The Anti-Defamation League on Friday thanked law enforcement for their work arresting Juan Thompson in connection with at least eight threats made against Jewish institutions nationwide.
One such threat was made against the ADL’s own headquarters. Thompson allegedly called the organization and said he had planted C-4 in the building, and that it would be “detonated within one hour,” according to a criminal complaint unsealed Friday.
“The diligence of law enforcement at such a critical time for the Jewish community is very reassuring,” Evan Bernstein, ADL’s New York regional director, said at a press conference Friday.
“However, there are many more JCC bomb threats that have not been solved, and communities are hurting,” he added, “and we hope all law enforcement will continue to be diligent.”
“Just because there’s been an arrest today around our bomb threat does not mean that the threat has disappeared or will stop. Hate toward the Jewish community and other minority groups is very real and very concerning,” he said.
Oren Segal, the director of ADL’s Center on Extremism, said that the while Thompson’s motive was unclear – the threats seem to have been made as part of a larger pattern of harassment against a former romantic partner – the impact of his threats was unambiguous.
“While the motive is unclear, the impact is crystal clear. While I cannot speak about what is in Thompson’s mind, or certainly in his heart, threatening Jewish institutions is an anti-Semitic attack,” he said.
Asked about whether he thought the political atmosphere had encouraged the recent wave of anti-Semitic incidents, Segal put the events within a broader context of divisive public discussions and online and physical harassment.
“We’re in unprecedented times. We’ve never seen, ever, the volume of bomb threats that we’ve seen,” he said.
“When you add the anti-Semitic vandalism that Evan described at cemeteries, at synagogues, in the public arena around the country; when you multiply that by the anti-Semitism that we’re seeing online, where the more people are likely to engage and see anti-Semitism on their phone than they are in their neighborhood; and when white supremacists in this country feel more emboldened than they ever have before because of the public discussion and the divisive rhetoric, that includes within the presidential campaign, I would say that you can’t separate an incident like this from the broader context,” Segal said.
