Enough evidence has emerged for me to know without any doubt that the gunfight in Jersey City Tuesday was a hate crime.

Jersey City’s mayor, Steven Fulop, said that surveillance footage indicated the two attackers had targeted a kosher supermarket where most of the carnage unfolded. Mr. Fulop said on Wednesday that the footage revealed that after the assailants shot Detective Seals in an earlier encounter, they drove slowly and deliberately to the market, roughly a mile away.

Last night after extensive review of our CCTV system it has now become clear from the cameras that these two individuals targeted the Kosher grocery location on MLK Dr – the 2 JCPD officers that were on a foot post one block away immediately responded/engaged— Steven Fulop (@StevenFulop) December 11, 2019

“The perpetrators stopped in front of there and calmly opened the door with two long rifles,” he said. Both Mr. Fulop and Jersey City’s public safety director, James Shea, said that after the attackers left the van, they walked past others on the street and aimed at people inside the kosher supermarket. “We now know this did not begin with gunfire between police officers and perpetrators and then moved to the store,” Mr. Shea said. “It began with an attack on the civilians inside the store.” Jersey City Shooting: Suspect Linked to Black Hebrew Israelite Group, New York Times, December 11, 2019

At first, it appeared that the two assailants shot a police officer in a cemetery, then moved at random to seek refuge in a Kosher grocery store. But now we know that they chose that store, not at random, but on purpose.

It’s very possible that Detective Joseph Seals, bless his soul, gave his life to prevent what could have been a massacre of Jews by Jew haters targeting a Hasidic community. The shooters were well-equipped, and police found a live pipe bomb in the van. Imagine the wholesale slaughter they could have perpetrated, beyond those who were murdered in the store, and the bystander, had they been able to act on their plan in a more organized way.

Anti-Semitism is real, my friends. It’s not some “anti-Israel” free speech fodder. It’s people who want to kill Jews. And on university campuses, and in the halls of Congress, liberals want us to look the other way.

We must look this evil in the eye, and stamp it out like the disease it is.

Jersey City was a hate crime against Jews, and the police saved many lives by eliminating the two killers. May they rot in hell.