At 10am Saturday morning, 46-year-old Robert Bowers, a white, bearded, heavyset man, burst into a synagogue in a Jewish neighbourhood in Pittsburgh armed with an AR-15 assault rifle.
“All Jews must die,” Bowers screamed just seconds before murdering 11 Jewish worshippers, including Rose Mallinger, a 97-year-old survivor of the Holocaust. Later he would tell law enforcement officers, “They’re committing genocide to my people. I just want to kill Jews.”
Even more specifically, Bowers had a deranged obsession with the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, or HIAS, a Jewish American non-profit organisation that provides humanitarian aid and assistance to the world’s most vulnerable people: refugees.
Just hours before Bowers carried out his demented evil, he posted on GAB, a social media platform popularised by followers of the alt-Right, that HIAS wants “to bring hostile invaders to dwell among us. It’s the filthy EVIL Jews. Bringing the (sic) Filthy EVIL Muslims into the country!! Stop the kikes then Worry About the Muslims!”
Read the article by CJ Werleman in The Sydney Morning Herald.
[CJ Werleman is a journalist, author, and analyst on conflict, terrorism, and Middle East.]