Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York announced on Tuesday up to $75 million in grants for local police departments and houses of worship in response to an uptick in reported antisemitic attacks and hate crimes against Palestinians in the wake of the Israel-Hamas war.
The state will also begin a review of the antisemitism and anti-discrimination policies in New York City’s public university system, while the State Police will expand its monitoring of social media to identify online threats on college campuses.
“You can vigorously oppose Israel’s response following the attack on their people, but still be vigorously opposed to terrorism, Hamas, antisemitism and hate in all of its forms,” Ms. Hochul, a Democrat, said in remarks that were streamed online. “We cannot allow any New Yorker to live in fear.”
The governor’s remarks came as a rash of threats, vandalism and attacks against Jews and Muslims, in New York and across the nation, has permeated headlines. The New York Police Department unveiled statistics last week that showed a spike in hate crimes in the city, especially against Jews, after the Hamas attacks on Israel earlier this month, despite an overall decrease in hate crimes this year.
There were 51 hate crimes in the third week of October, compared with just seven in the same week last year; 30 were antisemitic, the police said. There were four attacks against Palestinians in the same seven-day stretch, compared with two in the same week last year.
Over the weekend, a series of posts on a student website threatened violence against Jewish students at Cornell University, in Ithaca, N.Y. The posts, which urged people to kill Jews on campus, were referred to the F.B.I. as a potential hate crime and prompted the school and the State Police to increase security at the school’s Jewish center.
On Tuesday, the governor — who visited the university on Monday to condemn the posts as antisemitic — announced that “a person of interest” had been arrested by the State Police and would be questioned in connection to the threats.
Ms. Hochul announced $50 million in grants to help local law enforcement agencies prevent and solve hate crimes. Another $25 million would be made available to beef up security at houses of worship, community centers and other sites.
As the war continues to divide Democrats, Ms. Hochul has aligned herself as a steadfast supporter of Israel. She has vocally defended the country’s military response in Gaza in the wake of the Hamas terrorist attacks and visited Israel earlier this month on a “solidarity mission” as the leader of the state with the largest Jewish population outside of Israel.
On Tuesday, Ms. Hochul also denounced the opponents of Israel’s attacks on Gaza who were taking down street fliers displaying the faces of Israelis kidnapped by Hamas fighters.
“This cruelty by New Yorkers against New Yorkers must stop,” she said.
The new review of anti-discrimination policies at the City University of New York comes after months of unrest among some students and alumni who have accused the public university system of harboring anti-Israel bias. A commencement speech by a law student who denounced “Israeli settler colonialism” became a high-profile flashpoint last summer, prompting criticism from Mayor Eric Adams, among others.
The review will be spearheaded by Jonathan Lippman, the state’s former chief judge.