A rally is taking place Tuesday evening outside a synagogue that was defaced during the hate-fueled rampage.
"I'm here today to tell you that the safety of the Jewish community-and all communities in New York. But it is the Jewish community that is experiencing 53% of all hate crimes, and yet, the Jewish community is a little less than 12% of the New York City population. Those are the facts," said New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin.
Some of the leading experts on antisemitism say it's shocking. Swastikas found in Forest Hills and Rego Park, Queens did not spare people's homes, or their cars.
"It's on a synagogue, a house of worship, where nursery school kids are going," said Scott Richman, the Anti-Defamation League New York/New Jersey regional director. "But it's also on homes, and that, I think, is pretty rare. Usually, it's institutions that end up with graffiti, not private homes."
Yossi Aliev says the largest swastika was scrawled on the home of his elderly parents on 110th Street in Forest Hills.
"I saw a lot of graffiti. This was, like, really big," he said. "You could say the size was, like, five by four-it's big. It's upsetting that this neighborhood is getting into such, you know, something like that."
It happened late Sunday night. Aliev says surveillance video shows four young people wandering the neighborhood that night. At one point, he says, they ran up to his parents' home, then ran off. Another video appears to show a separate incident in the same neighborhood.
Five locations, in all, were targeted, including Congregation Machane Chodosh in Forest Hills and the Rego Park Jewish Center.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani has condemned the incidents as antisemitic hate crimes.
On Tuesday, NYPD detectives canvased the streets around Forest Hills High School, as the investigation intensified in the afternoon.
It all comes less than four months after dozens of swastikas were discovered in a Brooklyn playground. Two teenagers were arrested on hate crimes charges.
"While this symbol is offensive to the Jewish community, the truth is it should be offensive to every community," Richman said. "This is the symbol of the Nazis. This country went to war against what that stood for."
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