MIAMI.- About twenty threats against synagogues and Jewish cultural centers in Florida puts state authorities on alert, following the increase in anti-Semitic incidents in the United States and the world.
“Some 25 synagogues and Jewish centers, including schools, have received death threats and explosives in Florida,” confirmed the vice consul of Israel in Miami, Mike Driquez.
In fact, the Coral Gables Police, in Miami-Dade County, went to the Temple Judea synagogue after the religious site received a bomb threat.
After the formal search, the municipal police force reported that it found no evidence of danger and allowed the reopening of the place.
However, the investigation continues as it concerns a serial threat that was transmitted by email to several Jewish institutions.
On the other hand, Miami-Dade Police went to Temple Sinai, in Aventura, in response to a similar threat.
The same thing happened at Temple Kol Ami Emanu-El in Plantation and Temple Bat Yam in Fort Lauderdale.
Similar situations occur in New York, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco, as well as other locations in the United States, Europe and other countries.
“We take every threat very seriously,” declared the Israeli diplomat accredited in Miami.
“We cannot dismiss any threat because we know that the satanic ideology of Hamas spreads to many places in the world,” he said.
“We already saw what they did in Israel on October 7, 1,400 dead, more than 1,000 injured and 240 kidnapped,” he recalled.
From that date, Anti-Defamation League (ADL), or anti-defamation league in Spanish, which advocates stopping the defamation of the Jewish people; records more than 2,000 anti-Semitic incidents, from vandalism, harassment and assaults to anti-Israel demonstrations.
This high number of incidents, together with the more than 3,000 cases that were reported between January and September, leads to a record number of more than 5,000 in 2023.
The consul recalled that “terrorism does not distinguish between people when it attacks” so “it is not necessary to be Jewish. “Anyone can be a victim of an attack,”
Indeed, anti-Semitic sentiment, which already reported a worrying increase in previous years, increases after the Israeli military escalation in the Gaza Strip, where the authorities of the Hamas government, which governs that Palestinian area, assure that more than 20,000 civilians have been killed. died during bombings in recent weeks.
“We must understand that this is a fight to save the free world,” said the vice consul.
“If we Israelis do not do it now, the Hamas terrorist group will continue to expand to other countries and do as much or more than what it did on October 7 in Israel,” he stressed.
