December 30, 2019 A Hanukkah party on December 28, 2019 in Monsey, New York, was shattered when a man entered a local rabbi’s home armed with a large knife and began stabbing people. The attack left five injured, one critically. The following day, police in Ramapo, New York, charged Grafton Thomas of Greenwood Lake, New York, with five counts of attempted murder and one count of burglary. Thomas pleaded not guilty at his December 29 arraignment. On Monday, December 30,…

December 13, 2019 On December 10, 2019, David N. Anderson and Francine Graham allegedly shot and killed Jersey City Police Detective Joseph Seals after he approached them in the Bayview cemetery. The perpetrators then drove through Jersey City, bypassing other buildings and pedestrians before stopping outside the JC Kosher Supermarket, where Graham allegedly fired shots into the establishment, killing three civilians inside the store and injuring another. The pair then barricaded themselves…

December 13, 2019 THE WEEK'S BIG 3 Two gunmen motivated by anti-Semitism and anti-law enforcement beliefs attacked a Kosher supermarket in Jersey City on Tuesday, killing four people. President Trump signed an executive order that would ensure incidents of anti-Semitism be treated under federal as vigorously as other forms of discrimination. West Virginia fired three state employees and suspended more than 30 others after a photo surfaced showing a recent graduating class of correctional…

December 02, 2019 Telegram, the online social networking app, may not be a household name in the U.S. like Twitter or Facebook, but with well over 200 million users, it has a significant audience. And it is gaining popularity. Telegram has become a very popular online gathering place for the international white supremacist community and other extremist groups who have been displaced or banned from more popular sites. The platform, which is a cloud-based chat and group messaging app,…

November 08, 2019 THE WEEK’S BIG 3 An avowed white supremacist in Colorado was arrested after federal investigators uncovered a plot to bomb an historic synagogue. Campus officials at East Tennessee University are opening an investigation after signs saying “It’s okay to be white”— a popular white supremacist slogan — appeared around campus. A man in Milwaukee is facing felony hate-crime charges for allegedly throwing acid on a Latino man because of his…

November 06, 2019 “Pills” feature prominently in the online chat rooms and forums dedicated to right-wing extremism. These are not actual pharmaceuticals; instead, each “pill” sends a message about a person’s level of dedication to an extremist ideology or cause. Are they just beginning to learn about an ideology, or have they progressed further to embrace a nihilistic, potentially violent mindset? While online posts about “pills” can help outside…

November 05, 2019 Update: February 26, 2021: A federal court sentenced Richard Holzer to 19.5 years in prison.  Update: October 15, 2020:  The Justice Department announced that Richard Holzer, 28, pleaded guilty to federal hate crime and explosives charges for plotting to blow up the Temple Emanuel Synagogue in Pueblo, Colorado. According to a DOJ press release, Holzer faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison for the hate crime charge…

October 18, 2019 White supremacists continue to pose a serious threat to Jews in the United States – as they do to African Americans, Muslim Americans, Latinx Americans, immigrants, LGBTQ Americans and other communities. In the year since the deadly rampage at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue, at least 12 white supremacists have been arrested for their alleged roles in terrorist plots, attacks or threats against the Jewish community specifically. Many of the offenders were…