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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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250 Hezbollah Terrorists Including 21 Commanders Eliminated in Ground Op
DF operating in southern Lebanon. Photo: IDF Spokesperson
i24 News – The Israeli military eliminated 250 Hezbollah terrorists including 21 commanders in four days of ground combat, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in a statement on Friday.
IDF soldiers operating in southern Lebanon have uncovered vast caches of weapons and munitions in civilian residences, showing how central embedding within civilian population is to Hezbollah’s mode of warfare.
Meanwhile, heavy strikes targeting the Hezbollah stronghold of Dahieh in southern Beirut were ongoing, Lebanese media reported.
The post 250 Hezbollah Terrorists Including 21 Commanders Eliminated in Ground Op first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Airstrikes Launched on Several Parts of Yemen, Houthi Al Masirah TV says
Illustrative. Hodeidah, Yemen, July 20, 2024. Houthi Military Media/Handout via REUTERS
Airstrikes were launched on Friday at several parts of Yemen including its capital Sanaa and Hodeidah airport, Al Masirah TV, the main television news outlet run by the Houthi movement controlling much of Yemen, and residents said.
Strikes also targeted the south of Dhamar city and the southeast of al-Bayda province, the channel added.
Residents said that the attack on al-Bayda province targeted several Houthi military outposts.
Al Masirah TV reported that the strikes had been carried out by the United States and British forces, but a British government source said Britain was not involved.
Iran-aligned Houthi militants have launched attacks on international shipping near Yemen since last November in solidarity with Palestinians in Israel‘s war with Hamas.
The attacks have drawn US and British retaliatory strikes and disrupted global trade as ship owners reroute vessels away from the Red Sea and Suez Canal to sail the longer route around the southern tip of Africa.
Following the airstrikes, a Houthi spokesman called the attack “a desperate attempt,” adding that “Yemen will not be deterred by these attacks and will continue its steadfastness in confronting the enemies.”
The post Airstrikes Launched on Several Parts of Yemen, Houthi Al Masirah TV says first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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IDF Kills Hamas Commander in Tulkarem
Illustrative. Israeli troops during counterterrorism activity in Tulkarem, northwestern Samaria, September 2024. Photo: IDF.
JNS.org – An Israeli Air Force fighter jet conducted a rare strike in Tulkarem in the West Bank on Thursday night, targeting top Hamas terrorist Zahi Yaser Abd al-Razeq Oufi.
The Palestinian Authority reported at least 18 fatalities in the strike, with a local security source telling Agence France-Presse it was the deadliest in Judea and Samaria since the Second Intifada.
Ayyth Radwan, the head of Islamic Jihad’s Tulkarem branch, was also reportedly killed.
Oufi was planning a terrorist attack “in the immediate time frame,” according to the Israel Defense Forces, and directed the thwarted car bombing last month near Ateret in the Binyamin region of Samaria.
There were no casualties in the incident, which Israel Ganz, the head of the Binyamin Regional Council, called a “great miracle.”
The IDF said Oufi was involved in smuggling weapons to terrorists who perpetrated several recent attacks against Israelis, including some that resulted in injuries to civilians.
He also “worked to establish terrorist networks on behalf of Hamas and assisted terror operatives in the area to carry out significant shooting and explosive attacks,” added the military.
The post IDF Kills Hamas Commander in Tulkarem first appeared on Algemeiner.com.