Tala Farea (16) were discovered on October 24 on the banks of the river, having gone missing two months previously from Fairfax, Virginia, where they lived with their family. So far, the investigation has revealed that the sisters traveled from Washington DC to Philadelphia, before arriving New York City on September 1.

At a press conference on Friday, police said they had "no credible information” that any crime took place, but confirmed that their probe is ongoing. Investigators tracked the girls’ last movements using credit card records, which showed that they had “maxed out” a card staying in a number of “high end” hotels in New York, where they ordered meals for two people every day in the days leading to their deaths.

The sisters were found tied face-to-face with duct tape at the waist and feet, were fully clothed and their bodies showed no obvious signs of trauma, which likely rules out a theory that they could have jumped together from the George Washington Bridge.

Some kind of suicide is still a leading theory in the sisters’ deaths, however. Water found in their lungs made it “entirely credible” that they entered the water while still alive.

Applied for political asylum

The baffling case took on an added air of mystery when it was revealed that the sisters’ mother told police that she had received a phone call from the Saudi Arabian embassy in Washington DC the day before the sisters were found. During the call, a Saudi embassy official instructed her family to leave the US, due to the fact that her daughters had applied for political asylum, she claimed.

Police also revealed that a man who frequently exercises along the riverbank told them that he had seen the girls sitting about 30 feet apart in a playground with their heads in their hands and making “praying” noises on the same day that they were later found dead – an image that the witness said has been "haunting" him since.

Tala and Rotana moved to the US with their mother in 2015. Rotana had been enrolled at George Mason University but left in the spring.

Physical abuse

The two had previously been placed in a shelter after another disappearance in 2017, reportedly asking police not to reveal their location. On Friday, police confirmed that reports of physical abuse within the family had been made at that time, but did not elaborate.

Sources in Virginia who were not family members told the police that the sisters had said they would rather harm themselves or commit suicide than return to Saudi Arabia.

According to some media reports, 16-year-old Tala had reportedly been offered a place at a top school in Saudi Arabia but desperately did not want to go.

The Saudi consulate in New York said it had "appointed an attorney to follow the case closely,” while the Saudi embassy in Washington contacted the family and “extended its support and aid in this trying time.”

It certainly appears the family was preparing to return to Saudi Arabia and the girls were prepared to accept death rather than that. What a shame!

Astonishing Coincidence or Flat-out Miracle

An Australian pianist and a New York taxi driver

Sarah Grundstein, J-Wire

In 1983 Sydney pianist Sarah Grunstein, who had moved to NY to study at Juilliard, stepped onto the curb on West 57th St. There were 7 empty taxis coming along. She got into the first, an old yellow checker cab…

New York at the time was dangerous and racist, filled with street crime. Sarah asked the driver to please take her to East 78th. The driver, about 60 years old, began to drive, all the while staring at her in his rear view mirror. At every traffic light he turned around and stared at her more, entirely fixated. 

She was so uncomfortable she wanted to exit the cab and get into another. No time for that, she thought.

He asked her if she was from England. “No, Australia”, she replied. She realised that as he spoke he stared at her less, so she preferred to engage in conversation, feeling more comfortable with dialogue than this man’s prolonged stare.

The driver said, “I know people in Australia.” Sarah wondered, out of some 14 million, I wonder whom he knows. He mentioned five names. “Sorry sir,” she replied, “I don’t know any of those.”

Taxi-driver: Are you from Sydney or Melbourne?

Sarah: Sydney.

Taxi-driver: No wonder you don’t know those people, they are all from Melbourne.
I know two people in Sydney but I can’t remember their last names.

Sarah: That will make it a bit difficult. Who are they?

T-D: Rapping hands on steering wheel: … Last name, last name, what was their last name …. First names Hania and Bolek, I can’t remember their last name …

Sarah: Who are they?

T-D: Last name, last name, I don’t remember their last name. During the war I was in concentration camps with Bolek in Poland and Germany. Dachau, Bergen-Belsen, we were in several concentration camps together. He mentioned 5 concentration camps. Bolek came from Warsaw. We escaped, got captured again. After the war we were all together in a Red Cross Displaced Persons’ Camp in Eggenfelden, Germany. Hania and Bolek, they were at my engagement of my wife and myself in Eggenfelden. Then Hania went to Sweden. I don’t remember why she went to Sweden. Bolek tried to follow Hania to Sweden but  for some reason he couldn’t get there. Then Bolek got papers to Australia. So he sailed to Australia in 1949, and she followed him in 1950. Then they got married the next year. They had a dress factory. Bolek and Hania … I am trying to remember their last names … their last names …

[Sarah was shaking so much she thought the taxi should be swinging from side to side.]

Sarah (through the glass divider of the checker cab): Was their last name Grunstein?

T-D: What?

Sarah: Grunstein, was their last name Grunstein?

T-D: Grunstein! You know them!

Sarah: Excuse me sir, do you know those two people are my mother and father?

The driver slammed his foot on the brakes. He had just told Sarah her parents’ entire, detailed history from 1943-1951. She was still shaking.

Before she left the taxi, he said to her, “I didn’t know if you were in the entertainment business, but you look exactly like your mother.”

On the following Shabbat, at the taxi-driver’s home in Queens NY, he gave her photos of her mother and Uncle Jozef, taken at the taxi-drivers’ engagement, dating from Eggenfelden, 1946.

The story told in her words by Sarah Grunstein

The sad part of this story is that some people reading it will think that it was just a coincidence. But it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that the odds of such a 'coincidence' are so low as to be astronomic, in other words, literally impossible. 

Cuomo Issues Executive Order to Fight BDS

Photo by Kevin P. Coughlin/Office of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo

By Jacob Kornbluh 

NEW YORK – New York Governor Andrew Cuomo on Sunday signed an executive order that orders state agencies to divest themselves of companies and organizations who support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against the state of Israel.

“In New York, we lead by example. We are also a place of action. We want to take immediate action because we want Israel to know that we are on their side,” Cuomo said during a speech, attended by Jewish leaders, at The Harvard Club. “If you boycott against Israel, New York will boycott you.”
The executive order – the first such signed by a governor – will command the commissioner of the Office of General Services to compile a list over the next six months of businesses and groups engaged in “boycott, divestment or sanctions activity targeting Israel, either directly or through a parent or subsidiary.”

Once the process is completed, all executive-branch agencies and departments will be required to divest themselves of any company on the list to be made public, according to the draft first published by The New York Times. “The State of New York will not permit its own investment activity to further the BDS campaign in any way, shape or form, whether directly or indirectly,” the order states.

“New York stands in solidarity with Israel today and always. This state will not stand for the politics of discrimination in any form, and we will continue to demonstrate our unwavering support for the people of Israel in the fight for freedom, liberty and democracy,” said Cuomo. “I’m proud to sign this nation’s leading executive order, which will help protect Israel from the threat of divestment.”

Cuomo called on governors from all states to follow his lead and take immediate action to fight the BDS movement. According to the governor’s office, Cuomo has been named as the Co-Chair of the American Jewish Committee’s Governors against BDS initiative. “This order sends the message that this state will do everything in its power to end this hateful, intolerant campaign. New York and Israel share an unbreakable bond and I pray that the Israeli and Palestinian people will find a way to live side by side and find peace, prosperity and security,” he said.

Following his speech, Cuomo marched in the Celebrate Israel parade on fifth avenue, alongside a truck blaring Israeli music. “I am the first governor in the country to sign an executive order saying we oppose the boycott of Israel. I am proud of it  and I hope other states follow our lead,” Cuomo told reporters before marching. “It is very important that Israel is strong, not just for the sake of Israel but for the sake of all democracies. Israel is an important strategic ally of the U.S. And we have to keep that relationship strong. And even in this difficult time of turmoil, I want Israel to know New York stands with them.”

Asked if he has responded to President Obama’s April letter requesting to lift state sanctions against Iran as part of the Iran nuclear deal, Cuomo said: “I would have to check. I don’t know if we have.”

Last month, Texas Governor Greg Abbott informed the Obama administration that the state of Texas would reject the administration’s request, sent to all states on April 8, 2016, to “review” its economic sanctions against Iran in order to abide by the terms of the international accord. He also urged other states to follow his lead and reject the administration’s request to lift state sanctions on Iran in a letter sent to 49 governors on May 31.

Senator Chuck Schumer on Sunday said he would seek to introduce the same idea to fight BDS on a federal level. “I think what the governor has done is an excellent idea,” Schumer told reporters. “I think that the state (of New York) should not do any business with any company that participates in BDS, and I am looking at introducing a federal law to do the same thing. BDS is a movement that is just totally unfair to Israel. They hold Israel to one standard and hold the other countries, including those who are sworn enemies to Israel, to another standard.”

K2 Synthetic Pot: The Drug That Will Mess Up Your Life

As Canada moves to legalize marijuana, a cheap copycat is proving fatal in U.S.

By Matt Kwong, CBC News 

Synthetic marijuana or K2 herbal-chemical mixes contain plant material that is sprayed with toxic chemicals. It has been sold in convenience stores in the New York area as well as some head shops in parts of northern Alberta. (Hmmm, let me guess, Fort McMurray?)

At Lexington Avenue and 125th Street West, the corner about which Lou Reed sang of scoring heroin in 1960s New York, dealers today croon about a new cheap high: K2.

Stay there long enough and you'll hear them, says Fabe, a panhandler in East Harlem who says he once bought a K2 joint from a pedlar for $3.

"They come by and they'll be like, 'Yo, you got that K2? You got K2?'" he says, imitating the pitchmen he encounters almost daily selling joints and $10 baggies of the "synthetic marijuana."

Yomar Dortalatin, 37, in the red checkered shirt, and Fabe,
46, a homeless man in East Harlem, with his back to the
camera, say they have tried K2, but decided it was not
for them after 'bugging out' on it. (Matt Kwong/CBC)

It's a familiar drug to Canadians in parts of northern Alberta as well. Oil workers have reportedly lit up the herbal narcotic for years in order to mimic the mind-altering effects of weed, without having to worry about failing urine tests designed to detect cannabis.

The chemical-herbal mixes are designed to reproduce the effects of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC).

"I was addicted from that very first toke," Carmen Caldwell, a K2 addict and former oil-patch supervisor, told CBC Radio's The Current in October, speaking from Edmonton. "I could get high and still piss clean."

Unlike marijuana, K2 can cause seizures, vomiting, violent mood swings and organ damage. Due to manufacturers' ever-changing chemical recipes, its Canadian legal status remains hazy. The lethal drug, which resembles potpourri, involves psychoactive chemicals produced in China and sprayed on dried plant material.

As Canada braces for a shift toward legalizing marijuana after a change in government to the Liberal Party, New York City is toughening laws against synthetics and releasing PSA ads targeting youths who may be attracted to the product's flavours and colourful packaging.

K2 continues to be marketed as "legal weed" or "smokeable herbal incense" in shops. It goes by other names on the street — Spice, Zinger, Crazy Clown, Yucatan Fire, Skunk, Moon Rocks.

K2 is labelled with many other names, including Spice, Zinger, Crazy Clown, Yucatan Fire, Skunk and Moon Rocks. In 2013, police alleged this artificial pot product called IZMS was sold in Hamilton, Ont., and landed a man in hospital. (CBC)

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio calls it "poison." In October the city agreed to outlaw its sale and production, a move Canadian law enforcement may be watching closely as they try to crack down on the drug's use in Alberta.

Following alarming rates of overdoses, which U.S. attorney Preet Bharara declared a "public health crisis," de Blasio signed three bills to criminalize the sale of synthetic pot.

Selling or producing K2 was previously only considered a health code violation in New York state, punishable with a $250 fine. Under the new laws, offenders can be sentenced to a year in jail and fined up to $50,000. Shops could also be shut down.

Canada is monitoring the spread of synthetic cannabis use, according to the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse, but "clusters of harm" have arisen in Alberta.

Two St. Albert teens were hospitalized in 2013 after overdosing on synthetics. In 2011, Calgary police raided seven stores selling the chemical-herbal mixes.

The problem has not been as intense as it is in the U.S., says Matthew Young, a senior researcher and policy analyst with the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse in Ottawa.

But regulation is tricky because the chemical makeup changes frequently.

"There are over 130 of these compounds and there are new ones appearing at a fairly rapid rate," Young said. "When people say it's 'legal,' people automatically assume it's gone through some kind of quality control. But some of these compounds aren't covered by existing legislation because how do you control something that is yet to exist?"

New York's legislation is not intended to punish users, but the merchants who are selling to addicts and turning homeless people into zombies.

"You know who's smoking because they're bugging out," said Yomar Dortalatin, who sleeps on the streets. "They take a pull. They bug out. They fall down."

Following de Blasio's announcement, the colourful $10 foil packages quickly disappeared from the shelves of bodegas and convenience stores in East Harlem.

"I've seen it cut down dramatically within the last month or so. My friend died two days ago smoking that shit. He took a few pulls, fell asleep and died," said Dave Waller, who was soliciting for spare change near the track for the 4-5-6 train.

"You see guys hallucinating, kicking cars while high on that shit. I saw a guy walking up, his head up, just spitting, and it would come down, hit his face, and he'd keep spitting."

The potent, deadly cannabinoid sent 2,300 people to emergency rooms in New York state in August and September alone.

'It will mess up your life'

Young said Canada does not have reliable records on synthetics overdoses, but Health Canada issued a warning in August 2013 advising people not to purchase the products, which the agency acknowledged are "available for sale at some convenience stores, specialty tobacco stores and head shops."

The Centers for Disease Control logged 3,572 calls across the U.S. related to synthetics in the first five months of this year, up 229 per cent from the same period last year. In April there was a spike of 15 deaths.

Overdoses are especially high in New York state and New Jersey, where 22-year-old recovering K2 addict Zack Ellis lives.

"Each batch is different. Different chemicals, different products, different labels," he said from a rooming house in Dover, N.J. "Different flavours, too. I get mine as mango."

Ellis began smoking K2 around 2011, after he left the Jamesburg juvenile jail and wanted alternatives to weed so he could pass mandated urine tests. He quickly became addicted, and decided to seek treatment when he woke up in a hospital in July.

"I had took like three or four pulls, started getting dizzy and passed out on the concrete; cracked my nose," he said. "I realized if I keep doing this, I'm going to end up dead."

Ellis, who suffers from PTSD and bipolar disorder, now has a mental-health counsellor and has cut his K2 consumption to about two joints a week, down from as many as 11 a day.

He confesses that although K2 is sometimes all he thinks about all day, "I'm glad to see they're banning it."

"It will mess up your life. It messed up mine," he said. "I just hope I can stop."

NEW YORK, CALIFORNIA WILL KEEP IRAN SANCTIONS

Yesterday, Iranian news stated that Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper was alone in the universe for not agreeing to lift sanctions against Iran. Today, he's not alone. Two of the most powerful states in the U.S. have come out and stated that they will keep state-sanctions in place against the insane and obscenely ambitious sponsor of terror.

by JOEL B. POLLAK
Breitbart
The States of New York and California have no intention of complying with the Iran deal’s requirement that state and local governments lift their own sanctions against the Iranian regime.

As Breitbart News first reported last week, and the Wall Street Journal confirmed Monday, states have the constitutional authority to retain their existing sanctions against Iran, or even to apply new ones, because President Barack Obama decided to impose the Iran deal as an executive agreement without any federal enabling legislation that would override state laws.

“We will do everything in the world not to support the world’s foremost sponsor of terrorism,” said Democrat Dov Hikind, a New York State Assemblyman, speaking to Breitbart News on Monday.

Hikind said that while he was “cautiously optimistic” that Congress would have the votes to override President Obama’s expected veto and reject the Iran deal, he was also confident that New York would keep tough sanctions in place against Iran. New York, like 29 other states, has passed divestment laws that prevent the state from investing public funds in Iran.

In addition, New York is one of about a dozen states with laws that prevent the state and local governments from entering into contracts with companies that do extensive business in Iran’s energy sector.

The New York Iran Divestment Act of 2012 requires the state to maintain a blacklist of companies that are excluded. Many of the same companies are specifically granted sanctions relief by the Iran deal, which also provides (p. 15) that the U.S. must “take appropriate steps” to reverse “law[s] at the state or local level” that interfere with “sanctions lifting.”

Hikind told Breitbart News that he was confident that the Governor Andrew Cuomo would not yield in the face of pressure from the Obama administration. (The governor’s office did not return a request for comment. A spokesperson from the New York Department of Financial Services told Breitbart News: “We have a general policy of not commenting on ongoing enforcement matters.”) Hikind added that sanctions could be dropped when the Iranian regime had changed significantly, such that it no longer supported terrorism against the U.S. and Israel.

California is also unlikely to drop its sanctions against Iran, according to Republican Assemblyman Joel Anderson of Alpine, who introduced the Public Divest from Iran Act, which was signed by then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2007. The law “requires that two conditions are met before we can resume investment,” Anderson told Breitbart News via e-mail on Monday. “Neither have been met to date.”

Those two conditions, according to the bill’s text, are 1) that “Iran is removed from the United States Department of State’s list of countries that have been determined to repeatedly provide support for acts of international terrorism,” and 2) that “the President of the United States determines and certifies to the appropriate committee of the Congress of the United States that Iran has ceased its efforts to design, develop, manufacture, or acquire a nuclear explosive device or related materials and technology.” Neither of those conditions is likely to be met soon.

State sanctions against Iran were passed over the past several years to complement and expand federal and international sanctions. They enjoyed strong bipartisan support in many cases, building on public opposition to the Iranian regime. The California law, for example, passed the State Assembly and the State Senate unanimously.

That is why despite pressure from the Obama administration to back the Iran deal, New York and California are just two of many states that are unlikely to comply, though both are reliably “blue” and led by Democrats at every level of state government. (A recent CNN poll also shows that the majority of Americans want Congress to reject the Iran deal.)

It is possible that resistance by the states could scuttle the agreement, since it specifies that Iran will treat “an imposition of new nuclear-related sanctions, as grounds to cease performing its commitments.” As constitutional lawyers David B. Rivkin and Lee A. Casey argue in the Journal, states have the power to add new sanctions, thanks to the “lawless” way in which President Obama has structured the Iran deal. And as law professor William Jacobson argues, states ought to push back: “In opposing the deal, and all of the above strategy is warranted.”