The Anti-Defamation League considers Saturday’s attack on a Pittsburgh synagogue to be the deadliest on the Jewish community in U.S. history. Its death toll of 11 far exceeds other recent attacks in the U.S. where Jews were specifically targeted.
Following is a list of other deadly attacks over the last 40 years:
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March 9-11, 1977: The B’nai B’rith international headquarters in Washington and two other buildings were seized by a dozen Hanafi Muslim gunmen who took more than 100 hostages. A radio reporter was killed at City Hall in the initial takeover, but the captors released their hostages after 38 hours. Participants were convicted of second-degree murder, armed kidnapping and other crimes and sentenced to long prison terms.
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Oct. 8, 1977: A gunman fired five rounds from a high-powered hunting rifle into a group leaving the Brith Sholom Kneseth Israel Congregation Synagogue in suburban St. Louis after a bar mitzvah. One man, Gerald Gordon, was killed and another wounded. Joseph Paul Franklin was convicted of that murder and seven others, and was executed for Gordon’s death in 2013.
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Nov. 5, 1990: Rabbi Meir Kahane, a Brooklyn-born Israeli, was shot to death at a New York hotel. Egyptian native El Sayyed Nosair was convicted of the slaying.
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March 1, 1994: A Lebanese immigrant strafed a van full of Hasidic Jewish teenagers as it crossed the Brooklyn Bridge, killing Aaron Halberstam and wounding three other people. Rashid Baz was convicted and sentenced to 141 years in prison.
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Aug. 10, 1999: White supremacist Buford O. Furrow stormed into a Los Angeles Jewish community center that was packed with children attending day programs and fired more 70 bullets, injuring four children and a woman. He then headed into a San Fernando Valley neighborhood and killed Filipino-American mailman Joseph Ileto, who was shot nine times. Furrow apologizes and blamed mental illness at his sentencing, where he received two life terms.
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July 4, 2002: Hesham Mohamed Ali Hadayet, a limousine driver and Egyptian immigrant, opened fire at the counter of El Al, Israel’s national carrier, and attacked a guard with a knife before he was shot and killed by an airline security guard. El Al employee Victoria Hen and passenger Yaakov Aminov were killed. Four other people were wounded.
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July 28, 2006: Naveed Afzal Haq, a U.S. citizen of Pakistani descent, shoots six women at Seattle’s Jewish Federation offices, killing Pamela Waechter. Haq appealed for forgiveness and blamed his medication as a judge sentenced him to life in prison without parole.
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June 10, 2009: A man walked up to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum on June 10 carrying a vintage rifle and shot Stephen T. Johns as the guard was opening the door for him. Two guards fired back at James Von Brunn, who was wounded in the face. Police found anti-Semitic writings justifying the attack in von Brunn’s car. He died in prison while awaiting trial.
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April 13, 2014: Frazier Glenn Miller Jr. fatally shot 69-year-old William Corporon and Corporon’s 14-year-old grandson, Reat Griffin Underwood, at a Jewish community center in suburban Kansas City, then killed Terri LaManno at the nearby Village Shalom retirement center. Miller was sentenced to death.
(AP)
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2 Responses
What about Crown Heights riots in which Yankel Rosenbaum was murdered for being Jewish and a few weeks later, Anthony Graziosi, was murdered because it was mistakenly thought he was Jewish?
Note that the nationality of the attackers has changed over time. The earlier murders were mostly done by foreign-born Muslims for “nationalistic” reasons – i.e. as indirect strikes against Israel. More recently, the killers are native-born white Americans with emotional and ideological ties to the alt-right, neo-Nazis and “traditional” European-style anti-Semitism.
This makes me very nervous. These people are frequently being radicalized via the internet and social media, and like yesterday’s killer, they are not on any police radar screens. Previously, alt-right and racist types limited their attacks to physical violence against black Americans, but now they’ve expanded their sights to us. We have got to remember that in the minds of the far-right Jews are not “white,” and they see us just as much the enemy as black people. Racism doesn’t discriminate.
And please, if you feel that your shul needs protection, HIRE a PROFESSIONAL security guard. My shul hires guards for Yomim Nora’im, as do many other shuls. A congregant with a handgun in his shtender isn’t going to do anything against a madman with an AK-47.