Staten Island JCC Receives Bomb Threat, Defaced With Swastika
New York’s hate crime wave made land on Staten Island Wednesday, after a swastika and bomb threat was found at a Jewish Community Center in the borough.
Officials at the center, located in a park filled stretch of Staten Island, reported the incident on Wednesday morning to the New York City police department, which discovered no bomb on the site. Authorities are investigating the incident as a hate crime.
Since the victory of President-elect Donald Trump, the city and the country have seen a marked rise in bias incidents, many of them targeting Jews with slurs and Holocaust imagery, often graffitied on public areas with Jewish and non-Jewish associations. Targets have included a Williamsburg apartment building, a subway car, numerous city parks and several buildings on the Upper West Side.
On January 9, 16 JCCs across the country received bomb threats.
As of press time, a call for comment to the Staten Island JCC had not been returned.
Contact Daniel J. Solomon at [email protected] or on Twitter @DanielJSolomon
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.
In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.
At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.
Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we still need 300 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Only 300 more gifts needed by April 30