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911 dispatcher and rabbi take the stand on first day of Pittsburgh synagogue shooting trial
PITTSBURGH (JTA) — When Shannon Basa-Sabol was asked to recount the events of the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting in court on Tuesday, what stood out was her memory of the death of Bernice Simon.
Basa-Sabol, a 911 dispatcher, took the stand for close to an hour, describing the ins and outs of her job.
But when the crowded courtroom heard a recording of Simon’s 911 call from the Tree of Life Congregation, Basa-Sabol paused and began to sniffle. She described telling Simon to stay quiet, then hearing multiple gunshots over the phone.
“Are you still with me?” Basa-Sabol said on the recording of the call. “Bernice, can you hear me?”
Speaking on the witness stand on Tuesday, Basa-Sabol said she had realized Simon no longer had “sufficient breathing for life.”
“I was hearing her being shot,” she said.
Basa-Sabol was the first witness in the trial of Robert Bowers, the man accused of murdering 11 Jews in their Pittsburgh synagogue on Oct. 27, 2018. For months, survivors, relatives of victims and the Jewish community of Pittsburgh have anticipated the trial, which began Tuesday, hoping for closure while worrying that the proceedings would retraumatize people, even as no one doubted the culpability of the accused.
As the prosecution and defense gave their opening statements, it was clear that the trial would air graphic details from the attack. But while lawyers and witnesses recounted the events of the day, the courthouse was also the scene of embraces, tears of comfort, discussions of Jewish tradition and even laughter as those who lived through the tragedy connected with and supported one another.
Defendants’ families were in the courtroom and monitoring via videolink elsewhere in the Joseph Weis Federal Courthouse in downtown Pittsburgh. Social workers and psychologists were on hand to help them through the proceedings. Reporters were asked not to conduct interviews in the building.
At a break, Tim Matson, a policeman injured in an exchange of fire with the suspect, sought out Andrea Wedner, who was shot and whose mother, Rose Mallinger, was killed. They hugged.
Maggie Feinstein, the director of the 10/27 Healing Partnership, which provides post-traumatic therapy for the community, watched closely over the nine or so family members in the courtroom, and handed them tissues.
“Today marked the beginning of a very difficult and painful trial that is the direct result of an incredibly terrible action by one person,” Feinstein wrote in an email after the court was adjourned. “It represented an important step in the process of justice, because these court proceedings are a way for our society to take up the burden of remembering and telling the truth about what happened on October 27, 2018.”
On the witness stand, Jeffrey Myers, the rabbi of Tree of Life Congregation, cried as he described how he recited the Shema, thinking he was about to die.
“I thought about the history of my people, how we’ve been persecuted and hunted and slaughtered for centuries,” he said. “And about how all of them must have felt in the moments before their death, and what they did was recite Deuteronomy, chapter 6, verse 4, ‘Hear, O, Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One.”
The defendant is accused of murdering 11 people and wounding six at three congregations that met in the same building — Tree of Life, Or L’Simcha and Dor Hadash. He faces 63 charges, 22 of which are death penalty charges that relate specifically to allegations that he targeted Jews: 11 counts of obstruction in free exercise of religious belief resulting in death, and 11 counts of hate crimes resulting in death. Prosecutors previously rejected a guilty plea so that they could pursue the death penalty — a punishment that families of victims and congregational leaders have debated.
Jury selection began last month and took three weeks, culminating in the selection of 18 jurors and alternates — 11 men and seven women.
In their opening statements, prosecutors and defense lawyers alike warned that the trial would revisit the attack in horrific detail. Judge Robert Colville emphasized the presumption of innocence, telling the jury that Bowers had a “clean slate” unless the prosecution was able to persuade them otherwise.
He warned jurors to avoid reading about the case in the media, and not to discuss it with friends or even with each other. And he added what he acknowledged was a recent and novel caution: “Persons, entities or even foreign governments may seek to manipulate your opinions,” instructing them not to click through if they saw messages relating to the trial pooping up on their computer.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Song Soo’s 31-minute statement, delivered in a steady tone that only occasionally fluttered with emotion, set forth her case in vivid terms: A community that had come together for decades in love and caring for each other, and for Jewish tradition, was shattered by a gunman determined to murder Jews.
“In the Tree of Life synagogue, the words ‘Tree of Life’ are written in Hebrew high above the bookstand that holds the Torah, the holiest book in the Jewish faith,” she said. “The Tree of Life synagogue had anchored the corner of Wilkins and Shady for decades. As they did every Saturday men and women of the Jewish faith made their way to the synagogue to observe Shabbat.”
She noted that the Torah portion that week, Vayera, “was from the Book of Genesis and was about welcoming strangers.” She went on to describe the warmth of those who were killed and dwelled on Cecil and David Rosenthal, men in their 50s with developmental disabilities who loved to greet congregants.
“In many ways, they were like children, childlike because of their mental disabilities, trusting and pure,” Soo said, adding that fellow congregants would help them “tie a shoe lace, tuck in a shirt, find a page in a prayer book.”
“That morning David Rosenthal stood at the front of the chapel helping to lead the opening prayer” he had memorized, she said. “His devotion to the faith made up for the fact that he could not actually read the prayer book.”
Then, she described the carnage, referring to the defendant’s alleged statements of hate on Gab, a social media platform friendly to right-wing extremists. He allegedly condemned HIAS, the Jewish refugee aid group that partnered with Dor Hadash.
“That same morning the defendant was making his own preparations to destroy, to kill and defile,” Soo said. “He hated Jews, he called them ‘the children of Satan … the most bloodthirsty, evil demons who ever walked the face of the earth.’”
She read out the Gab entry Bowers allegedly posted while he was parked outside the synagogue complex. “HIAS likes to bring in invaders that like to kill our people. I can’t sit by and watch our people get slaughtered, screw your optics, I’m going in.”
“And the defendant did go in,” Soo said. She described some of the congregants’ deaths in detail, and concluded by reading out the 11 names of the murdered: Cecil and David Rosenthal, couple Bernice and Sylvan Simon, Rose Malinger, Joyce Fienberg, Richard Gottfried, Jerry Rabinowitz, Daniel Stein, Melvin Wax and Irving Younger.
The defendant, clad in a green sweater over an open-collared light blue shirt, stared ahead and scribbled notes. He never looked at Soo, who spoke at a podium to his right.
In her opening statement, Bowers’ lead attorney, Judy Clarke, said the defense would not contest the events, or Bowers’ responsibility for them. Clarke is known as “the attorney for the damned” for her determination to keep her clients from execution. She has defended the Unabomber, the Boston Marathon bomber and one of the conspirators who planned the 9/11 attacks.
“This senseless act, the loss and devastation, were caused by Robert Bowers,” she said. “There is no disagreement, there is no dispute and there will be no doubt as to who shot the 11 congregants. On Oct. 27, 2018, Robert Bowers, the man seated at that table, loaded with ammunition and firearms entered the synagogue.”
Clarke suggested that her defense would focus on whether the defendant’s motives met the standards required by the government’s charges, particularly regarding the 22 death penalty charges.
“We can at least do our best to uphold the rule of law by figuring out, to the best of our ability, what were Mr. Bowers’ motives and intent,” she said. She argued that her client’s statements, which focused on his deluded belief that Jews were intent on replacing white people, do not make clear that his intent met the standards enshrined in federal law.
“These statements are outrageous,” she said. “The fact that they were made raises more questions than they may answer.”
Carol Janssen, another employee from a 911 call center, testified, and in the afternoon, for a number of hours, Eric Olshan, a Jewish U.S. Attorney, asked Myers to guide the jurors through a tour of a physical scale model of the synagogue that was brought into the courtroom. Myers described the building, its congregations and the fundamentals of Judaism to an attentive jury.
Shabbat ends “when three stars are in the sky,” said Myers, who wore a black suit and white kippah and delivered his testimony in measured tones. He wore a kippah because “it reminds me that I’m in God’s presence wherever I go.”
Myers occasionally smiled at the jury when he cracked a joke, eliciting laughter, as when he recalled what a SWAT team advised him when they reached him in the synagogue: “Rabbi, run your ass off.”
And, as the defendant stared at him, Myers memorialized his murdered congregants, affectionately recalling their self-appointed roles during Sabbath services. He remembered one of the victims, Cecil Rosenthal, who always beat him to the synagogue so he could be in place to greet all comers. “I would say to him jokingly, ‘Cecil did you sleep here again?’”
David Rosenthal, he said, sang prayers “loudly,” while Rose Mallinger routinely led the prayer for peace, “that all people can live together in freedom and peace.”
As he recalled the moments of the shooting, Myers said, he felt he would not be angry at God, “because it was not God who did this. I was prepared to meet my fate.” He sobbed.
The scheduled Torah reading from Genesis 12, he said, narrates how Abraham welcomes three strangers.
“I was going to talk about the Jewish imperative to welcome all guests whoever they may be,” he said. “But I never gave that sermon.”
The defense declined to cross-examine the rabbi.
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Rashida Tlaib Introduces Resolution ‘Recognizing Ongoing Nakba’
US Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) addresses attendees as she takes part in a protest calling for a ceasefire in Gaza outside the US Capitol, in Washington, DC, US, Oct. 18, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Leah Millis
US Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) on Thursday reintroduced a congressional resolution recognizing the 78th anniversary of what she described as the “ongoing nakba,” using the Arabic term for “catastrophe” deployed by Palestinians and anti-Israel activists to refer to the establishment of the modern state of Israel in 1948.
The resolution, introduced on the anniversary of Israel’s independence, accuses the Jewish state of carrying out “ethnic cleansing,” “apartheid,” and “genocide” against Palestinians, language that many pro-Israel lawmakers in Congress and advocacy groups strongly reject as inflammatory and inaccurate. The measure also calls for renewed US support for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), an agency that has faced mounting scrutiny from Israel and several Western governments over allegations that employees participated in or supported Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel.
In a statement announcing the resolution, Tlaib argued that the so-called nakba “did not end” with the Arab-Israeli war in 1948 and continues today through Israeli military operations and settlement expansion.
“War criminal Netanyahu and his cabinet have repeatedly threatened to ethnically cleanse the entire Palestinian population in Gaza, annex the land, and permanently occupy it. Today, they are extending these same threats towards southern Lebanon,” she said, referring to Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and military operations against US-designated terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah. “As we mark the 78th anniversary of the Nakba, we honor all of those killed since the ethnic cleansing of Palestine began and all those who have been forced from their homes and violently displaced from their land.”
Activists often invoke the term “nakba” when discussing the displacement of some 750,000 Palestinian Arabs following Israel’s War of Independence, many of whom left the nascent state for varied reasons, including that they were encouraged by Arab leaders to flee their homes to make way for the invading Arab armies. At the same time, about 850,000 Jews were forced to flee or expelled from Middle Eastern and North African countries in the 20th century, primarily in the aftermath of Israel’s declaring independence.
Tlaib’s resolution is co-sponsored by several prominent progressive Democrats, including Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY), Ilhan Omar (MN), Ayanna Pressley (MA), and Summer Lee (PA).
The move is likely to draw fierce criticism from pro-Israel lawmakers and Jewish organizations, many of whom argue the resolution ignores the historical context surrounding Israel’s founding and the 1948 war. Israel accepted the United Nations partition plan in 1947 to create two states, one Jewish and one Arab, while neighboring Arab states rejected it and launched a military invasion after Israel declared independence.
The resolution also calls for a so-called Palestinian “right of return,” a demand insisting that potentially millions of descendants of Palestinian refugees should be able to return to the land of Israel, a step that, according to proponents, would result in the abolition of the world’s only Jewish state.
“This immense trauma, including the loss of their loved ones and connections to the communities they grew up in, needs to be repaired. True peace must be built on justice and the inalienable right of return for Palestinian refugees,” Tlaib said in her statement.
While refugees are generally defined as those who flee a country out of credible fear of persecution, UNRWA uniquely defines Palestinian refugees to include all descendants of those who left the land, regardless of where they were born.
Tlaib, the only Palestinian American member of the US Congress, has emerged as one of Israel’s loudest critics on Capitol Hill, repeatedly accusing the Jewish state of genocide and drawing rebuke from fellow lawmakers.
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Toronto Sees 50% Drop in 2025 Hate Crimes, Yet 82% of Religiously Motivated Attacks Target Jews
A member of law enforcement personnel works at the scene outside the US Consulate after shots were fired, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, March 10, 2026. Picture taken with a mobile phone. Photo: REUTERS/Kyaw Soe Oo
Even as Toronto recorded an overall decline in reported hate crimes last year, newly released data shows the city’s Jewish community continued to face disproportionately high levels of targeted antisemitism and violence amid an increasingly concerning social climate.
On Thursday, Toronto Police released its annual hate crime statistical report, showing that Jews accounted for 82 percent of all religiously motivated hate crimes in 2025, compared to 14 percent targeting Muslims.
Even though the Jewish community makes up less than 3 percent of Toronto’s population, officials now warn that Jewish residents are 14 times more likely than other residents to be targeted in a hate incident.
With 81 anti-Jewish hate crimes recorded, Jews and Israelis were the targets of 35 percent of all reported hate incidents in the city.
Despite a 50 percent overall decline in reported hate crimes, from 443 in 2024 to 231 in 2025, Toronto has seen a 40 percent increase in such incidents so far this year compared with the same period last year.
Toronto Police Chief Myron Demkiw noted that, even with the overall decline, the Jewish community continued to be the primary target of hate-motivated offenses.
“We are steadfast in our commitment to confronting hate in all its forms and making it easier for people to come forward and report incidents of hate,” Demkiw said in a press release.
Because police-reported hate crime data only includes incidents that come to the attention of authorities and are later confirmed or suspected to be hate-driven, official figures likely underestimate the true scale of such incidents.
Over the past two years, Toronto authorities have expanded law enforcement capacity and resources to investigate hate crimes by establishing a Counter-Terrorism Security Unit and increasing specialized training for officers, while also strengthening Holocaust education initiatives and introducing digital literacy programs for youth aimed at countering online radicalization.
Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs Vice President Michelle Stock called the latest statistics “deeply alarming,” warning of a broader reality of hostility that Jewish families across the city are confronting on a daily basis.
“Toronto prides itself on being a city where people of all backgrounds can live openly, safely and without fear. Those values are undermined when any community no longer feels secure expressing its identity in public,” Stock said in a statement.
“From synagogues to schools to public displays of Jewish identity, blatant attacks against the Jewish community are becoming more frequent and more brazen,” she continued. “Jewish Canadians are being targeted simply for who they are. No one should have to think twice about wearing a kippah, attending synagogue, sending their children to Jewish schools or participating openly in Jewish life.”
The city’s figures reflect a broader nationwide rise in antisemitism and anti-Israel hostility, with the Jewish advocacy group B’nai Brith Canada reporting a record high in anti-Jewish hate crimes in 2025 for the second consecutive year, documenting 6,800 such cases across the country.
According to the latest report, antisemitic incidents nationwide increased by 9.3 percent last year, surpassing the previous record total of 6,219 set in 2024.
With an average of 18.6 incidents per day, this figure represents a 145.6 percent increase from 2022, before the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Early 2026 data already indicate the country is now on track to see its most violent year against the Jewish community in recent memory, with more violent antisemitic attacks recorded so far this year than during all of 2025, B’nai Brith Canada reported.
In total, 11 violent antisemitic incidents have already been recorded across the country since January, surpassing the 10 violent cases documented during all of last year
“These brazen attacks on Jewish Canadians are a sign of a crisis of antisemitism that has spiraled out of control,” Simon Wolle, chief executive officer of B’nai Brith Canada, said in a statement.
“Violence such as this, which has escalated from targeting synagogues to targeting Jewish people directly, does not occur in a vacuum. It is what happens when governments fail to act despite mounting evidence that antisemitism is becoming more normalized and dangerous,” Wolle continued.
Last week, a group of Jewish worshippers standing outside the Congregation Chasidei Bobov synagogue in Montreal was targeted in a drive-by shooting, leaving one person with minor injuries.
A week earlier, three visibly Jewish residents were targeted in a separate antisemitic attack when suspects opened fire with a gel-pellet gun, causing minor injuries.
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Israel, Lebanon Extend Ceasefire by 45 Days as Washington Talks Conclude
Smoke rises following explosions in southern Lebanon, near the Israel-Lebanon border, as seen from northern Israel, April 27, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Shir Torem
Israel and Lebanon agreed to a 45-day extension of a ceasefire that has tamped down the conflict between Israel and Iran-backed terrorist group Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, as two days of talks facilitated by Washington concluded on Friday with an agreement to hold further meetings in the coming weeks.
“The April 16 cessation of hostilities will be extended by 45 days to enable further progress,” State Department spokesperson Tommy Pigott said on X, adding that the talks aimed at settling decades of conflict between the two countries were “highly productive.” The ceasefire was set to expire on Sunday.
The Lebanese and Israeli delegations issued positive statements about the talks, their third meeting since Israel intensified air attacks on Lebanon after Hezbollah fired missiles at Israel on March 2, three days into the US-Israeli war with Iran. Israel‘s bombing campaign and ground invasion into Lebanon’s south displaced some 1.2 million people, before US President Donald Trump announced a ceasefire last month following initial talks between the two countries’ ambassadors in Washington.
Hezbollah and Israel have continued to trade blows, with hostilities focused in southern Lebanon, where Israeli forces are occupying a self-declared security zone.
LEBANON WANTS HOSTILITIES TO CEASE
The US-led mediation between Lebanon and Israel has emerged in parallel to diplomacy aimed at ending the US-Iran conflict. Iran has said ending Israel‘s war in Lebanon is one of its demands for a deal over the wider conflict.
Lebanon’s delegation, which is attending despite objections from Shi’ite Muslim Hezbollah, has prioritized a cessation in hostilities in the talks. Israel says Hezbollah, which openly seeks the Jewish state’s destruction, must be disarmed as part of any broader peace agreement with Lebanon.
The Washington meetings, the highest-level contact between Lebanon and Israel in decades, have evolved to include security and military officials. Pigott said on X that a new “security track” of the negotiations would be launched at the Pentagon on May 29, while the State Department will convene the two sides again June 2-3 for a political track of negotiations.
“We hope these discussions will advance lasting peace between the two countries, full recognition of each other’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and establishing genuine security along their shared border,” Pigott said.
Lebanon’s delegation said in a statement that it wanted to turn the momentum from the ceasefire into a lasting peace agreement. “The extension of the ceasefire and the establishment of a US-facilitated security track provide critical breathing space for our citizens, reinforce state institutions, and advance a political pathway toward lasting stability,” the delegation said.
Israeli ambassador to the US Yechiel Leiter said the talks were “frank and constructive.”
“There will be ups and downs, but the potential for success is great. What will be paramount throughout negotiations is the security of our citizens and our soldiers,” Leiter said on X.