A Wave of Hate

Since the beginning of the year, there have been a number of plots, conspiracies and attacks against Jews and others. This trend reflects an overall increase in ideologically motivated violence in the United States. Many of the perpetrators do not belong to a specific extremist group or organization, but seem to be motivated to commit violence by their own extremist ideologies. Some of the more serious examples of these types of incidents, anti-Jewish and other, include:

June 2009 – Washington, DC
James Von Brunn (also known as James Wenneker Brunn), the suspect in the shooting at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, is a longtime white supremacist and anti-Semite.

June 2009 – Arkansas
Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad (also known as Carlos Bledsoe) an American Muslim convert who shot two uniformed American soldiers - one of whom was killed - at a military recruiting center in Little Rock, Arkansas, reportedly searched for information about Jewish institutions on the Internet. He used the Google Maps application to investigate these Jewish institutions, as well as a Baptist church, a day-care center, a post office and other military recruiting centers in several different cities.

May 2009 – New York
Four Muslim converts, three American and one Haitian, were arrested for an alleged plot to attack two synagogues in the Bronx and to shoot down planes at a military base in Newburgh, New York. The men allegedly began surveillance of several synagogues and a Jewish Community Center in the Bronx in April 2009. "These were people who were eager to bring death to Jews," Assistant U.S. Attorney Eric Snyder said at a court hearing the day after the arrests.

May 2009 – Connecticut
The suspect in a May shooting near Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut expressed threats in his personal journal toward Wesleyan and its Jewish students.

For more information, see:

American Muslim Extremists: A Growing Threat to Jews

The Re-emerging Threat of Right-Wing Violence