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Jewish organisations ‘surprised’ that bomb threats came from Israeli Jew

March 24, 2017 at 5:34 pm

Image of a Jewish community centre in California, US [kiddo27/Wikipedia]

Jewish community groups in America have expressed their surprise that a 19-year-old Israeli Jew has been arrested in Israel on suspicion of making multiple bomb threats to Jewish organisations and an airline in the US and elsewhere. The unnamed individual, who is from Ashkelon and holds joint US-Israeli citizenship, was arrested yesterday following a request from the FBI.

The suspect is said to be connected with bomb threats to well over 100 Jewish community centres, schools and museums since the start of the year. The threats were made against Jewish sites in the United States, Australia and New Zealand. In one case, a civilian aircraft had to make an emergency landing.

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The FBI held a conference call with leaders of Jewish organisations to discuss the surprising denouement to the investigation. As the news spread, reported the New York Times, it drew mixed reactions from Jewish leaders and anti-discrimination groups who tried to make sense of it. Joel Dinkin, the executive vice president of the Evelyn Rubenstein Jewish Community Centre of Houston, said that it was “a little bit perplexing from the standpoint of the fact that it’s somebody Jewish.”

Though none of the threats was carried out, the calls and emails prompted evacuations and anxiety for many of the targets. Several instances of vandalism of Jewish cemeteries, though unrelated, heightened fears of anti-Semitism. The incidents reached such a critical mass that President Donald Trump addressed the matter several weeks ago in his first speech to the US Congress.

Local Muslims offered to guard Jewish cemeteries and synagogues against the threats and vandalism to prove that not all Muslims should be tarred with the same brush, commented Britain’s Telegraph newspaper.