Jew Is Charged in Anti-Semitic Acts

In December, an 80-year-old Jewish woman in the Sheepshead Bay area of Brooklyn received several phone calls in which the caller made anti-Semitic threats. On Thursday, a 78-year-old Jewish woman living nearby received a similar call. 

Last week, in the Penn South co-op complex in Chelsea, home to many elderly Jews, several residents found swastikas on their apartment doors. Another resident there received an angry phone call.

The police said Monday that they had charged David Haddad, 56, of Penn South with aggravated harassment as a hate crime in connection with those acts. The police said that Mr. Haddad is himself Jewish, and that he knew all the victims, at least two of whom are his relatives.

The police are also investigating whether Mr. Haddad painted swastikas on buildings over the weekend in Midwood, Brooklyn, where the police said Mr. Haddad has family, too.

The threats appear to be the latest incidents among a number of anti-Semitic acts attributed to people whose true motives may not have been to harm Jews.

In November, someone set three cars on fire and scrawled swastikas on park benches in Midwood, a heavily Orthodox neighborhood. The police are now investigating whether the graffiti may have been placed there to cover up insurance fraud involving one of the cars.

The police said that Mr. Haddad had a business dispute with members of his family, and that they did not know why he would have made anti-Semitic threats.

“None of this makes me happy,” said Assemblyman Dov Hikind, who lives near the buildings in Midwood that were vandalized over the weekend. “But at the end of the day, I would obviously rather have a situation where there are other reasons behind the threats than pure anti-Semitism.”

Still, such acts create fear in Jewish communities because the motives are not immediately clear, Mr. Hikind said. “You don’t know until they make an arrest,” he said.

But there have been other recent threats in which the intent to do harm was clear. There have been two cases of arson at synagogues in Bergen County, N.J., since the year began, and several anti-Semitic episodes on Long Island.

Mr. Haddad could not be reached for comment Monday night, and a message left at a phone number belonging to his family was not returned.