A SUSPECT appeared in a New York court yesterday charged with five counts of attempted murder over a stabbing spree at a rabbi’s suburban house – the latest in a spate of attacks on Jewish targets.

Grafton Thomas, 37, allegedly entered the property in Monsey, Rockland County, during celebrations on Saturday evening for the Jewish festival of Hanukkah, knifing several people with a machete before fleeing.

He was ordered held in custody after appearing in Ramapo town court, where he denied the charges.

The attack was quickly condemned as another incident underscoring growing anti-Semitic violence in the United States.

President Donald Trump tweeted that Americans “must all come together to fight, confront, and eradicate the evil scourge of anti-Semitism”.

New York governor Andrew Cuomo told reporters at the scene yesterday that “these are people who intend to create mass harm, mass violence – generate fear based on race, colour, creed”.

No official details were released about the victims, who were rushed to nearby hospitals. Local media said one person was seriously injured.

Thomas was reportedly arrested in his car about 50km away, two hours after the attack.

One witness told how the weapon had a big handle and the attacker “swung it back and forth”.

“Everyone was screaming and panicking and shouting ‘out out out’. It was chaos,” Joseph Gluck, 30, told reporters.

Last year, a white supremacist walked into a Pittsburgh synagogue and shot dead 11 people – the deadliest attack against the Jewish community in the United States.

And earlier this month six people, including the two attackers, were killed in a shooting at a kosher deli in Jersey City, New Jersey, which authorities said was fuelled in part by anti-Semitism.

A report in April from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) stated that the number of anti-Semitic attacks in 2018 was close to the record of 2017, with 1,879 incidents. – AFP, December 30, 2019.