The couple who burst into a kosher market in New Jersey with assault weapons appear to have been targeting a Torah academy next door, according to Jersey City mayor Steven Fulop.

By World Israel News Staff and AP

The real target of the couple who committed last week’s anti-Semitic shooting in Jersey City “was the 50 children at the yeshiva” attached to the kosher market, tweeted Jersey City mayor Steven Fulop on Friday.

“We will never know 100 percent but the doorway to the yeshiva was three feet away and it seems he goes in that direction first, Fulop added.

The couple that perpetrated the attack, David Anderson, 47, and Francine Graham, 50, burst into a kosher market in Jersey City with assault weapons. Following the shooting, they were linked to a fringe group called the Black Hebrew Israelites that promotes anti-Semitism and advocates violence.

Attorney General Gurbir Grewal said the attack was driven by hatred of Jews and law enforcement and is being investigated as an act of domestic terrorism.

The two killers were armed with a variety of weapons, including an AR-15-style rifle and a shotgun that they were wielding when they stormed into the store in an attack that left the scene littered with several hundred shell casings, broken glass and a community in mourning. A pipebomb was also found in a stolen U-Haul van.

“The outcome would have been far, far worse” if not for the Jersey City Police, Grewal said Thursday.

The attackers killed three people in the store, in addition to a police officer at a cemetery about a mile away, before dying in an hours-long gun battle with police Tuesday afternoon, authorities said.

You can see the turn in this new video as well.

The massacre – while horrific – could have been so much worse. The 50 children upstairs had their lives spared only through an act of G-d. pic.twitter.com/uSIkdRIu7d

— The Meturgeman (@DraftRyan2016) December 13, 2019

The victims killed in the store were: Mindel Ferencz, 31, who with her husband owned the grocery; 24-year-old Moshe Deutsch, a rabbinical student from Brooklyn who was shopping there; and store employee Douglas Miguel Rodriguez, 49. A fourth person in the store was shot and wounded but managed to escape, authorities said.

Members of New York’s Orthodox Jewish community gathered Wednesday night for funerals for Ferencz and Deutsch. Thousands of people followed Ferencz’s casket through the streets of Brooklyn, hugging and crying.

The bloodshed in the city of 270,000 people across the Hudson River from New York City spread fear through the Jewish community and weighed heavily on the minds of more than 300 people who attended a vigil Wednesday night at a synagogue about a mile from where the shootings took place.

“The evidence points toward acts of hate. I can confirm that we’re investigating this matter as potential acts of domestic terrorism fueled both by anti-Semitism and anti-law enforcement beliefs,” the attorney general said. He said social media posts, witness interviews and other evidence reflected the couple’s hatred of Jews and police.

Grewal noted that after killing three people in the store, the couple concentrated their fire on police and did not shoot at others who happened to be on the streets.

Grewal said the attackers, Anderson and Graham, had expressed interest in the Black Hebrew Israelites but were believed to have acted alone.

The pair brought their cache of weapons in a U-Haul van they drove from Bay View Cemetery, where they shot and killed Jersey City Detective Joseph Seals, according to the attorney general.

The Tunnel2Towers organization, formed after Sept. 11 to support police officers killed in the line of duty, said Friday it would pay the mortgage of Seals, who left behind a wife and five children. The Jewish community raised around $50,000 for the detective’s bereaved family.

Director of Public Safety James Shea called Seals “the ultimate detective or officer we would point to to tell young officers, ‘This is how you should behave.'” He said Friday that he doubted Seals would have been ambushed by the pair. Authorities haven’t disclosed why Seals was in the cemetery or details of the confrontation that led to his death.

Anderson fired away with the AR-15-style rifle as he entered the kosher market, while Graham brought a 12-gauge shotgun into the shop. They also had handguns with a homemade silencer and a device to catch shell casings. In all, they had five guns — four recovered in the store, one in the van — in what Grewal called a “tremendous amount of firepower.”

Serial numbers from two of the weapons showed that Graham purchased them in Ohio in 2018, the attorney general said.

The post NJ killers’ real target: Jewish school 3 feet from market where 50 children studied appeared first on World Israel News.

In the wake of a deadly anti-Semitic attack, a video emerged of Jersey City residents at the crime scene railing against Jews and expressing delight at the carnage.

By World Israel News Staff

Less than 24 hours after assailants killed multiple victims in a kosher grocery in Jersey City, New Jersey, former New York Assemblyman Dov Hikind, founder of Americans Against Anti-Semitism, posted online chilling footage captured in the hours after the attack.

In one of the clips, a young man asks a Jewish first responder, “Four [Jews] are dead, right? If they’re dead and they got shot, that’s great.”

Another bystander comments, “I blame the Jews! We never had a shooting like this until they came here.”

“We can’t do it to them?” she added, referring to the attack as “Jew shenanigans.”

Another person can be heard yelling, “Get the damn Jews the f**k out of here! Get the Jews out of Jersey City.”

Hikind commented on the footage, “As Jewish bodies were still laying in cold blood after being murdered by terrorists in Jersey City, a representative of Americans Against Anti-Semitism captured spontaneous anti-Semitic tirades blaming Jews for their own murder and people cheering it on.”

During the attack on Tuesday, six people were killed, including two members of the local Hasidic community, Mindel Ferencz, 33, and Moshe Deutch, 24, in addition to Jersey City police officer Detective Joe Seals, a law enforcement veteran and father of five.

Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop on Wednesday announced that the kosher grocery had been specifically targeted.

In the aftermath of the shooting, the New York Times reported that one of the perpetrators, who was identified as David Anderson, posted anti-Semitic and anti-police content online and was affiliated with the Black Hebrew Israelite movement, a hate group that, despite its name, promotes virulently anti-Semitic conspiracies and advocates violence.

The Black Hebrew Israelites are in no way affiliated with any stream of Judaism or the mainstream Jewish community.

For decades, adherents of the sect have stood in New York’s Times Square accosting Jews and other passersby. The group made the news in January when a video surfaced of members in Washington, D.C. calling high school students “crackers” and “faggots.” Hate group watchdogs have warned about the dangers of the Black Hebrew Israelites since at least 2008.

SHOCKING VIDEO: As Jewish bodies were still laying in cold blood after being murdered by terrorists in Jersey City, a rep of @AmericansAA captured spontaneous antisemitic tirades blaming Jews for their own murder & ppl cheering it on!

Antisemitism, a bigger problem than appears. pic.twitter.com/WHmLtxANAE

— Dov Hikind (@HikindDov) December 11, 2019

The post ‘Jews are dead? That’s great’: Bystanders spew anti-Semitic hate after NJ attack appeared first on World Israel News.

Here is a recap of the top Israel news stories on December 11, 2019.

And in case you missed our last recap…

The post WATCH: Daily Israel News Recap – December 11, 2019 appeared first on World Israel News.