attack on the Q train

This news story on CNN came to me via Jewlicious. CNN plays up the angle that a Muslim man helped to defend against an antisemitic assault. Great thanks to him, but I noticed that the attack was on the Q train in Brooklyn. (I have Jewish friends who take that train, but then again a lot of people take that train. It would take a few more attacks before I start to worry for my friends safety in an immediate way.) But Brooklyn is not the sort of place that jumps to my mind when I hear about an antisemitic attack. (On reflection, I remember that there has been a lot of tension between Jews and Blacks in some parts of Brooklyn. Maybe if I'd grown up in Brooklyn that might be an easier assumption, but I assumed either white supremacists or "anti-zionists.") Also, I'm always curious about the perpetrators of antisemitic attacks. News stories rarely tell us anything about them, though an important discussion about how antisemitism appears today revolves around precisely that, as the most prominent antisemitic ideology comes from the left.

I went looking for a little more information. A google search revealed

One of the suspects, [I'm not displaying the name], 19, was previously charged with a hate crime, according to court records.

And a search on that name turned up something strange:

When cops questioned [him] about his alleged role in an attack on four black youths in Brooklyn's mostly white Gerritsen Beach neighborhood last summer, he offered a highly unusual defense: membership in the Bloods gang.

Here's more:

The gang could face hate crime charges stemming from the Friday night fight on the Qtrain, but [he] denied it was anti-Semitic, saying his mother is Jewish. "We didn't even know they were Jewish at the time," said [the guy], 19, who took prosecutors' plea deal in September in exchange for admitting he assaulted two black men in Gerritsen Beach, Brooklyn.

"The whole hate-crime talk is ridiculous," said [the guy], who claimed two of the friends arrested with him are Jewish.

Uh, yeah...