At least 17 Jewish community centres across the United States were targeted with bomb threats yesterday, the third time in recent weeks that a spate of simultaneous warnings have been received.
The Jewish Secure Community Network (SCN) said that some of the calls had been made by real people, others by robots.
“In the past we know that the numbers can grow exponentially,” said Paul Goldenberg from the SCN. He added that perpetrators were able to use new technologies to make mass calls. “We must remain a resilient community and we need to ensure that we are back at our JCCs as soon as local police advise the all-clear,” he told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA).
On January 9, 16 JCCs were threatened and on January 18, another 30 were targeted. Each threat triggered the evacuation of the centre concerned. A message on the Facebook page of the JCC in Albuquerque, New Mexico, said the police suspected that the threats to JCCs around the country originated “from a single source”
In a letter published on its website, the president of the JCC in Whitefish Bay, Milwaukee, said the community was resolved to open its building every day. “Incidents like these are, frankly, disheartening,” wrote Mark Shapiro. “But rather than lament how one negative voice can fill the air, we focus instead on how one community comes together in peace.”
In Woodford, Connecticut, where the JCC received a threat, the Muslim Coalition issued a statement of sympathy and solidarity. “We can relate to this kind of fear and assure our Jewish Brothers and Sisters that we stand with them in deflecting this repugnant behaviour against them”.
Rabbi Barbara Goldman-Wartell of Temple Concord synagogue in Binghamton, New York State, told TWC News that the trend was intended to create chaos. “The rise of antisemitic and other anti-minority groups of whatever kind, of actions that have been growing in this country during this past year, but particularly during the election, has been quite alarming,” she said.
Meanwhile, the Temple Concord Synagogue is involved with three days of interfaith action to support Muslims following President Donald Trump’s executive order banning travel to America from seven majority Muslim countries.
