Islamic State Threatens Jewish Museum Over Kurdish Event
NEW YORK (JTA) — Police increased security at a Jewish museum here after the Islamic State reportedly suggested it as a target for attack for hosting an event about Kurds fighting the terrorist group.
The threats against the Museum of Jewish Heritage-A Living Memorial to the Holocaust are unsubstantiated, but security was increased Sunday and Monday as a precautionary measure, NBC reported.
NBC said the recordings had suggested targeting the museum because of a “Kurdish exhibit opening Monday.”
The museum is not hosting a Kurdish-themed exhibition, Lisa Safier, the museum’s communications director, told JTA. It is, however, screening a movie Monday evening about Kurdish fighters battling the Islamic State. Safier declined to comment on the report of the threats.
The film’s director, Bernard-Henri Levy, a prominent French-Jewish public intellectual, will be present at the screening of “Peshmerga,” for which he traveled to Iraq to meet with the fighters.
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.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO