(New York) The American federal police (FBI) on Friday lifted its alert concerning threats against synagogues in the state of New Jersey, near New York, saying it had identified the source of these disturbances, in a country where the acts anti-Semites are on the rise.
Posted at 12:54 p.m.
In a tweet on Thursday, the regional FBI office spoke of “credible information about a broad threat” and called for “taking all security measures” to protect Jewish people and their places of worship in the coastal state. east, bordering New York.
“We have identified the source of the threat which no longer represents a danger to the Jewish community” according to the FBI office in Newark, a large suburb of New York.
According to American Jewish groups, such as the Secure Community Network (SCN), law enforcement authorities “have located the individual suspected of being responsible for yesterday’s threat to synagogues in New Jersey and allayed concerns to security”.
In a message of thanks to law enforcement, judicial and Jewish community authorities in his state, Attorney General Matthew Platkin said he knew more threats could “happen” and that the hate would “continue to spread.”
“We also know we can end it,” he said.
About 2.6 million people of the Jewish faith live in the states of New York and New Jersey, the largest Jewish community in the world outside of Israel.
Anti-Semitic acts have been on the rise for some years in the United States and synagogues are regularly targeted.
In October 2018, a man opened fire at a Pittsburgh synagogue after posting anti-Semitic messages on a far-right website. He had killed eleven worshippers.
In April 2019, a young man claiming to be anti-Semitic shot dead a woman and injured three people in a California synagogue.
And in January, a Briton held four people hostage for ten hours at a Texas synagogue before being killed in the police assault.
The Anti Defamation League, which fights in particular against anti-Semitism, recorded more than 2,700 such incidents in the United States in 2021, the highest level ever recorded.