NY shopping center blasted with ‘genocide supporter’ graffiti across from Jewish Community Center
A suburban shopping center in Westchester County was blasted with antisemitic graffiti overnight, with Gov. Kathy Hochul saying the incident has the community ‘traumatized.’
Cops are looking for a lone vandal who painted “genocide supporter” on the window of two stores at the Golden Horseshoe Shopping Center in New Rochelle, across from the JCC of Mid-Westchester, with surveillance video catching the culprit in the act,” CBS-TV News reporter Tony Aiello said in a post on X.
Speaking at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan Thursday, Hochul said she planned to speak to Westchester DA Miriam Rocah about the incident.
“I’m going to talk to her about something that she just experienced as a district attorney because just overnight there were horrific images and hateful speech scrawled on the front of Jewish businesses here between New Rochelle and Scarsdale,” she said.
“And the community is traumatized,” Hochul added. “You may think they’re only words on a sign or across a storefront, but it tears at you as a human being when you know that attack-full message, that hateful message, is meant for you.”
Security camera footage obtained by CBS shows the vandal, wearing an unzipped hoodie and dark pants, scrawling the hate message on the storefront in the middle of the night.
Dozens of residents and Jewish storeowners at the shopping center, which is in New Rochelle but has a Scarsdale mailing address, rallied at the Wilmot Road retail outlet on Thursday afternoon to denounce the incident.
“Hate has no home here,” the crowd chanted at the scene, as several people at the rally held up Israeli flags.
New Rochelle Police Capt. J. Collins Coyne told The Post on Thursday that the graffiti was discovered early in the morning by a police officer on patrol.
“It is currently an active investigation and we don’t have anything else to release at this time,” Coyne said. “The Westchester DA investigators are also assisting us.”
In a statement, Rocah and New Rochelle Police Commissioner Robert Gazzola issued a joint statement expressing “zero tolerance” for hate crimes.
“We understand the unsettling atmosphere of fear across all impacted communities and the safety of our residents and business remains a top priority for law enforcement,” the statement said.
“We have zero tolerance for hatred and bias in Westchester and we will use the full force of the law to hold perpetrators and keep our communities safe.”
In a separate statement, a spokesperson for the city of New Rochelle said cops in the city and in neighboring Scarsdale have now conducted “property security inspections” at local synagogues and businesses.
“We plan to monitor the situation closely and inform all residents of any updates,” the statement read.
Incidents of antisemitic graffiti and anti-Israeli protests have spiked in the New York metro area since the Oct. 7 sneak attack on Israel by radical Hamas terrorists, which prompted a massive military response by the Jewish State in the Gaza Strip.