Threats Hit More Jewish Centers

The Anti-Defamation League and several Jewish community centers across the country got a new round of bomb threats Tuesday, adding to the scores they have been plagued with since January, the AP reports. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio was at a Jewish Community Center on Staten Island to denounce previous threats when he learned of the new ones. "This is a moment in time, in history, where forces of hate have been unleashed," de Blasio said. "It is exceedingly unsettling." Federal officials have been investigating more than 120 threats against Jewish organizations in three dozen states since Jan. 9 and a rash of vandalism at Jewish cemeteries. Over the course of Monday evening and Tuesday, there were eight emailed or phoned-in bomb threats in six states plus Ontario, the JCC Association of North America said. Some details:

• Two suburban Jewish community centers in upstate New York were shut down when someone phoned in bomb threats.
• The Jewish Community Center in the Milwaukee suburb of Whitefish Bay was closed for almost two hours.
• A Jewish community center in Portland, Oregon, received a bomb threat.
• In Providence, Rhode Island, an administrator at the Jewish Community Day School, attached to a synagogue, received a threat Tuesday morning alleging there was a shooter with an assault rifle on the roof of the building, police said. Police and a K-9 team swept the building; no one was found.
• Chicago Jewish Day School on the city's north side was evacuated for a few hours.
• In New York, Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce said there were five threats made, including to the New York-based Anti-Defamation League, which also received threats to its offices in Atlanta, Boston and Washington, DC. The ADL said threats were also made in Florida and Maryland.

(More antisemitism stories.)