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A Jewish security group says it tipped off FBI about a neo-Nazi who said he wanted to kill Jews
(JTA) — A Jewish security agency is taking credit for tipping off the FBI about a man associated with a white supremacist group who had a stockpile of weapons and Nazi propaganda in his Los Angeles-area home.
Ryan Scott Bradford was charged last month with conspiring to distribute methamphetamine and being a felon in possession of ammunition. But the FBI and Los Angeles police found far more than drugs and bullets when it searched his house on July 27, according to the criminal complaint filed in federal court: They also uncovered five switches for converting semi-automatic weapons into automatic weapons; two 3D printers, one decorated with swastikas; posters of Adolf Hitler, Nazi flags, and a calendar with a handwritten note saying, “New Year’s Resolution: Take over the world – save Aryan race *Bake every single Jew.*”
When officers spotted a homemade bomb, they temporarily shut down the streets surrounding Bradford’s residence.
“As alleged, this convicted felon affiliated with a violent white supremacist group who espouses horrific acts of violence against Jews appears to be manufacturing firearms and possessing an improvised explosive device,” U.S. Attorney Martin Estrada said in a statement announcing Bradford’s arrest. “The potential danger to the community cannot be overstated.”
The charging documents do not make clear when the FBI began monitoring Bradford. But according to the Community Security Initiative, a watchdog group at the Jewish Federation of Los Angeles that monitors threats against the Jewish community and provides safety training to Jews and Jewish institutions, the agency knew to investigate him thanks to the Jewish group’s work.
A CSI analyst told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the group had identified Bradford as a possible threat because of his social media use. He used keywords that the organization monitors for and expressed “implicit threats toward the Jewish community,” said the analyst, who requested anonymity out of concerns about their safety.
“It’s one thing to post antisemitic content and imagery. It’s another to go into a little bit more detail of your own history and the fixation that one has on a certain community — that stood out right off the bat,” the analyst said. “It increased over time, I wouldn’t say dramatically, but it was on an escalatory basis where it continued to increase in duration and time.”
The FBI’s Los Angeles office declined to discuss the ongoing investigation or the role the Jewish security group played in its scrutiny of Bradford.
“The FBI relies on the community always as a source of intelligence,” a spokesperson wrote in an email to JTA. “In many cases, the community act as our eyes and ears and we take the information given to us very seriously. While I can’t get into the details about our continuing investigation in order to protect the rights of the accused, I can confirm that the FBI routinely relies on tips/intel from the public and, when corroborated, may act on that information.”
The case is at least the second in recent months where Jewish security groups have said their monitoring of threats against Jews online has resulted in arrests by law enforcement. In November, a tip from the Community Security Initiative’s New York outpost led to the arrest of a man who allegedly claimed he wanted to “shoot up a synagogue.”
The Los Angeles federation’s security initiative is a decade old, but in recent years sweeping investments in Jewish security efforts have enabled similar monitoring in other places, as well as more intensive monitoring at the national level. The Secure Community Network, which coordinates security for Jewish institutions nationwide, opened a “command center” in Chicago in 2021. That same year, the Jewish Federations of North America launched its own security initiative, LiveSecure, with $130 million to fortify Jewish institutions. The initiatives followed antisemitic attacks on synagogues in Pittsburgh and Poway, California, and came amid increases in white supremacist activity and reports of antisemitic incidents.
The CSI said between 2021 and 2023, Bradford posted multiple online messages and photographs under various iterations of the username “Peckerwood” — a reference to the San Fernando Valley Peckerwoods, a racially motivated violent extremist group based in Los Angeles County. He also documented his use of a 3D printer to manufacture firearms and calling for the mass murder of Jews.
Not all worrisome online activity causes the Jewish watchdog group to contact law enforcement. “The individual has to have the capability, intent and opportunity,” the analyst told JTA about CSI’s standards for reporting a threat to the FBI. CSI filed its first suspicious activity report to the FBI in March 2022, the organization said.
In July, according to the criminal complaint, Bradford posted on the secure communication platform Telegram, “Ready to kill some Jews with us? The white boys are gunna kick it off we’ve had enough of this kike bullshit what about you?”
In September, Bradford began posting links to instruction manuals for explosives on the encrypted cloud-based messaging app Telegram, according to the criminal complaint. That was enough for the Community Security Initiative to compile another suspicious activity report for law enforcement, according to the analyst.
The analyst compared the group’s work to that of private citizens, saying the online monitoring is like “being in a park and just watching the circus go by and jotting down information as it comes along.”
“We don’t surveil per se,” the analyst said. “We do what any private citizen has the right to do, which is look at open-source information and gather that information and submit it.”
Law enforcement agencies pick up the trail from there. In Bradford’s case, after agents found evidence of drug trafficking in his communications, the result was an arrest and prosecution.
“The defendant is a self-described anti-Semite associated with a white supremacist group which espouses the hatred of Jews and other minorities,” Donald Alway, the assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles field office said in a statement. “Hateful rhetoric that crosses the line into violence will get the attention of law enforcement and those who engage in such extremism will be held accountable should they act upon their violent rhetoric.”
Estrada, the U.S. attorney on the case, indicated in his statement that further charges could follow.
“We will continue to investigate this matter to ensure that this defendant is held accountable for his crimes, and to keep our community safe from acts of violence motivated by racist and hateful ideology,” he said.
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The post A Jewish security group says it tipped off FBI about a neo-Nazi who said he wanted to kill Jews appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Rubio Condemns Mass Killings of Alawites in Syria, Says US Stands With Country’s Minority Communities
Marco Rubio speaks after he is sworn in as Secretary of State by US Vice President JD Vance at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington, DC, Jan. 21, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday denounced the mass killing of more than 1,000 people, mostly civilians from the Alawite minority group, in Syria, calling on the newly installed Syrian government to hold the perpetrators “accountable” for the massacres.
“The United States condemns the radical Islamist terrorists, including foreign jihadis, that murdered people in western Syria in recent days,” Rubio said in a statement. “The United States stands with Syria’s religious and ethnic minorities, including its Christian, Druze, Alawite, and Kurdish communities, and offers its condolences to the victims and their families. Syria’s interim authorities must hold the perpetrators of these massacres against Syria’s minority communities accountable.”
In a series of clashes beginning on Thursday, fighters allied with the new Syrian government carried out mass executions of Alawite Muslim civilians in the coastal towns of Latakia and Tartus. According to Syria’s interior ministry, the pro-government fighters conducted “sweeping operations” in the towns to dismantle the remaining “remnants” of the regime of former President Bashaar al-Assad, targeting primarily adult men.
According to Syrian officials, the fighting started when a group of Alawite fighters loyal to Assad killed their forces in a premeditated attack.
The ensuing mass killing of Alawites, who comprise roughly 10 percent of the Syrian population, highlights growing concerns over the safety of minority groups in the country.
Syria’s interim President Ahmed Sharaa decried the massacres, claiming they undermined his efforts to unite the country and vowing to seek retribution for the violence.
“Syria is a state of law. The law will take its course on all,” Sharaa told Reuters. “We fought to defend the oppressed, and we won’t accept that any blood be shed unjustly, or goes without punishment or accountability, even among those closest to us.”
In late January, Sharaa became Syria’s transitional president after leading a rebel campaign that ousted Assad, whose decades-long Iran-backed rule had strained ties with the Arab world during the nearly 14-year Syrian war.
The collapse of Assad’s regime was the result of an offensive spearheaded by Sharaa’s Sunni Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group, a former al-Qaeda affiliate.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz denounced the Syrian president as a “terrorist” who “switched his robe for a suit and presented a moderate face.”
“Now he’s taken off the mask and exposed his true face: A jihadist terrorist of the al-Qaeda school who is committing horrifying acts against a civilian population,” Katz said in a statement. “Israel will defend itself against any threat from Syria.”
Following Assad’s fall in December, Israel moved troops into a buffer zone along the Syrian border to secure a military position to prevent terrorists from launching attacks against the Jewish state. The previously demilitarized zone in the Golan Heights was established under the 1974 Disengagement of Forces Agreement between Damascus and Jerusalem that ended the Yom Kippur War. However, Israel considered the agreement void after the collapse of Assad’s regime.
Syria’s new government has called for Israel to withdraw its forces.
Alawite leaders in Syria have also issued a statement to Israel, calling on the Jewish state to deploy forces in the country to protect its minority civilians.
“Following the fall of Assad’s regime, and after the massacres that took place in Alawite areas against our people, we call on the Israeli government to provide protection, assistance, and support,” the leaders wrote, according to i24 News.
The leaders lamented that “the world is silent about the massacres happening in Syria” and that if the Jewish state offered help, the Alawite Muslims “will be your most loyal and good friends.”
The post Rubio Condemns Mass Killings of Alawites in Syria, Says US Stands With Country’s Minority Communities first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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‘Inflection Point’: UCLA Announces Initiative to Combat Antisemitism
Anti-Israel protesters set up camp on the UCLA campus in Los Angeles, CA on April 25, 2024. Photo: Alberto Sibaja via Reuters Connect.
The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) announced on Monday an “Initiative to Combat Antisemitism,” a move that follows a series of incidents which have fueled allegations that the campus has become a hub of anti-Jewish discrimination.
“With honest reflection, it is clear that while we have made progress in addressing antisemitism, we have more to do in our shared goal of eradicating it in its entirety,” UCLA chancellor Julio Frenk said in a statement. “Through this initiative, UCLA will implement recommendations of the Task Force to Combat Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias.”
He continued, “These recommendations include: enhancing relevant training and education, improving the complaint system, assuring enforcement of current and new laws and polices, and cooperating with stakeholders.”
“This is an opportunity for UCLA to rise to the challenge of being an exemplary university,” Frenk concluded.
The Initiative to Combat Antisemitism is the second stage of a process begun by UCLA when it created an antisemitism task force in February 2024. Commissioned to study the problem and issue recommendations, the task force last year issued a report which noted, among other things, that two-thirds of Jewish UCLA students believe that antisemitism on the campus “is a problem or a serious problem,” and a higher share of them, 70 percent, attributed the atmosphere of hatred to the university’s decision to allow a “Gaza encampment” protest during the final days of the 2023-2024 spring semester.
That decision proved fateful, as it prompted a lawsuit accusing UCLA of fostering a discriminatory learning environment. Filed by several students, the complaint argued that the encampment was a source of antisemitism from the moment pro-Hamas agitators installed it. Students there chanted “death to the Jews,” the complaint recounted, set up illegal checkpoints through which no one could pass unless they denounced Israel, and ordered campus security assigned there by the university to ensure that no Jews entered it.
Alleging that UCLA refused to clear the encampment despite knowing what was happening there, the complaint charged that administrators put on a “remarkable display of cowardice, appeasement, and illegality,” and in doing so, allowed a “Jewish Exclusion Zone” on its property, violating its own policies as well as “the basic guarantee of equal access to educational facilities that receive federal funding” and other equal protection laws.
In addition to students, university officials have also been targeted by pro-Hamas activists — as The Algemeiner has previously reported.
On Feb. 5 some 50 members of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and the allied campus group Graduate Students for Justice in Palestine amassed on the property of Jay Sures — a Jewish member of the Board of Regents, the governing body for the University of California (UC) system — and threatened that he must “divest now or pay.” As part of the demonstration, the students imprinted their hands, which had been submerged in red paint to symbolize the spilling of blood, all over Sures’ garage door and cordoned the area with caution tape.
The behavior crossed the line, Frenk said in an email sent to the entire student body, and he suspended both groups while commissioning the school’s Office of Student Conduct to complete a thorough investigation into the incident. Defying the disciplinary measures, an estimated 150 people — including members of Faculty for Justice in Palestine (FJP), among other anti-Israel groups — the next day marched through the campus demanding that SJP’s punishment be repealed while arguing it is they and not Sures who are victims of racism.
“If you look at who actually experienced violence, it’s overwhelming our own students, and that was the fault of our university administration” Michael Chwe, a professor of political science and member of FJP, was quoted by The Daily Bruin as saying. “For them to be claiming that our students are violent is completely backward.”
That same month, a Jewish faculty group at the university issued an open letter calling attention to a slew of indignities to which they have been subjected in recent months. The missive enumerated a litany of falsehoods spread about Jews by a task force created to study anti-Arab bigotry on the campus — including that Jewish faculty have conspired to undermine academic freedom with “coordinated repression,” promoted the interests of conservative groups, and harmed minority students by opposing “racial justice.”
The group added that discrimination at the David Geffen School of Medicine (DGSOM) has wreaked demonstrable harm on Jewish students and faculty. Student clubs, it said, are denied recognition for arbitrary reasons; Jewish faculty whose ethnic backgrounds were previously unknown are purged from the payrolls upon being identified as Jews; and anyone who refuses to participate in anti-Zionist events is “intimidated” and pressured.
In Monday’s announcement, Frenk called for reforming UCLA’s culture to ensure that all are accepted, regardless of race, ethnicity, and creed.
“UCLA is at an inflection point,” he said. “Building on past efforts and lessons, we must now push ourselves to extinguish antisemitism, completely and definitively. The principles on which UCLA was founded — and which we continue to advance — point us toward a clear course of action: We must persevere in our fight to end hate, however it manifests itself.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post ‘Inflection Point’: UCLA Announces Initiative to Combat Antisemitism first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Connecticut Men Charged With Hate Crime for Vandalizing Menorah
Illustrative: A menorah knocked to the ground by an antisemitic vandal who attacked a Jewish educational center in eastern Moscow. Photo: SHAMIR.
Police in Guilford, Connecticut have arrested and charged Steven Prinz Jr., 25, and Troy Prinz, 22, for allegedly vandalizing a menorah set up for public display.
The menorah’s owner reported the damage to law enforcement on Jan. 13 and provided surveillance video of the Jan. 5 crime. The suspects hid their faces, one with a gas mask and the other with fabric, and knocked over the menorah before stomping it on the ground, breaking multiple parts. Before discovering the footage, the owner had originally reported that wind had knocked down the menorah.
The two brothers, who were arrested on Wednesday, face charges of second-degree intimidation based on bigotry or bias, second-degree conspiracy to commit intimidation based on bigotry or bias, first-degree criminal mischief, and first-degree conspiracy to commit criminal mischief. Police released both men after they posted $25,000 court-set bonds.
The Guilford Police Department’s Lt. Martina Jakober said in a statement that the investigation “involved significant cooperation between the police and members of our community in order to locate and preserve the essential evidence needed to properly identify these suspects.”
Jakober added that “the men and women of the Guilford Police Department wish to extend our deepest appreciation to all who live and work in the community” and that “our collective efforts, as the police and the community, ultimately resulted in their identification and arrest.”
Rabbi Yossi Yaffe, director for Chabad-Lubavitch of the Shoreline which had set up the menorah, released a statement following the arrests.
“This aberration does not represent the Guilford community. For 25 years, Chabad of the Shoreline’s menorah has illuminated Guilford without incident,” Yaffe stated. “Throughout the years, many residents from different faith communities and from across the political spectrum have expressed their appreciation and pride in having a menorah on the Guilford town green. With G-d’s help, we will continue to share the menorah’s light for many years to come!”
Yaffe announced that the hate crime targeting the menorah had inspired the community to increase its efforts to promote the holiday, with plans to increase displays and distribution of menorahs next Hanukkah.
Jakober said that the police department intends “to reflect on this incident and continuously work to figure out an ever-strengthening partnership with the community.” She added that “together, we can be sure that acts of hate or bias have no place in Guilford.”
Last week, the legal system made further efforts to counter alleged hate crimes in New York and Florida.
In Manhattan on Thursday, prosecutors said that Utah man Luis Ramirez, 23, allegedly proclaimed himself “Hitler reincarnated,” threatened to kill “as many Jews as I killed in [World War II],” and targeted New York City’s Central Synagogue. The judge denied bail for Ramirez and required him to undergo a psychological evaluation.
Prosecutors said that Ramirez had shown signs of paranoia and delusion which included calling himself by the names of “biblical characters.” Court documents stated that Ramirez had been diagnosed as “schizophrenic, suffering from hallucinations, delusions, and not being connected to reality.” A military officer cadet training school had reportedly discharged Ramirez for psychological reasons. Photos from Ramirez’s court appearance show him grinning.
Ramirez faces as much as 15 years’ imprisonment for a terrorism charge. “He is now charged with significant terrorism and hate crime charges and was remanded into custody,” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said. “Any form of antisemitism is despicable, and I want Manhattan’s Jewish community to know we are remaining extremely vigilant.”
The judge scheduled Ramirez’s next court appearance for March 20.
Meanwhile, in Florida on Wednesday, the Boynton Beach Police Department arrested Adam Elshazly, charging him with allegedly targeting his former employer with violent and antisemitic threats via texts on July 2, 2024. The messages included antisemitic images and threats of violent sexual abuse against the victim’s wife and daughter. The victim told police that he had hired Elshazly 10 years ago for a job and fired him three days later for poor performance, not to hear from him again until receiving the text messages.
Police charged Elshazly with a count of intimidation with prejudice while committing an offense and released him the next day following the posting of a $30,000 bond. A judge scheduled his arraignment for Thursday.
The post Connecticut Men Charged With Hate Crime for Vandalizing Menorah first appeared on Algemeiner.com.