Anne Frank Center sign

Anne Frank Center needles Trump after arrest of Jewish community bomb threat suspect

The Anne Frank Center used a statement on the arrest of a man suspected of making bomb threats to Jewish community centres to needle President Donald Trump for his perceived silence on anti-Semitism.

“We are grateful for the arrest of a suspect in a number of bomb threats to Jewish institutions,” Steven Goldstein, the executive director of the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect in New York, said in a statement. “This year, we have called on the Administration to respond to such threats consistently in real time, which didn’t happen.”

The as-yet-unnamed suspect is a 19-year-old US-Israeli citizen who was arrested in Israel. The man is reportedly suspected of carrying out bomb threats and other threats across the US — as well as in Europe, Australia, and New Zealand — over a six month period.

“It doesn’t matter where any suspect is from or what his or her background is,” Goldstein said. “Taking Antisemitism or any other kind of hate seriously requires a rapid response so that our nation, and indeed the world, sees the U.S. government as a leader against hate, rather than as a silent bystander.”

Read the full article by Peter Jacobs at Business Insider Australia.