hate crimes

Anti-Semitic incidents made up the largest share of New York hate crimes reported in 2009, according to statistics just released by the state’s Division of Criminal Justice Services. The number of incidents involving Jewish victims also rose 15 percent from 219 in 2008 to 254.

Statistics for 2010 have not yet been compiled by the division. The 2009 annual report, required by state law, was issued late because of rigorous fact-checking, a spokesman said.

(JTA) -- A letter threatening to blow up a New York City synagogue was discovered the same day as the release of a state report showing that hate crimes against Jews had risen significantly.

A letter discovered on the evening of Dec. 30 at the Congregation Ohab Zedek on the upper West Side of Manhattan threatened to blow up the synagogue on New Year's Eve, the New York Post reported. The newspaper quoted synagogue rabbi Allen Schwartz as saying that up to a dozen other synagogues received similar letters.

Responding to a recent wave of bias attacks, New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn has organized three days of programming at religious institutions and other venues to promote tolerance.

(JTA) -- A former Brooklyn car service driver accused of leaving notes reading 'Kill Jews' around New York's Long Island was arraigned on a hate crimes charge.

Demetrios Apolonide, the driver for XYZ Car Service who was arraigned Wednesday for aggravated harassment, allegedly dropped the notes, written on torn pieces of the company's vouchers, in the communities where he dropped off his fares, according to reports. He dropped the notes at least nine different times between September 2009 and March 2010.

(JTA) -- A Chabad House serving Northwestern University in suburban Chicago was vandalized.

Saturday's attack came a day after President Obama revealed in a televised news conference that two packages containing remote-controlled bombs addressed to Jewish organizations in the Chicago area were intercepted on the way to the United States.

If a mosque near Ground Zero is a national story, let alone a Jewish story — as is the proposed burning of a Koran by an obscure Florida pastor; as is the perceived surge in Islamophobia — with each of these stories inspiring endless Jewish statements, columns, and rabbinic sermons from here to Israel, then what are we to make of Molly Norris?

Is she a Jewish story, too?

And when so many in the media have so focused on how “moderate” an imam can be, what are we to make of Imam Anwar Al-Awlaki?

In the aftermath of last week’s deadly attack on the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington — an apparent hate crime by a known white supremacist — security analysts and extremism monitors are assessing the growing threat of so-called "lone-wolf" gunmen.
The Department of Homeland Security recently released a report detailing how political and economic events, nationally and globally, are fueling extremism, including the mass purchase of firearms. A follow-up report is due soon.

Updated 430 p.m.