Hate crimes and racial harassment are so common in New York City, the natives of one of the world’s most diverse metropolises have become practically inured to them. New Yorkers have seen and heard it all.
Still, every now and then, a hateful expression of antisemitism, or some other bias, will lift up its ugly head and startle even the most jaded New Yorker.
A lunchtime incident in Brooklyn on Jan. 14 is a case in point. A woman approached three children standing at a corner in the Marine Park section and greeted them, said the oldest child, who is 8, by shouting: “Hitler should have killed you all. I’ll kill you and know where you live.”
That was chilling enough, but before she bounced, the woman followed up by spitting in the child’s face and assaulting the boy. The unprovoked attack was captured on a nearby security camera. Police appealed to the public to identify the woman, who could be clearly seen on video.
By Friday morning, Christina Darling, a 21-year-old student at St. Francis College, was in police custody. She’s been charged with two hate crimes — aggravated harassment and menacing. Trying her best to help her daughter, Ms. Darling’s mom said she “needs to get [mental] help” and “it’s not like she hates Jews.”
Really? Ms. Darling’s ex-boyfriend and people who knew her in high school insist she is a bigot. Telling Jewish children that Hitler should’ve murdered them all and spitting in a child’s face are clear indicators of a mind poisoned by hate.
Following an uptick in attacks on Jews in New York, the NYPD Hate Crimes unit takes such incidents seriously, and it tracks down those who are responsible. In January to October of last year, confirmed attacks against Jews made up 144 of the 416 hate crimes against various groups. Antisemitic attacks are 57% of all hate crimes in New York, followed by anti-Asian hate.
An act of hatred is never an isolated incident. Whether or not perpetrators are alone, a wall of hate in social media and society are behind them. Racists never, truly, act alone.
The incident at a Colleyville, Texas, synagogue this month, in which four congregants were taken hostage by a Pakistani British extremist, is part of the same madness that killed 11 people in 2018 at the Tree of Life synagogue in Squirrel Hill.
Whether an antisemitic person rants and shoots at shoppers at a kosher market; takes hostages at a synagogue in Texas; or kills them, like Richard Bowers, a white supremacist, is accused of having done here, these events reflect the same chain of evil that led a woman in Brooklyn to spit in a child’s face.
Antisemitism has killed millions of people over the centuries; every act motivated by this sickness should be regarded as a germ in a contagious disease that we must not allow to spread.
First Published: January 25, 2022, 5:00 a.m.
