The incident is being investigated as a hate crime, according to the Clayton Police Department. There are no suspects, and no injuries have been reported.

By Jessica Schwalb, The Washington Free Beacon

Three cars were torched next to graffiti that read “Death to the IDF” early Tuesday morning in a St. Louis-area incident targeting an American citizen who served in the Israel Defense Forces, according to local police and a Trump administration official.

Another message was also spraypainted on the Clayton, Mo., street, but the local outlet that published the footage, First Alert 4, blurred it “because it’s targeted at a specific individual.”

According to Leo Terrell, who heads the Trump administration’s anti-Semitism task force, it called the IDF veteran a murderer. He said the three destroyed cars belonged to the vet, his family, and friends.

“I am outraged. Antisemitic violence has no place in America, not in St. Louis and not anywhere,” Terrell wrote in an X post.

“We will pursue every avenue to bring the perpetrators to justice. If you commit antisemitic hate crimes, you will be caught. And you will be held accountable.”

The incident is being investigated as a hate crime, according to the Clayton Police Department. There are no suspects, and no injuries have been reported.

“We are continuing to follow every lead that we have available,” Clayton Police Department spokeswoman Jenny Schwartz told the Washington Free Beacon.

“We are requesting anyone in the vicinity that has any surveillance footage to forward any possible information that would assist our investigation to our detective bureau.”

Nearly 20 percent of Jewish households in Greater St. Louis reside in Clayton and nearby University City, giving it one of the largest Jewish populations in the area, according to Brandeis University.

Several St. Louis Jewish groups condemned the attack in a joint statement Tuesday.

“This is more than vandalism; it is a hateful act of intimidation and only the latest example of what happens when antisemitic and anti-Israel rhetoric are normalized,” the groups wrote.

The attack follows a sharp increase in anti-Semitic incidents and a stretch of high-profile terror attacks.

In the year following Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, the Anti-Defamation League recorded over 10,000 anti-Semitic incidents, a more than 200 percent increase compared with the previous year.

In April, Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro’s residence was set ablaze by a man who targeted the Democrat for his support of Israel.

In late May, a radical yelled “Free Palestine” after murdering two Israeli embassy staffers outside D.C.’s Capital Jewish Museum.

Less than two weeks later, an illegal immigrant from Egypt firebombed Boulder, Colo., protesters raising awareness for Israelis held hostage by Hamas, killing an 82-year-old Jewish woman.

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“Cori has not done her homework about anything to do with Israel and Palestine and it’s very sad,” says rabbi of Missouri Democrat.

By World Israel News Staff

A progressive Democrat lawmaker, who is a member of the so-called “Squad” which includes Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, said she would consider partnering with a figure who dubbed herself the “Chief Rabbi of Gaza.”

The “Rabbi Linda Goldstein” parody Twitter account, which is run by a Jewish attorney identified only by his first name, Michael, has made headlines for its engagement with political figures who did not grasp that the profile is obviously satirical.

The account recently reached out to Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO)’s team to gauge her interest in a bogus “joint fundraiser.”

“I’ve been bouncing around different cities since my congregation was displaced from Gaza after Israel’s invasion on October 7,” Goldstein wrote to Ronika Moody, Bush’s finance and engagement director, according to exchanges seen by the New York Post.

That message should have raised red flags for Bush’s team, as Gaza has been devoid of any Jews since Israel’s 2005 disengagement from the coastal enclave.

Additionally, the account regularly posts outrageous claims, including that a Gazan congregation built a Hannukah menorah out of missiles, which should have been obvious clues that the profile is a joke.

Instead, Bush’s representative continued dialogue with the parody account.

“Rabbi Goldstein” suggested that Bush “travel to the Gaza border for the fundraiser” because “the optics could be incredible!”

Bush’s team replied that “Cori is interested in hosting in Gaza and it’s something she has been trying to plan. Unfortunately, we have not been successful with that opportunity as of yet.”

“Cori Bush is the perfect example of an ’empty suit’ antisemite – completely clueless about how the Israel-Palestine conflict works, but eager to speak up because it gives her cover to publicly hate Jews,” Michael told the Post.

Rabbi Susan Talve, a reform leader whose congregation is within Bush’s St. Louis district, told the Post that it was clear that the lawmaker was ignorant about basic facts of the conflict.

“Cori has not done her homework about anything to do with Israel and Palestine and it’s very sad,” she said.

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Nine days after Hamas launched the war against Israel, massacring some 1,200 people inside the country and kidnapping more than 250, Bush introduced a resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire.

By Ron Kampeas, JTA

Less than two days after AIPAC spent $14 million in a successful bid to send Rep. Jamaal Bowman packing in New York, the pro-Israel powerhouse texted a message to its followers: Their next target is Missouri Rep. Cori Bush.

“On Tuesday night, the pro-Israel community helped ensure anti-Israel Rep. Jamaal Bowman won’t be returning to Congress next year,” said the fundraising text the American Israel Public Affairs Committee sent Thursday afternoon.

“With your support, we can also help defeat Rep. Cori Bush, another member of the anti-Israel Squad.”

Time was pressing, AIPAC said. “We have a short window to act.” Bush’s primary is Aug. 6.

Bush, whose district includes St. Louis, has much in common with Bowman: Each ousted a long-serving establishment Democrat in a 2020 primary, and both are members of the far-left Squad in Congress.

They are also both harsh critics of Israel, voting against emergency funding for Israel in its war against Hamas, and accusing Israel of committing genocide in Gaza.

“The U.N. special rapporteur just released a report showing strong evidence of genocide in Gaza,” Bush said on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, in March.

“Meanwhile, the Biden Admin signaled it’ll continue arming the Israeli government. Hollow words aren’t enough. We need action. Stop sending bombs.”

On Oct. 16, nine days after Hamas launched the war against Israel, massacring some 1,200 people inside the country and kidnapping more than 250, Bush introduced a resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire.

For AIPAC and other pro-Israel groups, that has made her a prime target, and has benefited her rival, Wesley Bell, a St. Louis County prosecutor.

Now, Bowman’s ouster has emboldened Israel advocates, and has them craving another victory. Bush’s supporters also acknowledge that the races will resemble each other in significant ways.

“There’s no question, it’s a harder race, but it’s definitely a winnable race,” Mark Mellman, who heads the Democratic Majority for Israel, said regarding Bush.

His group shared polling showing that Bell was losing by double digits in January, but is tied with Bush now.

“So he was 17 points behind before we spent any money, before anybody else spent significant money and this race is tied,” said Mellman, whose organization also runs a PAC.

The race in Bush’s Missouri district, which includes St. Louis, won’t be as expensive as the race in Bowman’s district, which includes much of Westchester County and a sliver of the Bronx.

The ad market in the Missouri district is much less expensive — but the numbers are still eye-opening for a congressional primary.

Bell, as of the most recent filing, Bell has raised $1.72 million while Bush has raised $1.57 million.

The AIPAC-affiliated superPAC, the United Democracy Project has, according to Politico, pledged to spend an additional $2.5 million on ads. (Super PACs may raise and spend unlimited amounts, but may not coordinate directly with a campaign.)

Bush anticipated the AIPAC-led push when she launched her reelection campaign in January.

“It’s called AIPAC,” Bush said then. “I need y’all to make it clear that they’re trying to buy this seat.”

AIPAC raises money “to help oust anybody who does not stand 100% with Israel in the way that means that Israel has to be supreme,” Bush said at her campaign opener, according to KSDK 5 News, an NBC affiliate.

Bush’s problem is that AIPAC’s campaign may be working, as per the DMFI poll.

“Bush is still seen favorably, but assessments of her and her performance are moving in a negative direction, while Bell’s image is improving, leaving him with an underlying image advantage,” said a memo from DMFI’s affiliated political consultancy, the Mellman Group.

“With some six weeks to go and 11% still undecided, this race can go either way, but Bell has achieved a slight advantage.”

There are key differences between the Bowman and Bush races: Bell is known, but is not the household name that George Latimer, the Westchester County executive who beat Bowman, is in his own district.

Bowman also doubled down on emphatic anti-Israel rhetoric in a district with close to 150,000 Jews. Bush’s district does include many of St. Louis’ estimated 60,000 Jews, but they are not as influential as a voting share.

Bell, a leader in the movement of progressive prosecutors, also has issues Latimer did not, said Matan Arad-Neeman, a spokesman for IfNotNow, the non-Zionist Jewish movement that has vocally opposed AIPAC’s political involvement in Democratic politics.

“Cori Bush is quite popular among her constituents and she’s up against a candidate who was the campaign manager for an extremist anti-abortion Republican,” he said.

Bell did manage a campaign for his Republican friend in 2006, and a number of Republican donors are backing Bell.

Arad-Neeman said it was “catastrophic” that Republicans should be able to influence a Democratic primary, including through donations to AIPAC’s affiliated PACs.

He acknowledged that AIPAC was trying to repeat its successful formula in Bush’s district.

“It should be concerning to all of us that they’ll take the same playbook to St. Louis,” he said.

Bush also has vulnerabilities: She is under federal investigation for payments she made to private security, including to a security guard she eventually married.

And she voted against President Joe Biden’s landmark 2021 infrastructure funding bill. Pro-Israel advocates leveraged Bowman’s no vote on that bill against him.

Like Bowman, Bush has singled out her Jewish backers at campaign events to push back against the claim she does not represent the community.

“You heard the progressive Jews of St. Louis up here, they understand my congresswoman is not antisemitic,” Bush said at the January event.

But like Bowman, she has fraught relations with much of the local Jewish community, earning an anguished rebuke from a broad array of Jewish groups spanning the political and religious spectrums last November when she accused Israel of ethnic cleansing.

“While there are characterizations within this letter that are unfair and simply untrue, we recognize that our Jewish neighbors are justifiably feeling frightened amid the horrific global rise of antisemitism,” her office told the St. Louis Jewish Light in response.

(Bush also had declined to grant an interview to the Jewish Light, although virtually its entire readership now resides in her district.)

Maharat Rori Picker Neiss, who until December was the director of the St. Louis Jewish Community Relations Council, said there was a cost to not engaging with constituents.

“Any political official who doesn’t have a strong relationship with their constituency is somebody who is vulnerable in their position,” Picker Neiss said in an interview.

Still, said Picker Neiss, who now works for the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, it remained worthwhile for Jewish communities to reach out to representatives like Bush.

“It’s always tempting to want to talk to the people who already agree with us in some way or who are already aligned with us on issues,” she said. “But we don’t get to dictate who is in what job.”

The post Next up, Cori Bush: After Jamaal Bowman defeat, pro-Israel donors pivot to Missouri appeared first on World Israel News.

“Let us ask these five rabbis claiming to speak for Judaism: what positive commandment do they fulfill when stopping the heart of an unborn baby?”

By World Israel News Staff

An Orthodox Jewish umbrella group has denounced a lawsuit against the state of Missouri by a dozen “woke” rabbis and other faith leaders which claims that the right to abortion is a Jewish value, describing it as a “desecration of God’s name that is simply beyond words.”

In the wake of the Supreme Court decision reversing Roe v. Wade, Missouri Governor Michael Parson last year activated the state’s “Right to Life of the Unborn Child Act,” which barred abortions except in cases of a medical emergency.

In a lawsuit filed Thursday in St. Louis Circuit Court, more than a dozen faith leaders, including five rabbis, claim that Missouri violated the separation of church and state by “enshrining…religious views into laws.”

The Coalition for Jewish Values (CJV), which represents more than 2,000 traditional, Orthodox rabbis in American public policy, slammed the lawsuit as “irrational.”

“To assert that access to an elective procedure is somehow a religious obligation is inherently irrational, defying all logic and reason,” said CJV Midwestern Regional Vice President Rabbi Ze’ev Smason.

“And to cloak this demand in the mantle of Judaism is heinous. Let us ask these five rabbis claiming to speak for Judaism: what positive commandment do they fulfill when stopping the heart of an unborn baby? What Hebrew blessing do they recite upon feticide?”

CJV said in a statement that it rejected three ideas upon which the lawsuit was based: that a pro-life position places religion over science, that valuing fetal life is uniquely tied to one religion, and that legislators should be expected to discard their religious views when formulating public policy positions.

Contrary to the lawsuit’s narrative, science, CJV noted, “offers compelling evidence that a child is alive before birth.”

“The rejection of elective abortion is also rooted in the Jewish Bible, the foundation of monotheism and moral authority,” the rabbis said.

According to CJV, barring people from taking “personal religious views” into consideration on matters involving morality and ethics is a violation of both “common sense” and “democratic principles.”

“This lawsuit is without basis in either Jewish or secular law,” said CJV Vice President and adjunct professor of law, Rabbi Dov Fischer, said.

“That it was filed by people calling themselves ‘rabbis’ is simply outrageous. Their manifest ignorance of Jewish history and the sacred value of human life is in line with their ignorance of Jewish belief. Their woke effort to distort core Jewish values constitutes a desecration of G-d’s name that is simply beyond words, and they should be ashamed.”

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“What could be more fascist than forbidding people from seeing books that teach about the horrors of fascism?”

By World Israel News Staff

Missouri schools have pulled hundreds of books from their shelves, including Art Spiegelman’s Maus and several other titles on the Holocaust, since the beginning of the school year.

Spiegelman, Margaret Atwood, Neil Gaiman, and Lois Lowry, are among the authors and illustrators who signed an letter of protest published by the free-expression advocacy group PEN America.

The ban in Missouri schools districts represents “a grave threat to the freedom to read and will affect students across the state,” the group said.

PEN America’s director of free expression and education programs Jonathan Friedman said a “climate of fear” was to blame for the ban.

A Missouri state law was recently amended to prohibit “any visual depiction” of a range sexual acts. Graphic novels, Holocaust literature, and a collection of photography by Annie Leibovitz were affected.

Violation of the law can result in jail time for or school officials.

“What could be more fascist than forbidding people from seeing books that teach about the horrors of fascism?” PEN cited Spiegelman as saying.

Along with the Pulitzer Prize-winning Maus, other Holocaust titles for young readers that were pulled include three by Craig Blohm, “Holocaust Camps and Killing Centers,” “Holocaust Rescue and Liberation” and “Holocaust Resistance”; Don Nardo’s “Life in a Nazi Concentration Camp”; “Hitler’s Final Solution” by John Allen; “Apparatus of Death — The Third Reich” by Thomas Flaherty.

Earlier this year, a local Tennessee school board drew an outcry from Jewish groups after Maus was removed from its curriculum.

The school board had cited “nudity” and “inappropriate language” as justification for the ban.

Spiegelman said at the time that he pored over the transcripts of the McMinn County school board meeting where the decision to ban Maus was made and that he did not believe “it’s the dirty words that are really scaring them.”

“At first I thought it was joke…because to complain about these relatively mild words” seemed like a minor detail in a book which recounts genocide, mass imprisonment, and other realities far more disturbing than profanity.

According to Spiegelman, the real reasons the book was banned stem from parents’ unease with the ugly realities of the Holocaust and a resistance to facing the dark and evil side of humanity.

“Even if they say they’re willing to teach the Holocaust, they want a fuzzier, warmer, gentler Holocaust that shows how great the Americans were,” he said.

He noted that the U.S. was reluctant to take measures to stop the extermination of Jews at death camps and that Russia liberated prisoners at Auschwitz, where Speigelman’s father had been incarcerated.

“This is a dangerous world. It’s getting more dangerous. Are you going to try to confront it in a way that’s useful, or hide your head in myths and stories that are heartwarming?” he asked.

The author said he is against censorship in all forms and that forming one’s own opinion based on a diverse array of books is a crucial step towards developing critical-thinking skills.

“Banned books are the books to seek out first,” Spiegelman said. “Keep your nose in a book, and keep other peoples’ noses out of which books you choose to stick your nose into.”

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Black Lives Matter protesters heading to St. Louis Mayor Lyda Krewson’s home passed two armed homeowners apparently ready to do whatever it took to protect their property.

The post WATCH: Armed homeowners greet BLM protesters marching to St. Louis mayor’s home appeared first on World Israel News.

Foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said the legal action has “no factual and legal basis at all.”

By Associated Press

China on Wednesday slammed a lawsuit brought against it by the U.S. state of Missouri over the coronavirus pandemic as “very absurd.”

Foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said the legal action has “no factual and legal basis at all” and repeated China’s defense of its response to the outbreak, which has largely subsided in the country where it was first detected.

The ministry and other Chinese government departments have strenuously denied accusations that officials delayed reporting on the extent of the outbreak in the central Chinese city of Wuhan late last year, despite reports that worries over political stability were placed above public health concerns.

Medical staff who reported the outbreak were silenced under threat of legal retaliation and Wuhan went several days without reporting cases during the holding of an annual provincial government conference.

“This so-called lawsuit is very absurd and has no factual and legal basis at all,” Geng said at a daily briefing. Since the outbreak began, China has proceeded in an “open, transparent, and responsible manner” and the U.S. government should “dismiss such vexatious litigation,” he said.

Missouri’s top state prosecutor on Tuesday announced the lawsuit, which alleges that Chinese officials are to blame for the pandemic that has sickened around 2.5 million worldwide, thrown tens of millions out of work and devastated local economies, including in China.

Attorney General Eric Schmitt said the Chinese government lied about the dangers of the virus and didn’t do enough to slow its spread.

Missouri’s action is likely to be largely symbolic, however, since lawsuits against other countries typically don’t go anywhere because U.S. law generally prohibits them.

According to Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Systems Science and Engineering, the number of Missouri deaths from the virus rose by 16 Tuesday to 215.

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Pence deplored “this vile act of vandalism and those who perpetrate it in the strongest possible terms.”

Vice President Mike Pence condemned the vandalism at a St. Louis Jewish cemetery, where more than 150 headstones were damaged earlier in the week, and joined volunteers in cleaning up.

Speaking to small business owners at a business Wednesday in the St. Louis suburb of Fenton, Missouri, Pence deplored,”this vile act of vandalism and those who perpetrate it in the strongest possible terms.”

He lauded people from across Missouri who have “rallied with compassion and support.”

“You have inspired this nation,” Pence said, not long before making an unannounced visit to the cemetery.

With Eric Greitens, Missouri’s Jewish governor by his side, Pence told volunteers, many of them clutching yard rakes they used to beautify the graveyard, that, “There’s no place in America for hatred or acts of prejudice or violence or anti-Semitism.”

“I must tell you, the people in Missouri are inspiring the nation by your love and care for this place, for the Jewish community in Missouri,” he told the crowd, using a bullhorn. “And I want to thank you for that inspiration, for showing the world what America is all about.”

After hearing the recitation of  Psalms, Pence rolled up his sleeves, took a rake, and joined the cleaning and restoration efforts.

Greitens organized a volunteer effort to help in the cleanup Wednesday, and an interfaith service took place in the afternoon. A large crowd attended a candlelight vigil at the cemetery Tuesday night.

Greitens later told reporters at the cemetery that President Donald Trump had called him Wednesday morning and thanked the volunteers.

A group of Muslim activists have launched a crowdfunding campaign for the Chesed Shel Emeth Society cemetery in University City, Missouri, with a goal of $20,000. It has raised at least $75,000.

In the meantime, investigators have yet to determine who was responsible for the vandalism. Police said there is no evidence of a hate crime, but haven’t ruled out the possibility.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which was the target of an anti-Semitic bomb threat on Wednesday, offered a $10,000 reward for the vandals’ arrest and conviction.

By: AP and World Israel News Staff

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A prominent anti-Israel Muslim activist led a successful campaign to repair a desecrated Jewish cemetery in Missouri. Could there be an agenda?

A group of American Muslim activists banned together to raise funds to repair St. Louis’ old Jewish cemetery, which was heavily vandalized over the weekend.

Vandals had turned over 150 headstones at the Chesed Shel Emeth Cemetery in Missouri.

The crowdfunding project, launched by Linda Sarsour of MPower Change, a “digital Muslim-led political talking drum,” and Tarek El-Messidi of CelebrateMercy, a non-profit that teaches about the Prophet Mohammed, amassed $20,000 in just three hours. In total, the campaign collected over $57,000 from over 2000 supporters to date.

Indeed, donations tripled overnight after famous Harry Potter author JK Rowling supported the initiative online. “This is such a beautiful thing,” she tweeted, with a link to the campaign’s donation page.

“Muslim Americans stand in solidarity with the Jewish-American community to condemn this horrific act of desecration” against the cemetery. “We also extend our deepest condolences to all those who have been affected and to the Jewish community at large,” the campaign appeal stated.

“Through this campaign, we hope to send a united message from the Jewish and Muslim communities that there is no place for this type of hate, desecration, and violence in America. We pray that this restores a sense of security and peace to the Jewish-American community who has undoubtedly been shaken by this event,” the statement added.

Proceeds will be given directly to the cemetery, and any remaining funds will be allocated to repair all other vandalized Jewish centers.

Support from a Surprising Source

The fact that the campaign was organized by Linda Sarsour is a surprise, as she is a well-known anti-Israel activist with Palestinian roots.

As head of the Arab American Association of New York, Sarsour, one of the main organizers of the massive anti-Trump Women’s March, which took place after Trump’s inauguration, used that platform to attack the Jewish state. “Most of all, I am my Palestinian grandmother who lives in occupied territories’ wildest dream! Justice for all,” she stated at the event, rather than speaking out against honor killings and other forms of abuse against women in Muslim countries.

Sarsour supports the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and does not acknowledge Israel’s right to exist.

Several news and social media sites last month published pictures of Sarsour alongside Salah Sarsour, a member of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee and former Hamas operative who was jailed in Israel in the 1990s, taken at a charity event in Chicago.

She tweeted in 2015 that “Zionist trolls” were out to get her, and in 2012 that “nothing is creepier than Zionism.”

By: World Israel News Staff

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St. Louis’ old Jewish cemetery was heavily vandalized over the weekend. 

Vandals pushed down over 100 headstones at the Chesed Shel Emeth Cemetery in St. Louis, Missouri, over the weekend.

Police launched an investigation into the apparently anti-Semitic incident after the damage was discovered on Monday.

However, Lt. Fredrick Lemons said Monday that police are keeping all options of investigation open and are not treating the incident as a hate crime at this time, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.

Police has surveillance cameras footage and are using it for its investigation.

It is suspected that several perpetrators participated in the vandalism.

The Jewish cemetery dates to 1893.

“Have not seen desecration like this in region. Will work with law enforcement and community to support. Thanks for the solidarity and support,” the Anti Defamation League (ADL) tweeted after the incident.

The incident comes on the same day that 11 Jewish community centers around the country received bomb threats, the fourth such round of threats in a month’s time.

Missouri’s Governor Eric Greitens denounced the vandalism as a “despicable act” in a post on his Facebook page.

“Anyone who would seek to divide us through an act of desecration will find instead that they unite us in shared determination,” he said. “From their pitiful act of ugliness, we can emerge even more powerful in our faith.”

By: World Israel News Staff

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