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FBI investigating after shooter fires blanks inside Russian Jewish center in San Francisco
(J. The Jewish News of Northern California via JTA) — A man fired blanks from a handgun at a Jewish center in San Francisco Wednesday, shocking a group gathered for a study session in a community space serving mainly Russian-speaking Jews.
But no one present called police, so it was not until word of the incident began circulating in the community that authorities became involved. Now, local police and the FBI are searching for the man, whom they believe may have been the same person who brandished a gun at a local theater earlier in the week.
The man entered the Schneerson Center around 7:20 p.m. in the middle of a session on the life of the Lubavitcher Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson, according to Rabbi Bentzion Pil, who leads the community.
After the man entered, Pil said he first asked whether he wanted to join their session. It soon became clear that was not his intention.
Instead, the man pulled out a gun and said in accented Russian that he was from Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, and that he was going to start shooting, attendees said. Other outlets reported that he may have announced, “Say hello to Mossad for me.”
“I thought he was joking,” Pil told J. The Jewish News of Northern California on Thursday. “He looked like a Russian Jew.”
Located in a Richmond District neighborhood near what’s often called Little Russia, the Schneerson Center is a node of Jewish life for immigrants from the former Soviet Union in the Bay Area, where households from the former Soviet Union number between 15,000 and 20,000, according to Rabbi Shimon Margolin, who leads a local nonprofit serving Russian-speaking Jews.
A jarring video of the incident captured on a security camera shows what unfolded: A man wearing a baseball cap, jacket and sneakers enters the room and gestures animatedly with his arms while speaking to those seated around a table. After about 15 seconds, he reaches into his jacket pocket and reveals a handgun. He appears to struggle to cock the weapon, while an elderly man makes a phone call and starts walking toward him.
As the elderly man approaches, the suspect starts firing his weapon, and the elderly man crouches down. The man fires in a direction away from those seated around the table, then proceeds to fire around the room while some people clutch their ears and duck. In total the suspect fires between six and eight shots. Then he leaves.
“Everyone was stunned and shocked,” Pil said.
The video shows little movement from a dozen or so people around the table — many of whom are in their 60s or older, shul members said.
The Schneerson Center in San Francisco is a Lubavitch enterprise that serves mostly Russian-speaking Jews. (Google Maps)
Pil said the group was perplexed. “It was so unexpected from him,” he said.
One person in the group said he might have seen the suspect before. After the shooting started, Pil said he went into the kitchen to grab a knife, but by the time he got back the man was gone.
After the man left, those gathered deliberated about whether to call the police, Pil said.
“I still believe it was just a crazy guy,” he said. “He didn’t scream any antisemitic words or expressions.”
Ultimately, Pil said, they decided it wasn’t worth contacting the police because they were unhurt and they doubted the man would be kept in detention for long if he was caught.
Only the next day was law enforcement contacted after some of the younger community members heard about what had happened.
“I was shaken,” said Alon Chanukov, who viewed the incident on security footage. He said he reached the San Francisco Police Department Thursday morning and was told the matter would be referred to the investigations unit.
Chanukov said the video disturbed him greatly.
“There is a man, with a gun, who was in my shul. And I see elderly people cowering as he is firing his gun,” he said.
“This is a terrorist attack. The point of this was to cause terror,” Chanukov said. “Not to kill people. But to literally terrify Jews, as best as I can see.”
Statistics compiled by the California attorney general’s office show a rise in hate crimes targeting Jews over the last 10 years. Jews are the most frequent target of religiously motivated hate crimes in the state, numbers that accord with national figures.
Mattie Pil, the rabbi’s wife, lent another interpretation as to why the mostly senior Jews from the former Soviet Union did not contact police.
“They still feel like they’re in the Soviet Union,” she said. “There, when something happens, it’s always the fault of the Jews. If you called police, it would be your fault. So they didn’t want to make any waves.”
This story was originally reported in J. The Jewish News of Northern California, and is reprinted with permission.
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50 years after the Dirty War, Argentinians remember the Jews who ‘disappeared’
(JTA) — BUENOS AIRES — As Argentina marks the 50th anniversary of the 1976 military coup, a lesser-known aspect of the dictatorship is gaining attention: the disproportionate number of Jews among the disappeared.
Estimates suggest that as many as 1,900 Jews were abducted, tortured and murdered by the military junta during the six-year Dirty War, when many sources say 30,000 people were disappeared. Depending on the source, Jews represented 5% to 8% of the total, even though Jews made up less than 1% of Argentina’s population at the time.
That grim history is being explored in educational initiatives by Argentina’s Jewish community, aimed at younger generations and focused on understanding how the dictatorship operated and the disproportionate suffering it inflicted on Jews.
“The Jews were subjected to a particular form of treatment that resulted in greater brutality on the part of the repressive forces,” according to a new curriculum released by the education department of AMIA, the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires. “The experience of Jewish Argentines who were victims of state terrorism was marked by a strong antisemitic imprint among many members of the task forces.”
The AMIA project includes meetings between Jewish youth and relatives of the Jewish “disappeared,” as well as visits to memorial sites. Some 1,000 students are expected to take part this month.
A parallel digital project, Eduiot (“Testimonies”), documents the stories of Jewish victims of the military dictatorship and includes meetings between relatives of the disappeared and high school students.
The materials rely on personal testimonies to explain the human impact of the dictatorship and to put individual stories in the broader historical context.
Eduiot includes the story of Fernando Ruben Brodsky, a 22-year-old student who disappeared in 1979, including accounts from relatives who continue to seek answers. His mother, Sarah Brodsky, shares accounts of her son, a psychology student and kindergarten teacher who was abducted from his home on Aug. 8 and never seen again.
The testimonials relate how security forces subjected Jews to antisemitic abuse when they were kidnapped or detained, including Nazi language and symbols and “special” interrogations reserved for Jews.
The anniversary comes amid renewed debate over how Argentina interprets the dictatorship. President Javier Milei’s government has called for a broader account that also includes victims of left-wing guerrilla violence, which some suggest is a way to minimize the crimes of the dictatorship. Milei and other voices close to the government have also questioned the 30,000-victim figure, promoting a lower number (often 9,000).
Under the junta, the military and state security forces targeted suspected left-wing sympathizers, including students, unionists, journalists and activists.
In 1979, Jewish advocacy groups such as the Anti‑Defamation League expressed grave concern over the disappearances, focusing on the Jewish victims, and Jewish families in Argentina and abroad helped compile lists of the missing. According to an ADL official at the time, “Jews are not specifically targeted as Jews. However, the security agents tend to be suspicious of Jews.”
The best-known Jewish target of the state was journalist Jacobo Timerman, who published a left-leaning newspaper, La Opinion. In 1977, the generals who ruled Argentina shut down the paper and imprisoned Timerman. Among other things, Timerman was accused of masterminding a plot to establish a Jewish homeland in the remote Patagonia region of southern Argentina.
He survived, and in his 1981 memoir, “Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number,” he recounted how he was subjected to torture during his 2 1/2 years in confinement.
According to Eduiot, Jewish advocacy for the disappeared “proved effective in bringing early attention to human rights violations.” The U.S. Congress launched investigations, and in a 1978 article in Le Monde, novelist and Holocaust survivor Marek Halter compared the persecution of Argentine Jews to Nazi-era atrocities.
The Eduiot site includes photographs and audiovisual material, and features the accounts of parents, siblings, cousins, nephews and nieces of Jews persecuted and disappeared under the dictatorship.
“Because every testimony matters and holds great value,” according to its website. “Because these dark episodes of our history must never be repeated, and because we want each of the disappeared to have a space of remembrance on this site, helping families sustain their memory and uphold the call for justice.”
The post 50 years after the Dirty War, Argentinians remember the Jews who ‘disappeared’ appeared first on The Forward.
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Fortnite tops ADL’s new ‘leaderboard’ ranking video games on antisemitism safeguards
(JTA) — The online video game Fortnite tops the Anti-Defamation League’s “leaderboard” ranking online video game companies on their efforts to curb antisemitism and extremism on their platforms.
The Online Gaming Leaderboard, which the antisemitism watchdog billed as the “first comprehensive public evaluation” of how online multiplayer games address antisemitism, ranked 10 popular online games based on safety features, moderation, player protections and written policies meant to address antisemitism and hate.
Fortnite was followed at the top of the rankings by Grand Theft Auto Online, Call of Duty and Minecraft. Games labeled as having “limited protection” by the ADL included Counter-Strike 2 and PUBG: Battlegrounds.
Madden NFL, Valorant, Clash Royale and Roblox, a collaborative computer gaming platform for children as young as 7, were ranked as having “moderate protection.”
“Without strong safeguards, these platforms can become breeding grounds for harassment and hateful activity that harms players directly, normalizes hateful ideologies and damages trust,” Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of the ADL, said in a statement Wednesday. “This leaderboard provides the transparency that parents, gamers and the industry need to understand where companies are succeeding and where urgent improvements are necessary.”
The leaderboard’s release coincided with a landmark Los Angeles jury verdict finding Meta and YouTube liable for harming a young user through addictive design features.
In the virtual worlds of online gaming, players have posted abusive messages in chats, created antisemitic imagery and even given themselves bigoted usernames.
While Fortnite ranked first, the popular online game has also previously faced scrutiny over allegations that it enabled antisemitic content. Last September, it disabled a character dance feature after users said its gestures resembled a swastika.
Roblox, which has long faced criticism over content moderation, has also been the subject of controversy, including in 2022 when it removed a user-created simulation of a Nazi gas chamber. In the wake of the Oct. 7 attacks in 2023, the Israeli government also urged users to report pro-Palestinian activity in the game that it said included antisemitic content.
The post Fortnite tops ADL’s new ‘leaderboard’ ranking video games on antisemitism safeguards appeared first on The Forward.
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Iran Posts AI Video Showing Missile Striking Statue of Liberty
An Israeli air defense system intercepts a ballistic missile barrage launched from Iran to central Israel during the missile attack, February 27, 2026. Photo: Eli Basri / SOPA Images via Reuters Connect
Iran on Tuesday released an AI-generated video depicting a missile striking the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor, a global symbol of American freedom and democracy, in one of the regime’s latest propaganda efforts to influence public perception abroad.
Shared by Iranian state broadcaster IRIB as well as a Telegram channel affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the minute-long video ends with the slogan “One vengeance for all.”
IRGC Official Telegram Channel Releases AI Video Depicting Iranian Ballistic Missile Strike on United States, Hitting New York City and Toppling Statue of Liberty Shown as Idol of Baal Holding Babylonian Talmud pic.twitter.com/JhgNgHW2Zz
— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) March 25, 2026
The video was also circulated by Russian state outlet RT, in what appears to be a stark and symbolic threat against the United States.
‘ONE VENGEANCE FOR ALL’ — Iran ‘bombs’ the Statue of Liberty WITH THE HEAD OF BAAL pic.twitter.com/6tPH15fqkZ
— RT (@RT_com) March 25, 2026
Since the start of the US-Israel war with Iran, which began on Feb. 28, Iranian officials have ramped up their propaganda and disinformation efforts, trying to portray Washington and Jerusalem as responsible for decades of regional conflict while seeking to influence left-leaning Americans to mobilize domestic opposition to the war.
This latest widely circulated video presents a striking sequence portraying the United States as the world’s enemy, drawing on imagery from the dispossession of Native Americans and the atomic bombings of Japan to the Vietnam War and more recent Middle Eastern conflicts to craft a sweeping narrative of American aggression.
The clip also features footage alluding to a child on Jeffrey Epstein’s private island — a recurring theme in Iran’s messaging used to suggest that US President Donald Trump launched the current war to distract the public from the Epstein scandal, in which the late financier was convicted of running a sex-trafficking ring involving underage girls and, allegedly, various influential figures.
Later in the video, AI-generated figures of Iran’s former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the late Iranian Major General Qassem Soleimani are shown gazing skyward. Khamenei was killed in an Israeli airstrike on Feb. 28, and Soleimani was killed in a US drone strike in 2020.
The final sequence of the video depicts a missile in Iranian colors striking the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor, whose head has been replaced with that of Baal, a false god from the Bible, while the statue holds the Talmud, a key collection of Jewish religious teachings and laws.
This video is the latest example of AI-generated propaganda released since the start of the war with Iran.
Last week, Chinese state television CCTV released a separate AI-generated clip illustrating Beijing’s perspective on the Strait of Hormuz crisis, featuring Persian cats in martial arts combat and an eagle-headed human representing the United States.
Experts note that Russian dissemination of Tehran’s video reflects a broader coordinated effort to use visual propaganda to challenge US foreign policy and influence global perceptions amid rising regional tensions.
The latest video came as the US and Iran began engaging in diplomacy over a possible resolution to the war, although Tehran has reportedly responded negatively to Washington’s proposal.