Jewish community centers in US hit with bomb threats on Purim holiday

Jewish community centers  across the US and Canada received bomb threats over the Purim holiday.

Jewish Community Centers (JCC) in the US and Canada were hit with another round of bomb threats during the Purim holiday on Sunday, the seventh such wave of threats since the beginning of the year.

At least seven JCCs were threatened including, the JCC in Rochester, New York; Chicago; Indianapolis; Milwaukee; Cleveland; Houston, and Vancouver, British Columbia.

The JCC in Rochester was recently threatened in a prior bomb threat wave.

Purim events ceased and the centers were evacuated and searched.

None of the threats were credible, as was the case in all previous bomb threats.

To date, one man has been arrested in connection with eight of these threats.

Authorities believe one person is primarily behind most of the bomb threats.

Commissioner of Intelligence and Counter-terrorism John Miller of the New York Police Department (NYPD) said on the “CBS This Morning” TV program the NYPD believes one man using a voice changer and phone-spoofing device is behind the bomb threats.

“We have an offender with some technical prowess here,” Miller said.

Miller also described the suspected main offender as a, “typical coward.”

“They hide behind the shadows. They work from a distance and their goal is to instill fear. And doing that behind the shadows shows that they’re not willing to come out and confront whatever the issue is. They want people to jump through their hoops,” Miller said.

Since January, some 150 bomb threats have targeted Jewish institutions in 36 US states, including JCCs, schools, synagogues and Anti-Defamation League (ADL) offices in New York, San Francisco, Atlanta, Boston and Washington, DC.

Similarly, Jewish cemeteries in Philadelphia , New York and St. Louis were vandalized and desecrated.

According to the latest FBI statistics, the number of anti-Semitic criminal offenses rose from 635 in 2014 to 695 in 2015.

By: Aryeh Savir, World Israel News