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Tag: Jews

  • ‘Depressed’ Cornell student who threatened to murder Jews held up in jail

    ‘Depressed’ Cornell student who threatened to murder Jews held up in jail

    A student at a New York college has been detained and appeared in court, facing accusations of making violent threats against Jewish students.

    Patrick Dai, 21, is alleged to have threatened to bring a gun to Cornell University’s campus, commit acts of violence against Jewish women, and harm Jewish infants.

    The engineering student, appearing in court in an orange jumpsuit, has been charged with making threats to kill or harm others using interstate communications, a crime that carries a maximum penalty of up to five years in prison.

    During the court proceedings in Syracuse, New York, on Wednesday, Mr. Dai’s mother was present, and she appeared to make an effort to establish eye contact with her son. The prosecution, represented by Geoffrey Brown, requested that Mr. Dai be kept in custody, pointing out that he had visited a campus dining hall before allegedly posting threats about causing violence. Mr. Dai chose to forgo his right to a bail hearing.

    The initial report on a series of antisemitic comments, which were posted on the Greekrank website, was first brought to public attention by The Cornell Daily Sun, the university’s newspaper. Greekrank, while not officially affiliated with the university, is a platform used by many of its students, primarily focusing on fraternity and sorority life across various campuses.

    One post from the commenter named “hamas” was titled “if i see another jew”.

    Mr Dai’s parents told the New York Post that their son suffers from “severe depression”.

    “He cannot control his emotion well due to the depression,” Mr Dai’s father, who asked not to be named, told the newspaper in a text message.

    “No, I don’t think he committed the crime. He told us he lost his life goal and motivation. As parents, we tried to give him more love.”

    Mr Dai’s father said he and his wife lost communication with their son in the days before his arrest.

    They had attempted to contact him, he said, worried he might commit suicide.

    In a statement, Cornell University said: “We remain shocked by and condemn these horrific, antisemitic threats and believe they should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.”

    The university said that police will maintain a heightened security presence on campus in the coming days.

    Molly Goldstein, co-president of the Cornell Center for Jewish Living, told CNN: “Jewish students on campus right now are unbelievably terrified for their lives.”

    The threats against Cornell’s Jewish community came amid reports of rising antisemitic incidents around the country.

    Speaking to a congressional committee on Tuesday, FBI Director Christopher Wray told lawmakers that antisemitic abuse was reaching “historic levels” in the US.

    “Our statistics would indicate that for a group that represents only about 2.4% of the American public, they account for something like 60% of all religious-based hate crimes,” Mr Wray said of Jewish Americans.

    He noted that this figure had probably risen since the Israel-Gaza conflict erupted on 7 October.

  • Murderer of 11 Jews in Pittsburgh synagogue attack given death penalty

    Murderer of 11 Jews in Pittsburgh synagogue attack given death penalty

    The man who opened fire and killed 11 Jewish people in a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018 was given the death penalty.

    Robert Bowers was found guilty in June of attacking the Tree of Life – Or L’Simcha Congregation on October 27, 2018, in Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill neighbourhood.

    Eleven worshippers were killed in the shooting and six more were injured. The Jewish community was the target of the bloodiest anti-Semitic terrorist attack in American history.

    A federal jury decided that Bowers will be executed on Wednesday morning. Before reaching a unanimous verdict, the jury deliberated for more than 10 hours over the course of two days.

    Bowers’ reaction to being given the death penalty was emotionless.

    Judge Robert Colville reviewed the jurors’ comments to the 115 mitigating circumstances offered by Bowers’ defence before the jury’s recommendation was announced.

    Although the jury accepted some mitigating circumstances, they disagreed with many of the defense’s main points, including the claim that Bowers had schizophrenia.

    They concurred with the defence that Bowers had a challenging upbringing but disagreed with the claim that he was experiencing a “mental or emotional disturbance” at the time of the horrific murder.

    All five aggravating reasons, including the defendant’s hate of Jews and lack of regret for his acts, were likewise supported by the jury.

    Additionally, they discovered that Bowers targeted a Jewish-dominated area of Pittsburgh in order to “maximise the devastation, amplify the harm of his crimes, and instill fear within the local, national, and international Jewish communities.”

    After polling the jury, Judge Colville shed a few tears and thanked the members of the panel for their service. Colville stated, “I’ve never given it with as much sincerity as I did just now.”

    Although they will “never achieve closure,” Rose Mallinger’s family said they still “feel a measure of justice has been served” in regards to Bowers’ killing of the oldest victim.

    Other members of the Or L’Simcha Congregation made a media announcement for Wednesday at 2:30 p.m.

    Since President Joe Biden took office, Bowers’ sentencing is the first federal execution.

    Since the federal government reintroduced the capital sentence in 1988, just 16 inmates have been put to death. 13 of those executions took place between July 2020 and January 2021, over a six-month span.

    Since Biden became president and declared a moratorium, there have been no further federal executions.

    For updates on this breaking news story, come back here.

  • Five interesting facts about African Jees you need to know

    Five interesting facts about African Jees you need to know

    Jews lived on the Arabian Peninsula, which is located northeast of Africa on the Arabian Plate and contains nations like Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), before Christianity and Islam took hold there. Trade allowed Judaism to spread to Africa.

    African Jews, also called the Beta Israel community, believe they are descended from King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. There are many interesting and little-known facts about them. Here are five interesting facts about this interesting group:

    1. African Jews have a long and complex history.

    Some historians think that the Beta Israel community is made up of the descendants of ancient Israelite tribes who moved to Ethiopia, while others believe they may have become Jewish in the Middle Ages. What is certain is that the Beta Israel have lived in Ethiopia for many centuries and have kept their own culture and religion even though they have been persecuted and treated badly for many years.

    1. African Jews have their own unique traditions and practices.

    Even though they believe and act in many of the same ways as other Jewish groups around the world, the Beta Israel have made their own traditions over the centuries. For example, they use a version of the Jewish calendar that is different from what Jews use, and they have their own language for worship called Ge’ez. They also have a long history of folk music, dance, and stories. These things are important parts of their culture.

    1. African Jews faced significant persecution and discrimination.

    Even though the Beta Israel have lived in Ethiopia for a long time, the Christian and Muslim groups that make up most of the country have often ignored and mistreated them. In the 1970s and 1980s, they were treated very badly by Mengistu Haile Mariam’s communist government. Many of them were moved to cities against their will and were not allowed to go to school or get a job.

    1. African Jews have experienced a mass migration to Israel.

    In the 1980s and 1990s, tens of thousands of Beta Israel moved to Israel. Under the Law of Return, they were given citizenship. But moving to Israel and becoming part of Israeli society was not always easy, and many African Jews had a hard time getting used to life in a new place.

    1. African Jews are making important contributions to Israeli society.

    With many of its members holding significant positions in politics, business, and the arts, the Beta Israel community in Israel is now well-established and flourishing. The history and customs of African Jews have recently attracted increased interest, and groups like the Association for the Research of Ethiopian Jewry and the Center for Jewish Ethiopian Heritage are seeking to protect and advance this unique cultural heritage.

  • Nazi typist: Irmgard Furchner found guilty of complicity in the murder of 10,500 people

    More than 10,505 people were killed, and a former secretary who worked for the head of a Nazi concentration camp has been found guilty of complicity.

    Irmgard Furchner, now 97, worked at Stutthof as a teenage typist from 1943 to 1945.

    Furchner, one of the few women to face Nazi-related charges in decades, received a two-year sentence with a suspended sentence.

    Despite the fact that she was a civilian employee, the judge found that she was fully informed of all activities at the camp.

    According to estimates, 65,000 people—including Jewish prisoners, non-Jewish Poles, and captured Soviet soldiers—died at Stutthof in appalling conditions.

    The court at Itzenhoe in northern Germany heard from survivors of the camp, some of whom have died during the trial.

    When the trial began in September 2021, Irmgard Furchner went on the run from her retirement home and was eventually found by police on a street in Hamburg.

    Stutthof commandant Paul-Werner Hoppe was jailed in 1955 for being an accessory to murder and he was released five years later.

    A series of prosecutions have taken place in Germany since 2011, after the conviction of former Nazi death camp guard John Demjanjuk set the precedent that being a guard was sufficient evidence to prove complicity.

    That ruling also meant that civilian worker Furchner could stand trial, as she worked directly to the camp commander, dealing with correspondence surrounding Stutthof detainees.

    It took 40 days for her to break her silence in the trial, when she told the court “I’m sorry about everything that happened”.

    As she was under 21 at the time, the trial took place in a special juvenile court. “I regret that I was in Stutthof at the time – that’s all I can say,” she said.

    Her defence lawyers argued she should be acquitted because of doubts surrounding what she knew, as she was one of several typists in Hoppe’s office.

    However, historian Stefan Hördler played a key role in the trial, accompanying two judges on a visit to the site of the camp. It became clear from the visit that Furchner was able to see some of the worst conditions at the camp from the commandant’s office.

    The historian told the trial that 27 transports carrying 48,000 people arrived at Stutthof between June and October 1944, after the Nazis decided to expand the camp and speed up mass murder with the use of Zyklon B gas.

    Mr Hördler described Hoppe’s office as the “nerve centre” for everything that went on at Stutthof.

    Nazi crime cases since 2011

    • John Demjanjuk – jailed in 2011 for five years for his part in the murder of more than 28,000 Jews at the Sobibor death camp but released pending an appeal and died the following year aged 91
    • Oskar Gröning – the “Bookkeeper of Auschwitz”, sentenced in 2015 as an accessory to the murder of 300,000 Jews. He never went to jail, dying in 2018 aged 96 during the appeals process
    • Reinhold Hanning – former SS guard at Auschwitz convicted of helping to commit mass murder in June 2016 but died a year later aged 95 with appeals still pending
    • Friedrich Karl Berger – former guard at the Neuengamme concentration camp, deported to Germany from the US in February 2021 aged 95. German prosecutors dropped charges against him and his current fate is unknown
    • Josef S – jailed for five years in June 2022 for assisting in the murder of more than 3,500 prisoners in Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Aged 101, he is the oldest person to be convicted for Nazi-era war crimes in Germany, but because of age and ill health is unlikely to spend any time in prison

    Furchner’s trial could be the last to take place in Germany into Nazi-era crimes, although a few cases are still being investigated.

    Two other cases have gone to court in recent years for Nazi crimes committed at Stutthof.

    Last year a former camp guard was declared unfit for trial even though the court said there was a “high degree of probability” he was guilty of complicity.

    In 2020, another SS camp guard, Bruno Dey, was given a two-year suspected jail term for complicity in the murder of more than 5,000 prisoners.

    Source: BBC.com