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A Jewish group’s tip led to arrest of suspects who wanted to ‘shoot up a synagogue’
(New York Jewish Week) — A tip from a Jewish security organization helped lead to the arrest of two suspects Saturday in connection with online threats to attack a New York City synagogue.
The Community Security Initiative, a group created by UJA-Federation of New York and its affiliated Jewish Community Relations Council, discovered threatening tweets on Friday morning and brought the information to law enforcement, according to a UJA spokesperson.
In a news conference at City Hall on Monday, UJA CEO Eric Goldstein said that after they shared the lead with the New York Police Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, law enforcement “immediately sprung into action.”
New York City Mayor Eric Adams said during the news conference that Metropolitan Transit Authority police officers arrested the suspects — Christopher Brown, 21, of Aquebogue on eastern Long Island and Michael Mahrer, 22, of Manhattan — at Penn Station, adding that they had “an alleged plan to murder members of the Jewish community in our city.”
“This was not an idle threat,” Adams said. “This was a real threat.”
Join me, @NYPDPC Sewell and other law enforcement leaders at City Hall to discuss the efforts that stopped a potential attack on the Jewish community in New York City this past weekend. https://t.co/WyVz2qe44Q
— Mayor Eric Adams (@NYCMayor) November 21, 2022
Adams added: “Hate is on the rise in America. This hate cannot be allowed to take hold and build and gain further ground. We must reject the hate and the division that drives it.”
On Sunday, Gov. Kathy Hochul, responding to the arrest and Saturday night’s deadly shooting at an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado, said state police would increase surveillance and protection efforts at synagogues and other vulnerable sites.
Steve Weill of Flatbush Shomrim, a Jewish community watch organization in Brooklyn, said at the press conference that he received a call on Friday night from NYPD Inspector Ritchie Taylor, an Orthodox Jew, who advised him that there was “a credible threat to the community.”
“We put a plan in place where hundreds of trained volunteers would reach all the synagogues and all the houses of worship in the areas and warn them,” Weill said.
The suspects were caught before that plan was implemented. Weill added that the Jewish community has “an unprecedented relationship” with Adams.
“The information that flows is incredible, that we can get such sensitive information and that they can have the trust in us to relay that to the community in a calm and professional manner,” Weill said.
The Daily Beast reported that the NYPD intelligence division had become aware of Brown’s tweets talking about “shooting up a synagogue and dying.” MTA police, state police, the NYPD and the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force worked together on the investigation, according to Hochul’s office.
According to the Daily Beast, the hunt for Brown led police to an apartment on West 94th St. in Manhattan, where his acquaintance Mahrer was said to live with his parents. Neither Brown nor Mahrer were at the apartment, but detectives found a backpack with a Glock semi-automatic pistol and ammunition . In an intelligence alert, police said Brown had “a history of mental illness.”
What police described as a white supremacist Twitter group operated by Brown was taken down. After being caught, Brown was held on a weapons charge, and Mahrer was charged with illegal weapons possession. Each pleaded not guilty to state charges and are scheduled to appear in court on Nov. 23.
The New York Post reported that Mahrer is Jewish and the grandson of a Holocaust survivor.
UJA-Federation of New York and the JCRC of New York created the Community Security Initiative after the deadly attack on the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018. CSI helps provide protection and safety training to Jews and Jewish institutions in New York City, Westchester and Long Island.
The arrests come just weeks after the FBI warned synagogues in New Jersey about a “credible threat” made to them; the NYPD heightened security at city synagogues as a precaution. The FBI later announced that a 19-year-old man who said he had sworn allegiance to ISIS had been arrested for making the threat.
The arrests also come a time of heightened anxiety about antisemitism in New York City and beyond. The NYPD has recorded an increase in the number of reported antisemitic incidents.
Meanwhile, celebrities Kanye West and Kyrie Irving have ignited concerns about antisemitism with their comments and tweets, and turmoil at Twitter has fueled a rise in hate posts, including about Jews, according to watchdogs who monitor the social media platform.
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Israel’s Netanyahu Hopes to ‘Taper’ Israel Off US Military Aid in Next Decade
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks to the press on Capitol Hill, Washington, DC, July 8, 2025. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in an interview published on Friday that he hopes to “taper off” Israeli dependence on US military aid in the next decade.
Netanyahu has said Israel should not be reliant on foreign military aid but has stopped short of declaring a firm timeline for when Israel would be fully independent from Washington.
“I want to taper off the military within the next 10 years,” Netanyahu told The Economist. Asked if that meant a tapering “down to zero,” he said: “Yes.”
Netanyahu said he told President Donald Trump during a recent visit that Israel “very deeply” appreciates “the military aid that America has given us over the years, but here too we’ve come of age and we’ve developed incredible capacities.”
In December, Netanyahu said Israel would spend 350 billion shekels ($110 billion) on developing an independent arms industry to reduce dependency on other countries.
In 2016, the US and Israeli governments signed a memorandum of understanding for the 10 years through September 2028 that provides $38 billion in military aid, $33 billion in grants to buy military equipment and $5 billion for missile defense systems.
Israeli defense exports rose 13 percent last year, with major contracts signed for Israeli defense technology including its advanced multi-layered aerial defense systems.
US Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, a staunch Israel supporter and close ally of Trump, said on X that “we need not wait ten years” to begin scaling back military aid to Israel.
“The billions in taxpayer dollars that would be saved by expediting the termination of military aid to Israel will and should be plowed back into the US military,” Graham said. “I will be presenting a proposal to Israel and the Trump administration to dramatically expedite the timetable.”
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In Rare Messages from Iran, Protesters ask West for Help, Speak of ‘Very High’ Death Toll
Protests in Tehran. Photo: Iran Photo from social media used in accordance with Clause 27a of the Copyright Law, via i24 News
i24 News – Speaking to Western media from beyond the nationwide internet blackout imposed by the Islamic regime, Iranian protesters said they needed support amid a brutal crackdown.
“We’re standing up for a revolution, but we need help. Snipers have been stationed behind the Tajrish Arg area [a neighborhood in Tehran],” said a protester in Tehran speaking to the Guardian on the condition of anonymity. He added that “We saw hundreds of bodies.”
Another activist in Tehran spoke of witnessing security forces firing live ammunition at protesters resulting in a “very high” number killed.
On Friday, TIME magazine cited a Tehran doctor speaking on condition of anonymity that just six hospitals in the capital recorded at least 217 killed protesters, “most by live ammunition.”
Speaking to Reuters on Saturday, Setare Ghorbani, a French-Iranian national living in the suburbs of Paris, said that she became ill from worry for her friends inside Iran. She read out one of her friends’ last messages before losing contact: “I saw two government agents and they grabbed people, they fought so much, and I don’t know if they died or not.”
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Report: US Increasingly Regards Iran Protests as Having Potential to Overthrow Regime
United States President Donald J Trump in White House in Washington, DC, USA, on Thursday, December 18, 2025. Photo: Aaron Schwartz via Reuters Connect.
i24 News – The assessment in Washington of the strength and scope of the Iran protests has shifted after Thursday’s turnout, with US officials now inclined to grant the possibility that this could be a game changer, Axios reported on Friday.
“The protests are serious, and we will continue to monitor them,” an unnamed senior US official was quoted as saying in the report.
Iran was largely cut off from the outside world on Friday after the Islamic regime blacked out the internet to curb growing unrest, as videos circulating on social media showed buildings ablaze in anti-government protests raging across the country.
US President Donald Trump warned the Ayatollahs of a strong response if security forces escalate violence against protesters.
“We’re watching it very closely. If they start killing people like they have in the past, I think they’re going to get hit very hard by the United States,” Trump told reporters when asked about the unrest in Iran.
The latest reported death toll is at 51 protesters, including nine children.