The NYPD is on the hunt for several hateful suspects who targeted victims holding Israeli flags in Manhattan this month, including a disturbing attack outside Columbia University where a man was pelted in the face with a rock, cops and sources said.
The most recent attack took place near the Ivy League school’s Morningside Heights campus just before 10 p.m. Saturday, the same night three students were arrested and another taken away on a stretcher amid fiery anti-Israel protests.
A 22-year-old man was near Amsterdam Avenue and West 116th Street with an Israeli flag in hand when another man ran up to him and snatched it, police and sources said.
The victim tried to follow the stranger into a crowd, but was pelted in the face with a rock by another man, the NYPD said.
A third stranger “then grabbed the flag and set it on fire,” police said.
The brutal attack came exactly two weeks after a similar incident was reported in Midtown.
A 19-year-old woman was standing outside 39 West 34th Street around 5 p.m. April 12 when two strangers approached her and forcibly took her Israeli flag, police sources said.
The assailants — a woman and man both wearing headdresses — fled on foot eastbound on West 34 Street.
Both attacks are being investigated by the NYPD’s Hate Crime Task Force.
Police said there is no indication that either incident is related or that the five suspects were working in tandem.
