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Police investigate 2 Molotov cocktail bombs thrown at German synagogue
(JTA) — Unknown perpetrators threw two Molotov cocktails at a Berlin synagogue early on Wednesday morning, leading German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to declare that “antisemitism has no place in Germany.”
“We will never accept when attacks are carried out against Jewish institutions,” Scholz said during a trip to Egypt tied to the escalating tensions of the Israel-Hamas war.
The firebombs landed on the sidewalk and caused no damage, the synagogue’s congregation reported on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.
As officers were investigating the incident on the scene later Wednesday morning, a young man on an electric scooter wearing a Palestinian scarf raced through a police barricade toward the door of the community center and tried to pull something from his pocket. He was arrested after a struggle in which he reportedly shouted antisemitic and anti-Israel slogans.
“We are all shocked by this terrorist attack,” said Josef Schuster, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, in a press statement.
The Kahal Adass Jisroel community complex in Berlin’s Mitte neighborhood houses a synagogue, a kindergarten, a yeshiva school and a community center.
Parents brought their children to the kindergarten Wednesday morning despite the incident. A community member told Spiegel magazine that “we shouldn’t panic.”
Antisemitic incidents are on the rise across Europe in reaction to the Middle East conflict, and security for Jewish institutions has increased.
“The families around the synagogue are shocked and unsettled,” Schuster said in his press statement.
Some police officers were injured, authorities said Wednesday, after they clashed with Muslim immigrants at rallies overnight in multiple Berlin neighborhoods and at the city’s famed Brandenburg Gate.
“Security measures for Jewish institutions in Berlin have rightly been increased. And probably even worse things could have been prevented for the time being,” said Gideon Joffe, head of the Jewish Community of Berlin, in a statement. “But despite everything, Jews in our city no longer feel safe.”
The Jewish Community of Berlin announced Wednesday that Friedrich Merz, the head of Germany’s conservative Christian Democratic Party and a member of parliament, will visit the community’s Jewish high school on Friday to speak with some of its 500 students about their experiences with antisemitism and about Jewish life in Berlin. The school has both Jewish and non-Jewish pupils.
“The anti-Jewish violence on the streets of Berlin has reached a new dimension,” Joffe said in his statement, adding that “It is now up to civil society to show solidarity with the Jewish community.”
The Orthodox Kahal Adass Jisroel synagogue was opened in 2014 at the site of the former Beth Zion synagogue, which dated back to the mid-19th century. It is not part of the official Jewish Community of Berlin umbrella but is one of several independent congregations in the city today.
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The post Police investigate 2 Molotov cocktail bombs thrown at German synagogue appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Rights Group Files Lawsuit to Block Trump Deportations of Anti-Israel Protesters
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
The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) filed a lawsuit challenging as unconstitutional the Trump administration’s actions to deport international students and scholars who protest or express support for Palestinian rights.
The lawsuit, filed on Saturday in the US District Court for the Northern District of New York, seeks a nationwide temporary restraining order to block enforcement of two executive orders signed by US President Donald Trump in the first month of his term.
The lawsuit comes after the detention of a Columbia University student, Mahmoud Khalil, a 30-year-old permanent US resident of Palestinian descent, whose arrest sparked protests this month.
Justice Department lawyers have argued that the US government is seeking Khalil’s removal because Secretary of State Marco Rubio has reasonable grounds to believe his activities or presence in the country could have “serious adverse foreign policy consequences.” Rubio on Friday said the United States will likely revoke visas of more students in the coming days.
Trump vowed to deport activists who took part in protests on US college campuses against Israel’s war on Hamas in Gaza following the October 2023 attack by the Palestinian terrorists.
The ADC lawsuit was filed on behalf of two graduate students and a professor at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, who say their activism and support of the Palestinian people “has put them at serious risk of political persecution.”
“This lawsuit is a necessary step to preserve our most fundamental constitutional protections. The First Amendment guarantees the freedom of speech and expression to all persons within the United States, without exception,” said Abed Ayoub, national executive director of the ADC.
Chris Godshall-Bennett, the group’s legal director, said the litigation seeks immediate and long-term relief “to protect international students from any unconstitutional overreach that stifles free expression and deters them from fully engaging in academic and public discourse.”
The lawsuit centers on three Cornell University plaintiffs: a British-Gambian national and PhD student with a student visa; a US citizen PhD student working on plant science; and a US citizen novelist, poet, and professor in the Department of Literatures in English.
The post Rights Group Files Lawsuit to Block Trump Deportations of Anti-Israel Protesters first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Netanyahu Informs Shin Bet Chief to Vote on His Dismissal Next Week
Israel’s Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar speaks at Reichman University in Herzliya on Sunday, September 11, 2022. Photo: Screenshot
i24 News – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Ronen Bar, the head of the Shin Bet security agency, that he will bring a vote before his government to dismiss him next week.
The post Netanyahu Informs Shin Bet Chief to Vote on His Dismissal Next Week first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Houthis Claim to Attack US Aircraft Carrier, Retaliating for Strikes
Newly recruited fighters who joined a Houthi military force intended to be sent to fight in support of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, march during a parade in Sanaa, Yemen, Dec. 2, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah
i24 News – The Houthis claimed on Sunday that they targeted the aircraft carrier USS Harry Truman and other vessels in the northern Red Sea with 18 ballistic and cruise missiles and a drone. Military spokesperson Yahya Saree said that the US-led attacks against the Houthis on Saturday comprised of more than 47 airstrikes on seven governorates, with the death toll expected to rise.
“The Yemeni Armed Forces will not hesitate to target all American warships in the Red Sea and in the Arabian Sea in retaliation to the aggression against our country,” Saree said, vowing the Houthis “will continue to impose a naval blockade on the Israeli enemy and ban its ships in the declared zone of operations until aid and basic needs are delivered to the Gaza Strip.”
The post Houthis Claim to Attack US Aircraft Carrier, Retaliating for Strikes first appeared on Algemeiner.com.