Suspect in Hanukkah stabbing at NY rabbi’s home in custody, facing 5 counts of attempted murder
The man accused of entering the home of a New York rabbi and stabbing five people with a machete in a horrifying anti-Semitic attack pleaded not guilty to multiple murder charges hours after the attack; former New York Assemblyman Dov Hikind reacts.
Following the horrific machete attack in New York that injured five people celebrating Hanukkah, former New York state Assemblyman Dov Hikind said Sunday that the attack was a symptom of a much larger concern of rampant anti-Semitism.
“Anti-Semitism is out of control,” Hikind told “America’s News HQ.”
“What we see now is systematic day-in, day-out horrible things happening,” Hikind said.
The suspect pleaded not guilty to multiple charges Sunday.
SUSPECT IN HANUKKAH STABBING AT NY RABBI'S HOME PLEADS NOT GUILTY ON ATTEMPTED MURDER CHARGES
Wearing a white jumpsuit, Grafton E. Thomas, 37, of Greenwood Lake, N.Y., appeared at the Ramapo Town Hall facing five counts of attempted murder and one count of burglary. Bail was set at $5 million.
Thomas allegedly entered the home of Rabbi Chaim Rottenberg in Monsey, a suburb north of New York City, during a Hanukkah celebration -- the latest in a string of anti-Semitic incidents in recent weeks that included beatings of Jewish people in the streets of New York City and a massacre at a kosher grocery store in Jersey City, N.J.
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Thomas drove off from the scene of the stabbing but was later captured in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City. He had blood all over his clothing and smelled of bleach, according to prosecutors.
Hikind argued there was an atmosphere of legitimizing anti-Semitic rhetoric in the United States.
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“When we permit the Farrakhans of the world to get away with their hate, when we have a responsible say about [Louis] Farrakhan who is the vilest anti-Semite; I mean, he can compete with [Joseph] Goebbels and [Adolf] Hitler, when people say, ‘well, I disagree with the things he says, but he’s done a lot of good stuff,’ that’s a disaster.”
Hikind also claimed Sen. Bernie Sanders., I-Vt., and Reps. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., were complicit in anti-Semitism.
.Fox News’ Dom Calicchio, Eric Shawn and Lucia I. Suarez Sang contributed to this report.