Two hateful attackers were caught on disturbing video threatening to kill a group of young Jewish men on the subway — and grabbing one of them by the collar — in Brooklyn this week.
The group of eight boys and young men was heading back to the Chabad Lubavitch headquarters in Brooklyn from a Hanukkah celebration in Union Square on Monday night when the antisemitic bigots began hurling slurs at them, one of the victims recalled.
“They yelled at me, and the son said, ‘I’ll kill you,'” Mendy Asraf, a 20-year-old yeshiva student visiting from Israel, told The Post, noting the attackers appeared to be a father and son.
The vile pair first confronted the group while they were transferring to the No. 3 train at the Franklin Avenue stop, yelling “F–k the Jews,” Asraf said.
The harassment ramped up once on the train, when one of the Jewish men began filming the heinous onslaught.
One of the aggressors grabbed one of the victims by the collar of his coat, as the other yelled “I’ll kill you” and pointed a finger gun at his head, social media footage of the incident shows.
“I was really afraid. When he made his fingers the sign of a gun towards me, I was really afraid. I didn’t know what he had in his pockets,” Asraf said.
He said the group stayed fearfully silent as other passengers around them tried to intervene.
“Chill!” one straphanger can be heard pleading in the video in a desperate attempt to squash the scuffle.
The group of Jewish men got off at the next stop at Nordstrom Avenue and ran to the nearest police precinct to file a report, Asraf said.
“I thought it could be a very dangerous situation,” he said, adding he and the others feared for their lives.
Asraf said he believes they were targeted because of their faith — and police confirmed they are investigating the harrowing incident as a hate crime.
“We look like religious Jews,” Asraf noted. “They recognized our appearance along with the menorahs,” which the men had as part of their outreach for the Hanukkah Jewish holiday.
Police said they received a report about the alleged assault around 8:41 p.m. from two of the victims.
“While on board, the unidentified individuals initiated a verbal dispute with two victims, grabbed them by their jackets, and made verbal threats,” police said.
The two aggressors seen in the video had not been publicly identified as of Tuesday.
“The NYPD has access to video from train cars and stations to identify and apprehend the perpetrators, who should face maximum consequences from the justice system,” MTA Chair and CEO Janno Lieber said in a statement.
“This kind of hateful behavior has no place on the subway or anywhere, and is deeply offensive to New Yorkers.”
No injuries were reported.
But Asraf said the altercation put him, his family, and his pals on edge in the aftermath of the terrorist attack at a Hanukkah celebration in Australia’s Bondi Beach Sunday that killed 15 people and left dozens more wounded, including children.
“After Sydney, it’s not realistic to try to even fight with these people because you don’t know what they have in their pockets,” he said.
Asraf said his mother warned him about studying in New York as a visibly Orthodox Jew, telling him: “It’s going to be dangerous — keep your eyes open.”
Four months into his year of yeshiva studies in the city, Asraf said he’s never experienced such unchecked levels of antisemitism.
“I felt a little antisemitism, but nothing like this.”
https://nypost.com/2025/12/16/us-news/jews-attacked-on-nyc-subway-nypd-investigating-as-hate-crime/
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