Jeff Sessions Meets With JCC Leaders To Discuss Bomb Threats

Image by Getty Images

By Ben Harris March 30, 2017

(JTA) — Representatives of the umbrella organization of Jewish community centers discussed recent bomb threats against their institutions with U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

Officials from the Anti-Defamation League, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Jewish Federations of North America, Secure Community Network and the Jewish Community Center Association met with Sessions on Thursday, a week after an Israeli teenager was arrested on charges of calling in over 100 bomb threats to JCCs and other American Jewish institutions.

Ian Prior, a Justice Department spokesman, said the meeting was “positive and productive” and that Sessions had praised the Jewish leaders “for their responsiveness, efficiency, calm and competence” in dealing with the threats.

“The Department of Justice will not tolerate hate crimes against Jewish communities or the targeting of any community in this country on the basis of their religious beliefs,” Prior said, according to media reports.

Earlier this month, representatives from the association had written to Sessions to express their frustration with the investigation and to request a meeting.

Two weeks later, on March 23, Israeli police arrested a 19-year-old at his home in Ashkelon. Juan Thompson, a former journalist from St. Louis accused of making at least eight bomb threats against Jewish institutions, was arrested on March 3.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

The coming year promises to be filled with more complex and historic developments. We are entering an era where independent, fact-based Jewish journalism will be more important than ever. We need to be ready for whatever 2025 will bring, and with your help, we can be.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO