Jewish Agency for Israel chairman Natan Sharansky expressed “deep concern” on Wednesday over a recent wave of anti-Semitic attacks and threats in the US.
“If ever there was a line between the anti-Semitism of the far right and the anti-Israelism of the radical left, the demonization of Jews and the demonization of their state, it no longer exists,” said Sharansky in a statement.
Close to a hundred Jewish institutions have been targeted with bomb threats since the beginning of the year.
In the last week, hundreds of Jewish tombstones in Pennsylvania and Missouri have been vandalized and numerous Jewish institutions have received bomb threats, including 29 on Monday alone — the fifth wave of such scares since January.
Video still of vandalized headstones in Chesed Shel Emeth Society cemetery in St. Louis, February 20, 2017. (Screen capture: FOX2NEWS via JTA)
In the opening to his first joint address to Congress on Tuesday, US President Donald Trump described the recurrent bomb threats to Jewish institutions and desecration of Jewish cemeteries as a reminder “of our nation’s path toward civil rights and the work that remains.”
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Sharansky, who announced Tuesday that he would continue to lead the Jewish Agency for another year, added that “it is high time that all who hold democratic values dear put their political differences aside and band together to combat these expressions of hatred and violence.”
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