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Florida man arrested for attacking Chabad center in Cape Coral in March
(JTA) – Police have arrested a man who allegedly espoused conspiracy theories about Jews in connection with a March attack on a Chabad center in Cape Coral, Florida.
Maron Mark Raymon was arrested April 20 and has been charged with attempted burglary and criminal mischief to a place of worship, a third-degree felony in Florida. The arrest came more than a month after Raymon allegedly threw bricks at the front door of Chabad of Cape Coral as Shabbat services were wrapping up. Unable to break the glass, he allegedly broke a lock on the front door, before damaging the rabbi’s car and destroying a large wooden menorah on the outside of the Chabad center, housed in a shopping center along a main thoroughfare in central Cape Coral.
Rabbi Yossi Labkowski, head of the Chabad center, said the assailant fled when two people from the synagogue who had seen the incident approached him.
“Thank God we caught the individual, and I guess we don’t have to be worried anymore about this guy,” Labkowski told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Labkowski has lived in Cape Coral, a city of about 200,000 on Florida’s west coast, for 19 years and said he had never before experienced any antisemitism in his city. “Having this incident happen here, it was really out of the norm,” he said.
Local police say they have not yet been able to determine if Raymon has any links to extremist groups. But the arrest report, obtained by JTA, indicates that Raymon had been caught trespassing at a nearby church days after the Chabad incident. He then shared with law enforcement his belief that Jews were conspiring with the government “to keep medical marijuana down.”
In a statement, the Anti-Defamation League’s Florida chapter characterized the attack as an antisemitic incident.
Labkowski, who appeared at a press conference Friday alongside the local police chief and others, said the rarity of antisemitic incidents in the area made it easier to identify the suspect. “As soon as you hear somebody speaking against Jews in the area, you try to connect the dots,” he said.
“This case was priority No. 1,” chief of police Anthony Sizemore said at the press conference.
“We realize this was a horrific act,” he said. “It shook the confidence in the core of our community.”
The Chabad-Lubavitch center, one of two synagogues in Cape Coral alongside several others in nearby Fort Meyers, has several hundred members, Labkowski said. Local police provided it with an updated security camera system ahead of Passover after the attack.
The arrest adds to a growing list of arrests connected to antisemitic activity in the United States. In the last week a Massachusetts woman was arrested for distributing swastikas in front of the home of a Jewish lawyer, and three neo-Nazis were arrested after making online death threats against a Florida sheriff who vowed to take on antisemitism in his county.
The incident in Cape Coral followed a different incident at anotherFlorida Chabad center, in the Orlando area, where neo-Nazis who are active in the area gathered there to intimidate attendees in February. There, the rabbi said supporters soon outnumbered the neo-Nazis.
Debbie Sanford, director of the local Jewish federation serving Cape Coral, praised law enforcement for its handling of the incident. She said that, in general, police have been responsive and attentive to the needs of Jewish security.
“We have a very wonderful relationship with our local law enforcement,” she said. “We have full faith in them to keep our Jewish community safe.”
Labkowski said the community was “quite relieved” that the man had been caught. He added, “We didn’t believe it would happen in such a city.”
In the Cape Coral-Fort Myers area, residents are still recovering from the effects of a devastating hurricane last fall. The Jewish federation has given aid to the broader community and has not seen requests for help diminish at all in the past six months, according to Sanford. She hopes that by providing aid, they can show non-Jewish locals that Jews are there to support them.
“The federation concentrates on serving the community, and the entire community. It’s what our Jewish values teach us to do,” she said. “So the more we’re out there helping, the more I think we are preventing antisemitism.”
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The post Florida man arrested for attacking Chabad center in Cape Coral in March appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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IDF Nabs Islamic State Terror Suspect in Syria
Guns seized in the course of the operation. Photo: IDF Spokesperson via i24
i24 News – Israel Defense Forces soldiers conducted an operation on Wednesday in the area of Rafid in southern Syria to apprehend a suspected terrorist affiliated with ISIS, the military spokesperson said on Saturday.
The announcement comes as Washington announced a major operation to eliminated Islamic State terrorists in Syria after three Americans lost their lives in a jihadist attack in Palmyra.
The Israeli soldiers completed the operation in Syria “in cooperation with IDF intelligence,” the statement read, adding that “the suspect was transferred for further processing in Israeli territory.”
Additionally, during the operation, weapons were found and seized.
IDF troops “continue to remain deployed along the Golan Heights border in order to protect the State of Israel and its citizens,” the statement from the spokesperson concluded.
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Report: Trump Admin Envisions Transformation of Gaza into Chic High-Tech Metropolis
US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, Washington, DC, Jan. 20, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Carlos Barria
i24 News – The US administration of President Trump vision for the future of Gaza has it transformed into a high-end high-tech hub of luxury and innovation, the Wall Street Journal reported Saturday.
A team of officials understood to be led by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and special Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff developed a draft proposal to convert the war-ravaged Palestinian territory into a glittering metropolis, propelling Gazans from poverty to prosperity.
US officials with familiarity with the plan—pitched to foreign governments and delegations as a PowerPoint presentation— are cited in the report as saying that, understandable open-endedness of a project in its early phase notwithstanding, the blueprint has many lacunae and leaves crucial questions unanswered.
Critics cite the plan’s silence on the thorny question of disarming Hamas, the Islamist terror group that ruled Gaza for the past 15 years, and initiated the cross-border incursion and massacre of Israelis on October 7, 2023; the attack launched the devastating war that has left much of the coastal territory in ruins.
The plan’s projected cost is put at $112.1 billion over 10 years, with Washington prepared to commit support to the tune of some $60 billion in grants and guarantees on debt for “all the contemplated workstreams” in that time period.
The question of where two million Gazans would reside during the costly and lengthy rebuilding is also left unaddressed, it is understood.
Similar-sounding plans have been mooted by the Trump administration even before it managed to broker a ceasefire in October that paused the two year-long war.
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Lebanon Close to Completing Disarmament of Hezbollah South of Litani River, Says PM
FILE PHOTO: Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam speaks to journalists at the government headquarters in Beirut, Lebanon, December 3, 2025. REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir/File Photo
Lebanon is close to completing the disarmament of Hezbollah south of the Litani River, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said on Saturday, as the country races to fulfil a key demand of its ceasefire with Israel before a year-end deadline.
The US-backed ceasefire, agreed in November 2024, ended more than a year of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah and required the disarmament of the Iran-aligned terrorirst group, starting in areas south of the river adjacent to Israel.
Lebanese authorities, led by President Joseph Aoun and Salam, tasked the US-backed Lebanese army on August 5 with devising a plan to establish a state monopoly on arms by the end of the year.
“Prime Minister Salam affirmed that the first phase of the weapons consolidation plan related to the area south of the Litani River is only days away from completion,” a statement from his office said.
“The state is ready to move on to the second phase – namely (confiscating weapons) north of the Litani River – based on the plan prepared by the Lebanese army pursuant to a mandate from the government,” Salam added.
The statement came after Salam held talks with Simon Karam, Lebanon’s top civilian negotiator on a committee overseeing the Hezbollah-Israel truce.
Since the ceasefire, the sides have regularly accused each other of violations, with Israel questioning the Lebanese army’s efforts to disarm Hezbollah. Israeli warplanes have increasingly targeted Hezbollah in southern Lebanon and even in the capital.
Hezbollah, a Shi’ite Muslim group, has tried to resist the pressure – from its mainly Christian and Sunni Muslim opponents in Lebanon as well as from the US and Saudi Arabia – to disarm, saying it would be a mistake while Israel continues its air strikes on the country.
Israel has publicly urged Lebanese authorities to fulfil the conditions of the truce, saying it will act “as necessary” if Lebanon fails to take steps against Hezbollah.