Tag Archives: Jewish Americans

Increase in threats against U.S. Jewish institutions

Synagogue

Important Takeaways:

  • A Time Of High Anxiety For American Jews: Jewish Institutions Receive 199 Threats In Just 24 Hrs, Causing Evacuations
  • Hundreds of synagogues and Jewish institutions across the United States received bomb threats by email this weekend, in a substantial acceleration of a months-long spree of hoax threats.
  • The Secure Community Network, which coordinates security for Jewish institutions nationwide, said early Sunday that it had tracked 199 threats over the past 24 hours, with nearly 100 in California and 62 in Arizona. Synagogues in at least 17 states plus Washington, D.C., were affected, according to local media reports.
  • None of the threats were deemed credible after local investigations. But some of them caused significant disruption: A Boulder, Colorado, synagogue evacuated its Shabbat morning services on Saturday, for example, while a congregation in western Massachusetts canceled its Sunday religious school.
  • In Alabama, the state’s only Jewish lawmaker, Philip Ensler, posted a video to social media showing the moment that the Torah reading at his synagogue was interrupted and everyone in attendance was ushered outside.
  • “This is exhausting,” he tweeted. “I pray for the day that we can worship and live in peace.”
  • The surge in threats comes at a time of high anxiety for American Jews amid a spike in reports of anti-Semitic incidents amid the Israel-Hamas war. It also follows multiple arrests of people who have been charged with sending bomb threats targeting Jewish and other institutions, including a minor in California last week and a man in Peru in September.

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CNN’s Van Jones: The Left and Colleges are failing Jewish Americans

CNN-snippet

Important Takeaways:

  • Van Jones: ‘A Lot of Jewish Americans Feel Unsupported’ by Left, Colleges Are Failing While Students Are ‘Used by Iran’
  • During CNN’s coverage of the Republican presidential debate on Wednesday, CNN Political Commentator and former Obama Adviser Van Jones said that he thought there was improvement this week, because “Sheryl Sandberg and other people went to the United Nations and said rape is not resistance. And we’ve got to make sure that — we’ve got a whole generation of young people who, they don’t understand some of these longstanding conflicts and the idea that Nelson Mandela was a freedom fighter. He never raped anybody. He never kidnapped anybody’s grandmother. If he used weapons, he went after soldiers and infrastructure. Those are freedom fighters. Hamas is not.”
  • Later, he added, “We have a responsibility to say to this next generation, you may not know, but you’re getting pimped and used by Iran on some of this stuff. … Now, I hope those college presidents are more effective at addressing their young people on their campus than they were with Congress. But if they’re not, somebody needs to.”

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