It wasn’t a matter of whether the Jewish Community Center of Greater Rochester would receive a threat, but when. It had been spared during previous rounds of bomb threats to Jewish community centers across the country, none of which have involved actual bombs, thankfully.

That changed just after 6 a.m. Tuesday, when the center on Edgewood Avenue in Brighton received a threat; police aren’t saying how the threat was communicated. The 75 to 80 people who were there – members who were working out and some staff – were evacuated and police swept the building. The center reopened around 10 a.m., after police gave the all-clear.

Back in January, during the initial waves of threats against Jewish community centers, local JCC staff began working with Brighton police to develop an emergency response plan. Brighton Police Chief Mark Henderson says the plan worked flawlessly on Tuesday. (JCC’s in Miami, Milwaukee, and the Syracuse area also received threats.)

The fact that the JCC had to plan for this is scary, and it says all too much about the current national psyche. Right now, a lot of people in this country live in a constant state of anxiety or fear because of what the White House may do, or what their neighbors may do.

It all starts at the top. The president and his top advisers want to ban Muslim immigrants from the US and they continue to flirt with white nationalist groups and personalities. They’ve also cast Mexican immigrants as criminals and they’ve stripped protections from transgender youth. They demonstrate a disdain for “otherness,” and their attitudes have clearly emboldened some people to act on some of their darkest prejudices.

Brighton police are investigating the threat, and they’re not saying whether they’ve identified a suspect or motive. State and federal law enforcement are also taking action.

“The FBI and the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division are investigating possible civil rights violations in connection with threats to Jewish Community Centers across the country,” FBI Buffalo office spokesperson Maureen Dempsey said in a statement Tuesday. The threat to the local JCC will be included in that investigation, she said.

But let’s not pretend this bomb threat is anything other than what is: the latest act in a campaign of terror against “otherness.” Odds are good that the person who made the threat meant to intimidate the local Jewish community, though the JCC is very clear that it welcomes all faiths as members. But even if it’s an isolated prank, it still taps into the fear that now permeates many lives.

It shouldn’t be lost on people that just a few days before the JCC threat, someone vandalized graves at Waad Hakolel Cemetery, a Jewish cemetery just off of Lake Road in Charlotte. State and local police are investigating that incident; several Jewish cemeteries across the country have been vandalized.

As for the JCC threat, Brighton Supervisor Bill Moehle referred to it as “an expression of hatred in our community” in a Facebook post Tuesday. He said Brighton would continue to welcome people of all faiths.

“We reject hatred and we open doors to welcome our neighbors,” he wrote.

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This article appears in Mar 1-7, 2017.

Covers county government and whatever else comes my way. Greyhound dad; vegetarian; attempted photographer with a love for film and fixer; sometimes cyclist.

6 replies on “JCC threat fits into campaign of terror”

  2. Leave it to a Trump apologist to link to a neo-fascist rag to defend him. Suuuure, all this Jew hatred coming after Trump’s “election” is purely coincidental.

  3. Troll it’s easily verified through a Google search. Your sites will only report the arrest. The anti-Trump background was not reported by them because it didn’t fit the false narrative
    His actual Twitter comments are available online that show his anti Trump and left wing views
    He was linked to at least 8 of the incidents so far

  4. A good example of how Trump’s assault on the truth that a troll could think he could expect us to believe that it isn’t Trump who is giving aid and comfort to alt right, meaning Neo-Nazis. Call it what it is. America’s Jews (and certainly Muslims and Mexicans) sure know where this is all coming from. The object of this hate know from where it originates.

    Why, those Holocaust-denier / Nazi sympathizers Patrick Buchanan and David Duke (with whom Steve Bannon fits right in; hey, how ’bout that omission of, you know, Jews, on Holocaust Remembrance Day? keep it classy), were just do devastated by Trump’s victory. Oh wait –

  5. Andrew Cuomo, in Israel just said “everyone is welcome in NYS”. Last year he said that if you are a gun owner or pro life that you aren’t welcome in NYS. Which is it Andrew?

  6. Liar, liar pants on fire:

    In a January 17, 2014, interview with Susan Arbetter on WCNY’s The Capital Pressroom, Cuomo stated,

    {New York Republicans] are searching to define their soul, that’s what’s going on. Is the Republican party in this state a moderate party or is it an extreme conservative party?… The Republican Party candidates are running against the SAFE Act it was voted for by moderate Republicans who run the Senate! Their problem is not me and the Democrats; their problem is themselves. Who are they? Are they these extreme conservatives who are right-to-life, pro-assault-weapon, anti-gay? Is that who they are? Because if that’s who they are and they’re the extreme conservatives, they have no place in the state of New York, because that’s not who New Yorkers are. If they’re moderate Republicans like in the Senate right now, who control the Senate moderate Republicans have a place in their state. George Pataki was governor of this state as a moderate Republican, but not what you’re hearing from them on the far right.”

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