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Long-delayed Pittsburgh synagogue shooting trial to begin Monday, igniting pain, fear and hopes for closure
(JTA) — Every Thursday, Brad Orsini gets on a conference call with dozens of other security specialists who, like him, focus on preventing threats to American Jews. But in a few days, and for the coming months, the conference call won’t just address the dangers of the present and future. It will also deal with events that occurred more than four years ago.
That’s because next week marks the beginning of the trial of the gunman who is accused of killing 11 worshippers in a Pittsburgh synagogue in October 2018.
Orsini, who oversaw the city’s Jewish communal security on the day of the attack in the neighborhood of Squirrel Hill, hopes to find a sense of closure in the alleged shooter’s prosecution. But he also knows that the trial threatens to broadcast the white supremacist ideas that lay behind the attack, and continue to pose risks for Jewish communities. And he worries that, in addition to providing a possible pathway for survivors and victims’ families to move into the future, it could also thrust them back into a painful past.
“It’s long overdue,” Orsini said. “This has been looming large over the Pittsburgh community and, quite honestly, the Jewish community in the nation. We’re all looking toward finishing this trial and prosecuting this actor for what he did.”
At the same time, he added, “This trial is going to reopen wounds that this community has suffered for almost five years now, and it’s going to have the ability to retraumatize many people in the community. And we have to be concerned about that.”
Beginning on Monday, those countervailing emotions and expectations will come to bear as the deadliest antisemitic attack in American Jewish history is litigated in court. The trial, which will begin with jury selection, is expected to last about three months. Few doubt the guilt of the accused shooter, Robert Bowers, whose name is hardly uttered by Jewish residents of Squirrel Hill. But what remains unclear is what the trial will mean for American Jews — and for the families most directly affected by the attack.
Some hope for the defendant to get the death penalty — even though that will mean prolonging the legal ordeal — while others have advocated against it. Some hope for the trial to shed light on the threat of white supremacy, even as renewed attention on the attack could inspire other violent extremists. And some hope the trial will help them move past the tragedy, even as they know it will be difficult to hear the details of the shooting laid out in court.
“The country is going to have to undergo this unprecedented trial of the country’s worst mass killer of Jews,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League. “It’s going to be really hard, so I think our community is really going to have to buckle down and brace ourselves.”
The attack on Saturday morning, Oct. 27, 2018, killed 11 people from three congregations, all of which met at the same building, and injured six others, including four police officers. The defendant faces 63 criminal charges, including hate crimes and murder charges. He has pleaded not guilty. The prosecution is seeking the death penalty — a choice some relatives of victims are vocally supporting. Previously, leaders of two of the three congregations that suffered the attack had opposed the death penalty in this case.
“This massacre was not just a mass murder of innocent citizens during a service in a house of worship,” Diane Rosenthal, sister of David and Cecil Rosethal, who died in the attack, told local journalists, according to reporting by the Pittsburgh Union Progress. “The death penalty must apply to vindicate justice and to offer some measure of deterrence from horrific hate crimes happening again and again.”
For the survivors and families of victims, the trial will likely be especially painful. Some told the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle that they intend to take time off work, delay a vacation or be away from family for an extended period of time to be present at the proceedings.
“I want to see justice happen, but at the same time, I hate to think about the families having to potentially see images of what happened and things of that sort,” Steve Weiss, who survived the attack, told the weekly Jewish newspaper. “I’m sure they have mental images, but to have to actually see photos of victims and things of that sort I think can really be difficult for them.”
One thing few people question is the shooter’s guilt, despite his plea of not guilty. He offered to plead guilty in 2019 in exchange for taking the death penalty off the table, but prosecutors, determined to pursue capital punishment for the crime, rejected the plea.
It was the same thing that had happened in the case of the man charged with killing nine Black worshippers in a Charleston, South Carolina, church in 2015. But there, despite the rejected guilty plea, the trial took place a year and a half after the attack, and the shooter was sentenced to death. (In an illustration of the length of death penalty cases, his latest court proceeding happened in October, and he has not yet been executed.)
In contrast, the Pittsburgh trial is not starting until four and a half years after the shooting there. Part of the reason for the delay stems from the work of the defense team, which has pushed back the trial through various court filings. The alleged shooter’s lead attorney, Judy Clarke, has defended a series of high-profile attackers: the Unabomber, the attacker in the 1996 Atlanta Summer Olympics bombing and the Boston Marathon bomber, among others. According to Pittsburgh’s local CBS affiliate, her singular goal is to avoid the death penalty for her client.
But in many other ways, the parallels between the Charleston trial and this one are clear. Both concern shootings by alleged white supremacists in houses of worship, tragedies that have become gruesome symbols of a national rise in bigotry. In both, the culpability of the defendant was assumed before the trial began. Like the Pittsburgh defendant, the Charleston shooter has been lionized by white supremacists, including some who cited him as an inspiration for their own violent acts.
And in both cases, there is an understanding that a conviction does not heal the wounds opened by the shooter.
“This trial has produced no winners, only losers,” said the judge in the Charleston shooter’s trial, Richard Gergel, according to the New Yorker. “This proceeding cannot give the families what they truly want, the return of their loved ones.”
Still, some who are watching the Pittsburgh trial closely hope that it will bring new facts and connections to light. Amy Spitalnick, the executive director of Integrity First for America, a nonprofit that spearheaded a multimillion-dollar victory in a civil trial against the organizers of the 2017 far-right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, hopes that the Pittsburgh trial illustrates the links among different white supremacist shootings — such as the attacks in El Paso, Texas; Christchurch, New Zealand; and at a synagogue in Poway, California.
Those attackers spouted similar conspiracy theories and referenced other recent violent attacks in their manifestos. Spitalnick said that the accused Pittsburgh shooter allegedly communicated with the organizers of the Charlottesville rally on the social network Gab, which is known as a haven for right-wing extremists.
“Trials like this can really be illustrative of how deep the poison of white supremacy and antisemitism goes,” she said. In the Charlottesville trial, she said, “The reams and reams of evidence… really helped pull back the curtain on what motivated the defendants, how they operated, the tools and the tactics of the movement, the conspiracy theories at its core.”
There’s also the possibility that, with the attack resurfacing the shooter’s motivations, and putting him back in the spotlight, it will act as an inspiration for other white supremacists. In the years following the synagogue shooting, Pittsburgh became a kind of pilgrimage site for the defendant’s admirers — leading to continued harassment of local Jews.
“We’re giving a platform to an individual who is a Jew hater, who wanted to kill all Jews,” Orsini said. “What does that spark in other like-minded people? We need to be very cognizant throughout this trial on what kind of chatter is going to be out there on the deep dark web, or even in open portals.”
In the face of concerns about retraumatization, Greenblatt said the ADL is preparing resources on how to discuss the trial with students and amid the Jewish community.
“To relive the horrors of, the grief of, the event — this thing being constantly in the news — it’s going to be hard to avoid, it’s going to be difficult and it could be grisly and upsetting,” Greenblatt said. “I would much prefer this trial didn’t happen — I would much prefer this crime never happened, I would much prefer that those people were all still with us today — but this is where we are.”
He added, “If there might be some ability to raise awareness among the non-Jewish population of what we’re facing, [that] would be of value.”
One potential challenge for American Jews as a whole, Spitalnick said, is that federal prosecutors don’t necessarily share the needs of Jews who will be following the proceedings. While the trial will conjure a mix of emotions for Jews locally and beyond, she said, prosecutors will be more focused on the nuts and bolts of what happened that day and the details of the accused attacker’s actions and motives.
“We’re going to probably spend a lot of time hearing from the prosecution about what motivated him, but it’s not through the lens of what we as Jews think about when we think about Jewish safety,” she said. “It’s through the lens of making the case that this guy did what he did motivated by this extremism and hate… It’s going to be very deliberate and tactical and precise, versus where we as American Jews have been thinking about this from a deeply personal, communal safety perspective.”
The deliberate and detailed work of prosecutors, however, may not be at cross purposes with the emotional needs of Jews, Orsini said. When the trial ends, he said, the establishment of Bowers’ guilt may itself prove to be transformative for how Jews relate to the tragedy, in Pittsburgh and beyond.
“The fact that this individual has not been fully brought to justice… and is not convicted yet of this mass shooting — in some way, yes, that closure and finality will be done at the end of this trial,” he said. “The community can kind of regroup and truly become resilient once this phase is over with.”
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Man Charged With Hate Crime for Car Ramming at Chabad Headquarters in Brooklyn
Police control the scene after a car repeatedly slammed into Chabad World Headquarters in Crown Heights section of Brooklyn. The driver was taken into custody. Photo: ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect
Police in New York City charged a man on Thursday with a hate crime and other charges after he allegedly rammed his car repeatedly into Chabad Lubavitch World Headquarters in Brooklyn.
The suspect, 36-year-old Dan Sohail, has been charged with attempted assault as a hate crime, reckless endangerment as a hate crime, criminal mischief as a hate crime, and aggravated harassment as a hate crime, New York City Police Department (NYPD) Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny announced at a press conference on Thursday.
“The hate crime right now is that he basically attacked a Jewish institution,” Kenny explained. “This is a synagogue, it was clearly marked as a synagogue, he knew it was a synagogue because he had attended there previously.”
The Chabad-Lubavitch movement is an influential force in Orthodox Judaism that operates around the world. The iconic 770 Eastern Parkway building in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn became the world headquarters of the Hassidic movement in 1940.
The NYPD’s Hate Crimes Task Force is leading the investigation into the car ramming.
Sohail is a resident of New Jersey and has no criminal history in New York City, Kenny said. The vehicle he allegedly used on Wednesday night was registered under his name and, earlier this month, Sohail attended an event at the Chabad Lubavitch World Headquarters.
“We believe that he was in Brooklyn last night to continue this attempt to connect with the Lubavitch Jewish community,” Kenny said. Sohail was due in court on Friday.
Footage from the incident showed Sohail drive his vehicle multiple times into the rear door of the 770 Eastern Parkway building in Crown Heights, according to Kenny, who added that the suspect stepped out of his vehicle, removed several blockades from his path, and cleared snow away from a sidewalk before ramming into the building.
Later, when talking to police, Sohail claimed his foot slipped and that he lost control of the car because he was wearing “clunky boots,” Kenny said. No injuries were reported and the damaged synagogue door is currently being repaired, according to Yaacov Behrman, head of public relations at the Chabad Lubavitch World Headquarters.
“It is clear the incident was intentional,” Behrman added. “The attacker removed the metal bollards that typically block the ramp and protect the entrance shortly before driving into the building. The bollards have since been restored.”
The car ramming took place the same day as the 75th anniversary of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson being chosen as the leader of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement.
Rabbi Yehuda Krinsky, chairman of the Chabad Lubavitch World Headquarters, said in a statement on Thursday night that the incident “underscores a painful and undeniable reality: acts of hate, intimidation, violence, and antisemitic aggression are no longer isolated incidents or abstract threats.”
“Condemnation alone is insufficient. Real deterrence requires prompt, decisive action by the justice system — through swift prosecution and meaningful consequences — to discourage further incidents and ensure public safety,” he said. “As this incident occurred while the anniversary of the beginning of the Rebbe’s leadership was being observed worldwide, we reaffirm our faith that the world is meant to be refined — not ruled by fear or force, but cultivated as a place of moral clarity, responsibility, and goodness. We remain committed to that vision, even in the face of events such as this.”
The ramming incident occurred amid an alarming surge in antisemitic hate crimes across New York City.
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Left-Wing Conspiracists Attempt to Connect Israel With Minneapolis ICE Shootings
People tend to a candlelight vigil assembled for Alex Pretti at the Veterans Affairs New York Harbor Healthcare System on Jan. 29, 2026, in New York, New York, USA. Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse at the Minneapolis VA hospital, died Jan. 24 after being shot multiple times during a brief altercation with border patrol agents. Photo: Derek French / SOPA Images via Reuters Connect
Political progressives are attempting to draw a direct link between the ongoing unrest in Minneapolis over US Customs and Immigration Enforcement (ICE) and Israel, suggesting that the Jewish state has trained or infiltrated critical American governmental agencies.
A sprawling constellation of left-wing social media accounts and news outlets have argued that Israeli agencies have trained or assisted ICE, a federal agency responsible for conducting criminal investigations and enforcing immigration laws. They claim that Israel has collaborated with ICE in surveillance and detainment strategies. On social media platforms such as TikTok, baseless claims that ICE agents are from Israel have gone viral.
“From Palestine to Minneapolis, ICE and Israel use the same playbook,” wrote popular, far-left social media pundit Sulaiman Ahmed on X/Twitter.
Protests in Minneapolis have intensified following a surge in federal immigration enforcement operations and two controversial fatal shootings involving federal agents this month. Demonstrations grew after large numbers of ICE and partner agents were deployed to the area under an expanded enforcement initiative, drawing criticism from local activists and officials. A statewide strike and mass rallies followed, then expanded nationally after the shooting of a Minneapolis hospital worker during an ICE operation, prompting a US Justice Department civil rights investigation.
Controversial leftist social media personality Hasan Piker was suspended from the Twitch streaming platform for spreading anti-Israel conspiracy theories and making antisemitic comments in attempt to connect ICE to the Jewish state.
“This is another big suck my d**k to all the f**king Israel d**k riders out there. You f**king rabid ultra-Zionist pigs,” Piker wrote.
“You run around going ‘Why are you tying this back to Palestine?’ Because this is precisely the same s**t. You Israel-first monsters,” he added.
Piker also posted that Israel had helped the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) implement a “censorship regime” to label Americans “domestic terrorists” and carry out surveillance “on the basis of their anti-Israel & anti-ICE activism.”
“Two senior national security officials tell me there are more than a dozen secret watch lists that homeland security is using to track protestors (both anti-ICE and pro-Palestinians),” he wrote.
Other progressive commentators pointed out that ICE maintains offices in Tel Aviv, suggesting that the agency is controlled by Israel
“ICE isn’t just trained by the IDF [Israel Defense Forces], they have a whole office on Israeli-occupied land,” wrote another left-wing account on X/Twitter.
However, ICE maintains a broad international presence through its Homeland Security Investigations division, operating dozens of offices at US embassies and consulates in more than 50 countries worldwide. While ICE is best known domestically for immigration enforcement, its overseas units primarily serve as investigative and liaison posts focused on transnational crime, including human trafficking, smuggling networks, financial crimes, and sanctions violations.
Josh Paul, a self-described “human rights activist” and a former director of congressional and public affairs for the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, attempted to draw parallels between ICE and Israeli policy in the West Bank
“You have units of a security force that are imposed on the local authorities, imposed on the local police, that engage in checkpoints, detentions, including of children […] And it seems to operate broadly with impunity,” Paul told Responsible Statecraft, a publication of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a think tank critical of US support for Israel.
“It’s kind of every man for himself. They are obviously not operating under any standard operating procedures,” Anthony Aguilar, a US Army veteran and former contractor for the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) who has made discredited claims against Israel, told the publication. “This is exactly how the Israel Defense Forces operate in Gaza.”
Aguilar claimed he witnessed the IDF shoot a child — Abdul Rahim Muhammad Hamdene, known as Abboud — as the GHF was distributing humanitarian aid on May 28. The GHF was an Israeli and US-backed program that delivered aid directly to Palestinians, blocking Hamas from diverting supplies for terrorist activities and selling them at inflated prices. An independent investigation later revealed that Abdul had not been killed and was alive with his mother, exposing that Aguilar’s story was fabricated.
There is no evidence to suggest that ICE, which is part of the US government and charged with enforcing American immigration laws, has taken any direction from Israel in Minneapolis.
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Israeli NGO Uncovers Online Terror Plot Targeting Jews in US on Passover, Shares Data With FBI
Rabbi to the UAE Rabbi Levi Duchman helping to prepare matzah. Photo: Jewish UAE/Shneor Shif.
The Israeli nongovernmental organization Fighting Online Antisemitism (FOA) announced this week that it uncovered a terrorist plot by white nationalists to target Jewish communities in the United States on the eve of Passover and that the intelligence was handed over to the FBI.
The NGO said the planned terrorist attack was orchestrated by a “white nationalist accelerationist cell” and was scheduled for April 1, the first night of the Jewish holiday. FOA discovered messages by the terrorist cell on X in which the white nationalists discussed their goal to “bring the Nova massacre home,” which is a reference to the deadly Hamas-led terrorist attack at the Nova music festival in Re’im, Israel, of Oct. 7, 2023. Members of the cell talked about their intent to repeat the Nova attack in the US by using weapons and targeting Jewish families that would be gathering to celebrate Passover.
“We have been following this X account for a few months and recently we have noticed a shift from general slurs to operational specifics,” said Tomer Aldubi, FOA’s founder and executive director. “The group began discussing the acquisition of knives and celebrating the Oct. 7 atrocities as a blueprint. They explicitly stated it was ‘time for violence’ because ‘Jews don’t learn.’ We realized they were counting down to April 1.”
FOA shared several of the messages it found on X that were related to the terrorist plot. One post read: “Honestly we don’t have to go anywhere. Everyone just wake up on April t, choose violence, clean up our communities and cities.” Another message said: “April 1. Delete the Invaders. Pass It On!
FOA, which was founded in 2020, said it shared its intelligence with X so that the platform could remove the accounts owned by members of the terrorist cell. FOA has worked with X for many years, according to the Israeli organization. The data has also been shared with the FBI.
“The team secured a comprehensive evidentiary file, including digital fingerprints of the ringleaders, operating under specific handles, and transmitted the intelligence directly to the FBI Detroit Field Office’s hate crimes division via a confidential channel,” FOA stated.
“The distance between an online post and a terror attack is shrinking,” said Aldubi. “This success was made possible by our trained volunteers, proving that individuals have the power to protect their communities and fight antisemitism. Join us and get training on how you too can stop the next attack.”