A Florida man accused of hurling a brick through the front window of a Sarasota Chabad House shared New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s video labeling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a “war criminal” just days before the crime.

Local police arrested 30-year-old Brayton Laschinger on July 31 and charged him with felony criminal mischief for the attack two days prior on the Lubavitch Chabad of Downtown SRQ. The Sarasota Police Department stated that Laschinger had admitted to targeting the synagogue “because it was a Jewish place of worship” — and had blamed “propaganda on social media” for enraging him in the hours before the vandalism.

The police statements make no mention of Mamdani’s controversial July 21 video assailing Netanyahu as “the architect of a horrific genocide” and a mass maimer of women and children, which the mayor released as a way of confessing he could not make good on his campaign pledge to arrest the Israeli leader during the United Nations General Assembly in September. But an Instagram account bearing Laschinger’s name, and featuring photos of him dating back more than a decade, reposted the clip, which went out on City Hall’s official social media channels a week prior to the attack.

The only other politically tinged shares on Laschinger’s page deal with wildlife conservation.

Jewish leaders had warned that the mayor’s singular and relentless excoriation of Israel and its government could inspire violence against Jews — concerns that only intensified after the double-stabbing of an Asian American and a Jewish man wearing a kippah in Manhattan days after the social media post. There is no proven link between the attack, which authorities have deemed a hate crime, and the mayor’s video.

The accused assailant of the Manhattan stabbing allegedly shouted “Allahu Akbar” and “Justice for Islam” while passing a synagogue displaying the Israeli flag, before ramming a screwdriver into the chest of Moshe Grunhaus. Mamdani has to date refused to engage with suggestions from fellow Democrats that he temper his rhetoric about the Jewish state, even as he has vowed to combat the hate crimes against Jewish New Yorkers that have spiked under his watch. 

Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt reiterated his call for the mayor to tone down his criticism of Israel on X in a post after highlighting Laschinger’s social media history.

“Words have consequences. Your inflammatory rhetoric can lead to violence,” Greenblatt wrote. “Jewish people and institutions are being attacked in NYC and across the country because of hateful and demonizing rhetoric.”

Mamdani spokesman Sam Raskin noted that the democratic socialist had explicitly denounced violence against Jewish people and institutions, and maintained his broadsides are meant for Israeli leadership alone.

“The mayor’s criticism has always been directed at Benjamin Netanyahu and the actions of his government. He has been clear that no political disagreement, no foreign conflict, and no public statement can ever justify antisemitism or violence against Jewish people or Jewish institutions,” Raskin said in a statement to Jewish Insider. “Every Jewish person deserves to be safe in their home, in their synagogue, and in every neighborhood across our city. The vandalism of a synagogue — whether in New York City or anywhere else — is an abhorrent act of antisemitism. It has no place in our city and stands in direct opposition to the values of this administration.”

Raskin did not answer whether the mayor would dial back his commentary if he believed there was any chance it could inspire violence.