Dallas JCC bomb threat goes to spam folder
Community center finds threatening email several days later after an alert from local authorities
Sue Surkes is The Times of Israel's environment reporter
An emailed bomb threat to a Jewish community center in Dallas landed without fanfare in the center’s spam filter and was only retrieved several days later, according to a report in the Dallas News.
In January, the city‘s Aaron Family Jewish Community Center was closed after a bomb threat, and on Wednesday, it was among dozens of JCCs across the US to be evacuated after receiving threats of explosives.
But a separate threat, the week before, went unnoticed.
On Sunday, Artie Allen, the JCC’s chief executive officer, notified center members that local authorities had been in touch the previous Friday about a bomb threat they believed had been delivered earlier in the week.
When hate is the new normal: Another threat at Dallas' JCC, a swastika on Woodall Rodgers https://t.co/FUjA3j5pvL via @dallasnews
— Stacey Dunn, Antifascist (@dunnclan) March 2, 2017
The JCC checked its email files and found that the threat was lodged in the spam folder, which collects mails from unknown senders.
“That’s right,” wrote Dallas News columnist Robert Wilonsky. “The terroristic threat wound up in the junk folder alongside erection-pill ads, pleas from Nigerian princes who need fast cash and Nextdoor notifications.”
He went on, “I spent Monday looking at photos on Twitter of JCC teachers wheeling out nursery-schoolers in cribs; I read a few Facebook posts from friends in faraway places whose kids were hustled to remote locations … you know, just in case. But this hits close to home, like a sledgehammer to the forehead. I’ve been a member of the J since I was born. Played a million basketball games there, went to a thousand awkward bar mitzvah dances. My boy went to pre-K and summer camp there. My folks go every morning.
“The threats have been just that and nothing more, which is more than enough. They’re intended to be disruptive, to create anxiety, fear — that weight that lies on your chest, that churning that burns a hole in your stomach.”
