De Blasio and Cuomo United Amid Wave of Anti-Semitic Threats

http://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/07/nyregion/de-blasio-cuomo-jcc-bomb-threats.html

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Mayor Bill de Blasio had just arrived for a meeting with Jewish leaders on Tuesday morning to discuss a disturbing rise in the number of hate crimes aimed at Jewish community centers and organizations when he was briefed by police officials about the latest incident: a bomb threat at the office of the Anti-Defamation League in Manhattan.

“New threats are coming in literally as of today,” Mr. de Blasio said at a news conference after the meeting, held at the Joan and Alan Bernikow Jewish Community Center on Staten Island. The center had received a bomb threat about a week earlier and the facility was evacuated while police searched the building.

Other threats on Tuesday morning were made at Anti-Defamation League offices in Boston and Washington, and at several Jewish community centers and a day school in upstate New York, Florida, Maryland, Oregon and Wisconsin, according to Twitter posts by the league’s chief executive, Jonathan Greenblatt, and state officials.

“This is a moment in time, a moment in history, where forces of hate have been unleashed,” Mr. de Blasio said.

The mayor’s trip to Staten Island came a day after Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo returned from Israel, where he had traveled to show his support amid the wave of anti-Semitic threats and attacks in New York State and around the nation.

The rise in anti-Semitic attacks has drawn condemnation from the mayor and the governor, who, although both Democrats, have found little to agree on. Both Mr. Cuomo and Mr. de Blasio have pointed to last year’s presidential election as a factor in the increase in hate crimes, which have also targeted Muslims, blacks, Hispanics, and members of gay and transgender groups.

The governor’s whirlwind trip to a critical American ally — he arrived on Sunday morning and left shortly after midnight — stoked speculation that he was considering a future presidential run, although he denied that there were political ramifications to the visit.

“If you really care, you show up,” he said in Jerusalem, where he met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other officials.

Mr. Cuomo took to Twitter on Tuesday to say that state police officers were on the scene at the league office in Manhattan and community centers in two upstate towns, Brighton and Dewitt, that had received bomb threats.

There have been 100 hate crimes reported so far in New York this year, compared with 47 during the same period last year, according to the Police Department. Of those 100, 55 were aimed at Jews or Jewish institutions, compared with 19 in the prior period.

“We have not seen anything like this in many years, this level of hatred directed against the Jewish community, this many threats,” Mr. de Blasio said.

Robert K. Boyce, the Police Department’s chief of detectives, said that common elements linking some of the threats led investigators to conclude that the wave of incidents may be organized.

“This could be coming from a singular individual or a group thereof,” he said. “Right now, it’s undetermined. But they are coming in quite frequently right now with specific language that I will not get into on each one.”

Last week a St. Louis man, Juan Thompson, was arrested on charges of making more than a half-dozen threats against Jewish institutions in New York and around the country. Among the threats listed in the complaint against Mr. Thompson was a February bomb threat called into the New York office of the Anti-Defamation League.

But there have been many other threats not attributed to Mr. Thompson, officials said.

Asked on Tuesday whether the new executive order signed by President Trump this week restricting immigration from six majority-Muslim countries contributed to an atmosphere in which hate crimes could flourish, Mr. de Blasio said, “In my opinion, it does not help at all.”

Mr. Cuomo chimed in on Twitter, saying that the new executive order “fails the test of American values.”

Etzion Neuer, the deputy director of the Anti-Defamation League for the New York region, attended the meeting with Jewish leaders and the mayor. While there have been spikes in the number of threats before, “We’ve never seen this, again and again, waves and waves of these threats,” he said. “They’re targeting Jewish community centers, they’re targeting offices and lives are being disrupted.”