The 90th Precinct squats in a faded tan building on Union Avenue in Brooklyn. There are dirty windows and protruding air conditioners. During Chanukah, a testament to its presence in one of the densest Jewish neighborhoods in the city, the Williamsburg police precinct puts up a large menorah.

The 90th was also the precinct at the center of multiple hate crime attacks on Jews caught on tape.

But the overall winner for the highest number of hate crime complaints was the 71st Precinct with 18 complaints. Of those, 14 were labeled as “anti-Jewish”, another as anti-White, another as anti-gay and two as ambiguous. All but one of the suspects arrested in the attacks in the 71st were black men.

The 71st is located in Crown Heights while the 90th is based out of Williamsburg. Both have some of the largest populations of Chassidic Jews, who dress distinctively and are easily identifiable, in the country.

They’re also at the center of a disturbing rise in hate crimes in New York City.

“I want to be very, very clear, the violent threat, the threat that is ideological is very much from the right,” Mayor Bill de Blasio insisted, in response to numbers showing a 90% rise in anti-Semitic incidents, while denying that anti-Semitism exists on the Left.

In Williamsburg and Crown Heights, populations of Orthodox Jews intersect with African-American and Latino populations, and a new wave of hipsters. All three groups live uncomfortably with each other. None of them host the “white supremacist” movement that De Blasio was blaming for the problem.

The two non-Orthodox groups in Williamsburg and Crown Heights are strongly identified with the Left.

Mayor Bill de Blasio may be under the impression that because Trump won precincts in Williamsburg, the area is a right-wing hub, but the 6 of 8 districts that he won are made up of Chassidic Jews.

As the media noted after the election, “Nearly every election district that Trump won in Brooklyn was in a Jewish neighborhood.”

They’re about the only Trump supporters in the area. And they’re the victims of the violence.

The highest numbers of hate crimes in 2018 took place in the 71st precinct with 18, the 18th with 16, the 24th with 15, the 66th with 14, the 60th with 12, the 6th with 11, and the 90th with 10.

Jews were the single largest group targeted in the 18th, Midtown Manhattan, with 5 incidents, the 24th, the Upper West Side, with 12 incidents, the 66th, Borough Park, with 14 incidents, the 60th, Coney Island and Brighton Beach, with 10, the 6th, Greenwich Village, with 5, and the 90th with 8.

Many of these neighborhoods are heavily associated with Jews, but even in Greenwich Village, the home of Stonewall and the gay rights movement, there were more anti-Semitic incidents than anti-gay ones.

None of them are ideal platforms for a white supremacist movement.

In Borough Park, Trump won 69% of the vote. A New York Times reporter was unable to find a single Hillary voter. And that’s as close as the area gets to any kind of right-wing movement.

Who’s actually carrying out these attacks?

“Forty of the alleged perpetrators were white, 25 were black, two were Hispanic and two were Asian,” the JTA claimed last year.

The arrests however represent barely a third of the actual incidents. And the NYPD frequently classifies Hispanic suspects as white. The NYPD’s statistics also list multiple arrests of the same person.

The first quarter hate crimes report shows that six 28-year-old males were arrested for anti-Semitic hate crimes at the 94th Precinct in Greenpoint.

That would be statistically unlikely.

28-year-old Glenn Murto was arrested and charged with 7 hate crimes for spray painting a whole bunch of Nazi graffiti around the area. Murto, not exactly a genius, confined the vandalism to most of the same places. Two cops were waiting when he next began spraying swastikas.

Age is the only useful metric for identifying a repeat offender. And unless there’s a rash of incidents and arrests, it can be very hard to know whether a suspect of the same age is also the same person.

Back in the 90th, four white men and three black men were arrested in anti-Semitic incidents. The white people in Williamsburg are mostly Orthodox Jews and hipsters with a sprinkling of old area holdovers.

In the 66th, 3 black men, 2 white and Hispanic males, and 2 Asians were arrested.

Asians are not known for engaging in anti-Semitic hate crimes. But Borough Park has large Chinese, Bangladeshi and Uzbekistani populations. It seems likelier that the perpetrators may have spoken Bengali or Uzbek than Fujianese. Muslims would have more of an anti-Semitic motive than Buddhists.

Meanwhile in the first quarter of 2019, the 71st has seen four anti-Semitic hate crime complaints and the arrests of 4 black men.

In the 112th and the 114th, three Asian teens were arrested in anti-Semitic incidents. Both precincts are located in Queens. The borough has the highest percentage of Muslims anywhere in the city.

But that’s speculation.

Compstat statistics leave plenty of room for ambiguity. What is reasonably clear though is that the rash of cases, especially the violent assaults, are not about white supremacy. Neo-Nazis in New York City usually limit themselves to some heavy blogging and social media trolling or light vandalism.

One of the fundamental problems with hate crime statistics is that they fail to distinguish between actual violent incidents, vandalism and more nebulous problems like bias intimidation.

The violent assaults on a number of Orthodox men in Williamsburg and Crown Heights are classed together with swastikas drawn on a playground. But it’s much easier to establish that graffiti has a bias motive, because of the physical evidence, than that a violent assault was a hate crime.

Last fall, a Jewish teen walking home from his Yeshiva in Queens was violently assaulted by a gang of teens shouting, “Kill the Jew” outside Masbia, a soup kitchen run by a Jewish religious organization. Even though the teen was hospitalized, the police claimed that there was insufficient evidence for hate crimes charges. But swastika graffiti in Queens this year was treated as a hate crime.

The paradox of hate crime charges is that they’re often useless for dealing with serious problems, like physical violence and arson, but come in handy when dealing with nuisance offenses like graffiti.

New York City’s presentation of statistics blur the line, but it’s clear that Mayor Bill de Blasio is wrong.

“I want to be very, very clear, the violent threat, the threat that is ideological is very much from the right,” he insisted at a press conference.

New York City does not have very much of a Right. That doesn’t mean the violence comes from the Left.

The Left is just very good at covering it up.

In response to the rash of anti-Semitic attacks, Martha Ackelsberg and Arielle Korman, two members of Jews For Racial & Economic Justice (JFREJ), an anti-Israel and anti-Jewish group, wrote an editorial, claiming that, “policing cannot solve our problems” denounced “zero tolerance policies” and “armed guards”, while urging “education” and “restrorative justice, counselling and peer support.”

JFREJ’s site features a petition that doubles down on the left-wing group’s call for the decriminalization of anti-Semitic attacks on Jews by urging “transformative justice processes that focus on challenging and transforming the perspectives of people who do harm in our neighborhoods”.

Despite its false claims otherwise, JFREJ is well aware that the perpetrators of anti-Semitism in New York City aren’t white nationalists or Trump supporters.

JFREJ knows that better than anyone after the black foster son of one of its members set 7 fires inside synagogues and Jewish schools in Brooklyn, while scrawling, “Jew Better Be Ready” and “Kill All Jews”.

The Left isn’t behind the anti-Semitic violence in New York City. But it’s covering for those who are.

            (Front Page Mag)

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.

As the US administration prepares to roll out its long-awaited plan for peace in the Middle East, also known as the “Deal of the Century,” Iran appears to be increasing its efforts to help its allies in the region try to thwart the plan.

Recently, Iran seems to have stepped up its political and military support for radical Palestinian groups that are staunchly opposed to any peace agreement with Israel. These groups, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad, do not recognize Israel’s right to exist and are publicly committed to its destruction and replacement by an Iranian-backed Islamic state.

Iran, of course, has long shared the same ambition of destroying Israel and has never hesitated to make its position known to the world. In several statements during the past few decades, Iranian leaders have been frank about their wish that Israel be “a one-bomb country.”

Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has several times referred to Israel as a “cancer” and threatened to “annihilate” the cities of Tel Aviv and Haifa. He has also taken to Twitter to denounce Israel as a “barbaric, wolf-like and infanticidal regime.” Israel, he added, “Has no cure but to be annihilated.”

Earlier this year, the chief of Iran’s Air Force, Gen. Aziz Nassirzadeh, was quoted as saying that his forces are “impatient and ready to fight against the Zionist regime to wipe it off the Earth.”

Such threats by Iranian leaders and officials are not uncommon or new. In fact, they accurately reflect Iran’s long-standing policy of incitement against Israel and recurring threats to “annihilate the Zionist regime.”

To achieve their goal, the leaders of Iran have been providing financial and military support to their proxies in the Middle East, specifically Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah — three groups committed to Israel’s obliteration.

Now, the Iranians are focusing their efforts on foiling US President Donald J. Trump’s peace plan. The Iranians also appear to be angry with some Arab countries for allegedly colluding with the Trump administration to facilitate the implementation of the “Deal of the Century.”

On May 29, Khamenei told a group of university professors, academic elites and researchers that some Arabs were committing an act of treason by collaborating with the Trump administration. Although he did not mention the countries by name, it is clear that he was referring to Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt.

Referring to the “Deal of the Century,” Khamenei said: “Of course, it will never be accepted and it will never be realized. The US and its cohorts will certainly face failure on this matter.”

The leaders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip are now offering themselves as a weapon in the hands of Iran to foil Trump’s plan.

“No one should blame us for thanking Iran,” said Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar.

“It is our duty to thank anyone who supports the goals of our people. Without Iran’s support, we would not have such military capabilities. We will continue to develop our weapons to face the occupation. Iran has provided us with rockets and money and helped us develop missiles that hit Tel Aviv. Those who support the resistance and Jerusalem are our friends, while those who want to sell Jerusalem are our enemies.”

Last year, Iran announced its decision to “endorse” all the families of Palestinians killed and injured in the weekly protests along the Gaza-Israel border. The protests, called the Great March of Return, were launched in March 2018. The endorsement means that Iran will provide financial aid to the families.

Walid Awad, a senior official with the Palestinian People’s Party, formerly the Palestinian Communist Party, praised the Iranian financial aid to the families. “We salute Iran for standing with the Palestinians and Arabs,” he said. “The option of resistance is needed to foil the Deal of the Century.”

Sources in the Gaza Strip revealed this week that Iran is also planning to provide financial aid to Palestinian employees who stopped receiving salaries from the Palestinian Authority (PA). In the past few months, the Palestinian Authority has cut the salaries of hundreds of employees in the Gaza Strip, including physicians and schoolteachers. The punitive measure comes in the context of the Palestinian Authority leadership’s efforts to undermine its rivals in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.

Iran’s increased financial and military support for radical Palestinian groups is hardly the result of love for the Palestinians: rather, it is out of a desire to advance its own goals in the region. These include not only foiling Trump’s peace plan, but also seeing Israel destroyed. That is why it is supporting Hamas and Islamic Jihad, the two Gaza-based groups that are committed to the annihilation of the “Zionist entity.” Iran is also supporting radical Palestinian groups because it seeks to undermine the Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his regime in the West Bank, whom they consider traitors for their perceived moderate policies towards Israel.

Iran’s support for Hamas and Islamic Jihad also needs to be seen in the context of Tehran’s effort to undermine Arab states that have close relations with the Trump administration. Iran and its Palestinian allies are worried about the apparent rapprochement between Israel and some Arab countries.

Nasser Abu Sharif, the Islamic Jihad representative in Iran, said this week that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have become enemies of the Palestinians. Trump’s “Deal of the Century,” he added, “aims to pave the way for normalization” between the Arabs and Israel.

The Trump administration is planning to unveil the economic portion of the “Deal of the Century” during a “workshop” in Bahrain in late June or “when the timing is right.” The Palestinians have called on all Arabs to boycott the US-led “workshop” on the pretext that it is part of a scheme to “eliminate the Palestinian cause.”

This view is shared by the leaders of Iran, who are now calling on the Arabs to boycott the “workshop” and the Trump administration. “Regrettably, a number of Persian Gulf states are cooperating [with the US] because they are hoping that America will protect them in return for their betrayal of the Muslims,” said Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif.

By boycotting the US-led conference in Bahrain, Mahmoud Abbas and his Palestinian Authority in the West Bank have placed themselves in the same league as Iran — a country that despises them, deems them traitors and bankrolls their rivals, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, in the Gaza Strip.

Even so, Abbas and Palestinian Authority officials match Iran’s incendiary rhetoric of violence at the US administration and its “Deal of the Century” by denouncing it as a conspiracy against Arabs and Muslims.

The Palestinian Authority’s actions and words serve to support Iran’s self-appointed task of meddling in Palestinian affairs and strengthening radical Arabs and Muslims in the region. Iran’s leaders have every reason to be satisfied with Abbas, whose every remark indirectly bolsters the Ayatollahs in their campaign to undermine any Arab and Muslim who wants to work with the US or make peace with Israel.

            (Gatestone Institute)

Khaled Abu Toameh, an award-winning journalist based in Jerusalem, is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at Gatestone Institute.

If, one year after 9/11, an individual originally from India drove a van full of propane tanks into the front gate of a California Air Force base, burning himself to death in the process, it would have been deemed an act of terrorism. In fact, it would have received extensive media coverage and quickly reverted society back to being concerned about another attack. Additional consequences would have included an enraged society, a collective call by citizens to find a motive, and an easing of political correctness.

If, one year after 9/11, a Muslim male was stopped in Los Angeles with two homemade bombs in his car while heading to a crowded mall with the intent of carrying out an attack, the plot would have gained national attention. And if deeper searches revealed that the suspect had a previous conviction for making terroristic threats, inquiries would have begun for the missing links. If, finally, it was determined that this same man had another, more recent conviction overseas for attacking someone with acid and disfiguring him for life, Congress may have stood up and taken notice.

Finally, if one year after 9/11, a Bangladeshi man meticulously plotted to carry out a jihadist attack in Times Square, more than just New Yorkers would be alarmed. If he lauded Osama bin Laden and characterized the attacks of 9/11 as a success, American citizens across the country would take notice.

Although the dates have been changed, these stories are true. In fact, each happened within the last two years inside America’s borders with little to no national media coverage. Motives have still not been “determined,” which begs the question whether authorities are keeping information close to the chest or whether there’s a lack relevant training to help them understand the ideology and motivations of this enemy.

What happened? Why is there such a lack of interest in, or denial of, jihadist attacks and plots in America today? Does it have to do with the drowning out of information by the daily news cycle? Or maybe these are just lower priority stories given the tectonic events happening around the country each day. Law enforcement has been tremendously effective in thwarting attacks over the years. Perhaps those successes generated a sense of perpetual protection.

In reality, there are three other options that might explain this lackluster interest in such attacks and plots.

First, people have little awareness about, or have become numb to jihadist terrorism. Despite thousands of attacks globally each year, Americans receive little exposure to the daily attacks in India, Somalia, and other countries. Events taking place in far-off and austere locations around the world rarely make their way into American media. Beyond this fact, jihadism has all but become a way of life given its frequency, especially in countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan. Outside the shock and awe of ISIS beheadings and Boko Haram school kidnappings, Americans have become numb to the weekly IED and car bomb attacks.

Second, American citizens are afraid to acknowledge and publicly connect anything evil that may have a potential link to religion as its root. Scratching the surface in the above attacks or plots would most likely connect these incidents to Islamism. In fact, one just needs to read the criminal complaint from the last week’s Times Square plot to learn that the suspect listened to sermons by American-born al-Qaida cleric Anwar al-Awlaki in his run up to planning the attack. He said he would be “happy” “seeing the flag of Islam on the Twin Towers or the Empire State Building.”

While those are his exact words, calling attention to them is likely to trigger immediate accusations of Islamophobia. This is an all-too-common reaction from certain Muslim advocacy groups subsequent to jihadist attacks or uncovered plots within America. Others will claim the suspect is mentally ill, lacks knowledge of Islam, and the other go-to excuse – he was manipulated and radicalized by the Internet.

Finally, a third possible reason for the lack of interest in or denial that jihad is present in the United States may have to do with our lack of understanding about the ideology that fuels many plots. Cyber-attacks are a simple concept – someone hacked a company’s computer and stole data. A slick businessman swindled a slew of elderly citizens out of their retirement savings: evil, but straightforward. Even school shootings are pieced together after the event, the suspect was bullied and committed to bringing vengeance to those that wronged him.

But the jihadist ideology continues to be a mystery. A young man, often college educated and raised in a stable family, decides to martyr himself in the cause of a religion. In fact, he’s so dedicated to his effort he is ready to kill scores of other people he has never met as part of his martyrdom. Why? He begins spending every waking moment of his day watching videos of jihadists killing coalition troops in Iraq, reading manuscripts like the “Management of Savagery,” written by an al-Qaida scholar, and communicating with like-minded believers in Yemen through encrypted communications. Maybe he’s an engineer by trade and has a well-paying job and a hopeful future. We can’t make heads or tails of it.

In the end, we’re left with two things. Jihad continues to be a threat in the United States, and there is a lack of interest and focus on the consequences of its presence. Jihadists revel in the lack of scrutiny. They will continue to plan, conduct surveillance, and build their network unless a citizen calls the authorities with a hunch about something seeming suspicious. Yet, will that call happen? It did not in San Bernardino, and 14 people were gunned down.

America is being lured into a false sense of security by the media, given the lack of coverage and what some could characterize as a minimization campaign. Jihad is real, and radicalization is happening every day in America, we just need to read our history.

(Investigative Project on Terrorism)

Brig Barker is a retired FBI counterterrorism agent and former Army officer. He is now the CEO of Red Rock Global Security Group.