- A bomb threat was emailed to 19 Jewish Community Centre locations in the US, including several in New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said at a press conference in Albany on Sunday.
- The threat was emailed to JCC email accounts at about 11:30 a.m. Sunday, the director of New York State’s Director of Emergency Management said.
- Cuomo likened the bomb threat, which he attributed to the “contagion” of hate across the state and country, to the COVID-19 coronavirus, saying “there’s also a virus of hate, and it’s spreading and it’s spreading quickly.”
On Sunday morning, 19 Jewish Community Centre locations in the US – including several in New York – received an emailed bomb threat, sending the facilities into high alert amid a police investigation.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York visited one of the confirmed locations, the Sidney Albert JCC located in the state’s capital, Albany, and spoke at a press briefing following evacuations, the Albany Times Union first reported Sunday.
“These types of situations are so ugly and so unfortunate,” Cuomo said. “What’s worse is we’re seeing more and more of them. We’ve had about 42 incidents of anti-Semitism in this state this past couple of months so it’s not getting better. It’s only getting worse.”
Asked whether there were other JCCs threatened, Cuomo said: “Yes. There were about 18.”
A representative for the office of the New York governor later clarified that not all 19 occurred in New York but would not say how many occurred in the state versus in others.
Read the article by Connor Perrett in Business Insider Australia.