Three Bias Crimes Over Weekend

  A string of biased crimes took place in Queens over the holiday weekend, with two synagogues and an apartment complex vandalized with swastikas and Jewish and anti-American epithets. Police are investigating all three, but have no reason to believe they are linked to one another.
In Rego Park, the elevator and basement walls of an apartment complex at 99-16 67th Road were covered with the Nazi swastika hateful messages about Jews Friday morning. The Congregation Sons of Israel in Long Island City had a swastika carved into the post between its two front doors Saturday morning. Also on Saturday evening,
Police from the 112th Precinct said the incident in Rego Park took place at approximately 7 a.m. on Friday. Painted swastikas and the message "everybody death" were found in elevator and basement walls. Police said the vandalism was not directed toward any individual.
"It is terrible," said the super at the apartment, who wished not to give his name. "I dont know who did this. I think it is criminal or terrorist."
The super said that approximately 85% of the tenants were Jewish.In the year he has worked at the apartment, he cannot remember another anti-semitic incident. However, the previous super, Joaquin Luc, a sergeant in the 112th Precincts auxiliary police, said a couple of similar incidents took place two years ago.
The incident at Sons of Israel took place Saturday morning, while Rabbi Jay Shoulson was conducting his service. The carved swastika measured approximately eight by five inches, said the rabbi. He added that his congregation had the Nazi symbol scraped off Saturday night. It post was sanded and repainted Sunday.
Shoulson said his synagogue, where 75 families worship, enjoys good relations with the surrounding community, mostly comprised of Greeks and a rising Muslim population. The rabbi, who has led Sons of Israel for 23 years, said there has not been anti-semitic incident for many years, and that incident was from an old time Nazi.
Shoulson was concerned that a growing trend worldwide of hostility toward Jewish people, including a series of synagogue bombings in Turkey and a rising anti-semitic sentiment in the European Union, is steeling anti-semiticism in Queens.
"If they are blowing up synagogues in Turkey, why not put a swastika in Queens," asked Shoulson. The rabbi said biased crimes against Jews have a tendency to rise with world
"If you look around the time of the Yom Kippur War, when Israel was fighting the Arabs, they came out of the woodwork," he said.
Though the Queens Jewish community found the incidents disturbing, they believe the prejudice is the sentiment of a only few in the borough.
"This is not reflective of Queens as a whole, but it is something we are very concerned about," said Manny Behar, executive director of the Queens Jewish Community Council. "There are many people here who remember another time and another place where this type of graffiti was a prelude to much worse."
Behar said due to the recent incidents, the Council will address beefing up security at its institutions, but he added that not much else will change.
"We are not going to allow us to be intimidated," he said. "Most Importantly, we will to continue to live our lives and Jewish lives."