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Bomb Threats Against Jewish Community Centers Across US Raise Alarms
[NBCBayArea] Jewish community centers around the country were again targeted with bomb threats Wednesday morning, a week after a spate of similar threats against many centers. Centers in Miami, Newton, Massachusetts, Scotch Plains, New Jersey, California's Bay Area, and Portland, Maine, were targeted. Two centers in Connecticut, one at the JCC of Greater New Haven in Woodbridge and another at The Mandell JCC West Hartford, also reported receiving bomb threats.Marla Cohen, communications manager for the New-York based, JCC Association of North America said that 28 centers in 17 states have been threatened in total on Wednesday. Last week, there were 16 JCCs threatened in nine states. She said some of the threats came in as robo dialers and some were actual people. Last week, the FBI was called in, she said. A JCC building in Marin County, California, was also evacuated as a precaution after a threat. "We don’t know what’s going on. There are a lot of unknowns," said Jeremy Russell, of the Jewish Community Relations Council in San Francisco. "We are very concerned about the existence of these calls and the literal threat they are imposing on the community. We will be responding appropriately." There were no injuries or actual explosives reported found following the earlier bomb threats. "I think this is the world we now live in," said Molly Jo Rosen, who works at Kol Shofar synagogue in Tiburon, California. "There will be threats to religious organizations and we'll see it skewed toward certain religions more than others."
News reports also cited threats in Albany, New York; Nashville; suburban Boston and Detroit; West Hartford, Connecticut; and the Orlando area. Additional threats were being reported early Wednesday afternoon. In many cases Wednesday the callers were live, Goldenberg said, as opposed to the previous round of threats, when calls were recorded. FBI to probe wave of bomb threats to US Jewish institutions [IsraelTimes] Federal authorities said Wednesday that they are launching an official probe into a wave of bomb threats to US Jewish institutions across the country in recent weeks, the latest of which came earlier Wednesday when at least 32 Jewish centers in 16 states received threats. The FBI said the bureau and the Justice Department’s civil-rights division are investigating “possible civil rights violations in connection with threats.” The statement from the agency’s Washington headquarters didn’t characterize the threats. “The FBI will collect all available facts and evidence, and will ensure this matter is investigated in a fair, thorough, and impartial manner,” the bureau said in a statement. Posted by: Steve White 2017-01-19 |
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