Republican Senator Was Target Of JCC Hoaxer
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
By Naomi Zeveloff April 24, 2017
A Republican senator was a target of the Israeli-American teen charged with making threatening calls to Jewish community centers in the United States, court documents reveal.
Haaretz reported that the indictment, which will be handed down in an Israeli court today, includes details about how the teen called the senator to get him to retract his comments condemning the threatening calls to the JCCs — and planned to plant drugs on the lawmaker if he refused to go along.
The teen allegedly said that he would fine the senator in Bitcoin if he didn’t retract his comments. He threatened to incriminate the senator online. The teen then sent drugs to the politician’s house and threatened to publish photos proving that he had drugs.
The Republican senator was unnamed in the Haaretz report.
The indictment said the teen made 2,000 calls, some of them graphic, to Jewish institutions and individuals. That is far more than the 200 previously revealed.
Contact Naomi Zeveloff at [email protected] or on Twitter @naomizeveloff
Why I became the Forward’s Editor-in-Chief
You are surely a friend of the Forward if you’re reading this. And so it’s with excitement and awe — of all that the Forward is, was, and will be — that I introduce myself to you as the Forward’s newest editor-in-chief.
And what a time to step into the leadership of this storied Jewish institution! For 129 years, the Forward has shaped and told the American Jewish story. I’m stepping in at an intense time for Jews the world over. We urgently need the Forward’s courageous, unflinching journalism — not only as a source of reliable information, but to provide inspiration, healing and hope.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
