Palestinian Gunman Kills 7 Near Jerusalem Synagogue

Victims of a shooting attack are covered on the ground near a synagogue in Jerusalem , Friday, Jan. 27, 2023 Israel's national rescue service Mada says a gunman killed five people and wounded three others in a shooting near a synagogue Friday night in east Jerusalem in one of the deadliest attacks on Israelis in years. The gunman was shot and reportedly killed. Image: Mahmoud Illean/AP

BY JOSEF FEDERMAN AND ISABEL DEBRE

JERUSALEM (AP) — A Palestinian gunman opened fire outside an east Jerusalem synagogue Friday night, killing seven people, including a 70-year-old woman, and wounding three others before he was shot and killed by police, officials said. It was the deadliest attack on Israelis in years and raised the likelihood of more bloodshed.

The attack, which occurred as residents were observing the Jewish sabbath, came a day after an Israeli military raid killed nine people in the West Bank. The shooting set off celebrations in both the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, where people fired guns into the air, honked horns and distributed sweets.

The burst of violence, which also included a rocket barrage from Gaza and retaliatory Israeli airstrikes, has posed an early challenge for Israel’s new government, which is dominated by ultranationalists who have pushed for a hard line against Palestinian violence. It also cast a cloud over a visit by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken to the region Sunday.

Addressing reporters at Israel’s national police headquarters, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he had held a security assessment and decided on “immediate actions.” He said he would convene his Security Cabinet on Saturday night, after the end of the sabbath, to discuss a further response.

Netanyahu declined to elaborate but said Israel would act with “determination and composure.” He called on the public not to take the law into their own hands.

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the U.S. strongly condemned the attack and was “shocked and saddened by the loss of life,” noting it came on International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

″The United States will extend our full support to the government and people of Israel,” she said.

Israeli police said the shootings occurred in Neve Yaakov, a neighborhood with a large ultra-Orthodox population, and that the gunman fled in a car. Police said they chased after him and after an exchange of fire, killed him.

Jerusalem police chief Doron Turjeman confirmed seven deaths, in addition to the shooter, and said three people were wounded.

Police identified the attacker as a 21-year-old east Jerusalem resident who apparently acted alone. Turjeman promised an “aggressive and significant” effort to track down anyone who had helped him.

Police also released a photo of the pistol it said was used by the attacker.

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant huddled with Israel’s military chief and other top security officials and instructed them to assist police and strengthen defenses near Jerusalem and for Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank.

“Israel’s defense establishment will operate decisively and forcefully against terror and will reach anyone involved in the attack,” Gallant said.

Israel’s MADA rescue service said the dead were five men and two women, including several who were 60 or older. Jerusalem’s Hadassah Hospital said a 15-year-old boy was recovering from surgery.

The attack was the deadliest on Israelis since a 2008 shooting killed eight people in a Jewish seminary in Jerusalem, according to the Foreign Ministry. Given the location and timing, it threatened to trigger a tough response from Israel.

Overnight Thursday, Gaza militants fired a barrage of rockets into southern Israel, with all of them either intercepted or landing in open areas. Israel responded with airstrikes on targets in Gaza. No casualties were reported, and calm had appeared to be taking hold before Friday night’s shooting.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility. In Gaza, Hazem Qassem, spokesman for the ruling Hamas militant group, said the attack was “a revenge and natural response” to the deadly military raid Thursday.

At several locations across the Gaza Strip, dozens of Palestinians gathered in spontaneous demonstrations to celebrate the Jerusalem attack, with some coming out of dessert shops with large trays of sweets to distribute.

In downtown Gaza City, celebratory gunfire could be heard, as cars honked and calls of “God is great!” wafted from mosque loudspeakers. In various West Bank towns, Palestinians launched fireworks.

The attack escalated tensions that were already heightened following Thursday’s raid in the town of Jenin, where nine people, including at least seven militants and a 61-year-old woman, were killed. It was the deadliest single raid in the West Bank in two decades. A 10th Palestinian was killed in separate fighting near Jerusalem.

Angry Palestinians marched Friday as they buried the last of those killed a day earlier.

Scuffles between Israeli forces and Palestinian protesters erupted after the funeral for a 22-year-old Palestinian north of Jerusalem and elsewhere in the occupied West Bank, but calm prevailed in the contested capital and in the blockaded Gaza Strip for most of the day.

But that suddenly dissolved with the east Jerusalem shooting, described as “horrific and heartbreaking” by Yair Lapid, the opposition leader and former prime minister.

Neve Yaakov is a religious Jewish settlement that Israel considers to be a neighborhood of its capital. Israel claims all of Jerusalem as its undivided capital, while the Palestinians seek east Jerusalem as a capital of their future state.

Blinken’s trip will probably now focus heavily on lowering tensions. He is likely to discuss the underlying causes of the conflict that continue to fester, the agenda of Israel’s new far-right government and the Palestinian Authority’s decision to halt security coordination with Israel in retaliation for the deadly raid.

The Biden administration has been deeply engaged with Israeli and Palestinian leaders in recent days, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said, underscoring the “urgent need here for all parties to deescalate to prevent the further loss of civilian life and to work together to improve the security situation in the West Bank.”

While residents of Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank were on edge, midday prayers Friday at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, often a catalyst for clashes between Palestinians and Israeli police, passed in relative calm.

Both the Palestinian rockets and Israeli airstrikes seemed limited so as to prevent growing into a full-blown war. Israel and Hamas have fought four wars and several smaller skirmishes since the militant group seized power in Gaza from rival forces in 2007.

Tensions have soared since Israel stepped up raids in the West Bank last spring, following a series of Palestinian attacks. Jenin, which was an important a militant stronghold during the 2000-2005 intifada and has again emerged as one, has been the focus of many of the Israeli operations.

Nearly 150 Palestinians were killed in the West Bank and east Jerusalem in 2022, making it the deadliest year in those territories since 2004, according to leading Israeli rights group B’Tselem. Last year, 30 people were killed in Palestinian attacks against Israelis.

So far this year, 30 Palestinians have been killed, according to a count by The Associated Press.

Israel says most of the dead were militants. But youths protesting the incursions and others not involved in the confrontations also have been killed.

Anwar Gargash, a senior diplomat in the United Arab Emirates, warned that “the Israeli escalation in Jenin is dangerous and disturbing and undermines international efforts to advance the priority of the peace agenda.” The UAE recognized Israel in 2020 along with Bahrain, which has remained silent on the surge in violence.

In the West Bank, Fatah announced a general strike and most shops were closed in Palestinian cities. The PA said Thursday it would halt the ties that its security forces maintain with Israel in a shared effort to contain Islamic militants. Previous threats have been short-lived, in part because of the benefits the authority enjoys from the relationship, and also due to U.S. and Israeli pressure.

The PA has limited control over scattered enclaves in the West Bank, and almost none over militant strongholds like the Jenin camp.

Israel says its raids are meant to dismantle militant networks and thwart attacks. The Palestinians say they further entrench Israel’s 55-year, open-ended occupation of the West Bank, which Israel captured along with east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians want those territories to form any eventual state.

Israel has established dozens of settlements in the West Bank that house 500,000 people. The Palestinians and much of the international community view settlements as illegal and an obstacle to peace, even as talks to end the conflict have been moribund for over a decade.

___

Associated Press writer Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed.

Synagogue Got Money To Boost Security Just Before Attack

In this Sunday, April 28, 2019 file photo, a San Diego county sheriff's deputy stands in front of the Poway Chabad Synagogue in Poway, Calif. The gunman who attacked the synagogue last week fired his semi-automatic rifle at Passover worshippers after walking through the front entrance that synagogue leaders identified last year as needing improved security. The synagogue applied for a federal grant to better protect that area. The money, $150,000, was approved in September but only arrived in late March. "Obviously we did not have a chance to start using the funds yet," Rabbi Scimcha Backman told The Associated Press. (AP Photo/Denis Poroy, File)

BY JULIE WATSON, DON THOMPSON

POWAY, CALIF (AP) — A gunman fired his semi-automatic rifle at Jewish worshippers after walking through a Southern California synagogue’s open front door, a spot that synagogue leaders determined last year needed improved security.

The Chabad of Poway synagogue applied for a federal grant to install gates and more secure doors to better protect that area. The $150,000 was approved in September but only got awarded in late March.

“Obviously we did not have a chance to start using the funds yet,” Rabbi Simcha Backman told The Associated Press.

Backman, who oversees security grants for the 207 Chabad institutions across California, declined to provide details on the planned security enhancements or to speculate whether they might have changed the outcome of Saturday’s attack.

The shooter killed a woman and wounded an 8-year-old girl, her uncle and Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein, who was leading the service on the last day of Passover, a major Jewish holiday.

Backman said the synagogue north of San Diego is considering asking authorities to allow some of the money be used to hire security guards.

The synagogue doesn’t have guards now. But after a gunman massacred 11 people at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh last October, rabbis of California’s Chabad organization, including at the Poway synagogue, began asking members who were trained law enforcement professionals to carry their weapons at services, Backman said.

The congregation also received training from the city of Poway on responding to an active shooter, and Goldstein applied for a concealed carry permit.

On Saturday, an off-duty Border Patrol agent who attends the synagogue fired at the gunman as he fled, hitting his vehicle. The 19-year-old suspect, John T. Earnest, has pleaded not guilty to murder and attempted murder charges.

The Poway synagogue was built two decades ago with security features such as video surveillance, but it started to beef up its measures in 2010. The synagogue received and spent money from a $75,000 grant that records show was earmarked for a security assessment, 16 cameras, fencing and lighting.

The synagogue applied for another grant in May 2018 to upgrade those cameras and add other enhancements. It was approved in September, but the funds weren’t released until March 22.

Backman said it often takes at least a year to complete the paperwork and necessary approvals.

The security grant program is funded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and administered in California by the state Office of Emergency Services.

While the synagogue got approval in September, a workshop on the required documents was not held until the end of October and the synagogue submitted its first documents in early February, Office of Emergency Services spokesman Brad Alexander said. The state then requested additional information before awarding the money.

“It seems like a long time from the time they granted to the authorization,” said Republican state Sen. Brian Jones, whose district includes the synagogue. “I would like to find out if there’s a way we can speed this up, can we remove some bureaucratic steps here to help these organizations get these improvements done quicker?”

New FEMA rules allow the grants to be spent on security guards, and state officials said recipients can seek a modification to existing grants to use the money that way. Backman said the synagogue is considering it and will find the funds to hire guards even if the government does not fund them.

With hate crimes against Jews and other religious and racial minorities growing, Gov. Gavin Newsom is backing legislation that would change a similar state grant program to allow money for guards. He said institutions should decide whether those guards are armed.

Democratic Assemblyman Jesse Gabriel, who is sponsoring the legislation, said Thursday that one goal is “to make sure that vulnerable communities that need additional security are getting this financial help as quickly as possible.”

Goldstein, who lost a finger in the shooting and joined President Donald Trump on Thursday for the National Day of Prayer , has talked to Newsom, while the Chabad organization sent rabbis to Sacramento to push for funds to secure places of worship, Backman said.

Backman applauded Newsom’s announcement Monday about budgeting $15 million to increase security for religious institutions and other vulnerable nonprofits. Last year, the program got $500,000.

Jewish-affiliated organizations in California received 79% of the 264 nonprofit security grants awarded under the federal and state programs since 2012. The remaining 21% went to institutions serving other faiths, hospitals, Planned Parenthood chapters, domestic violence shelters, museums and a university.

Houses of worship, like all institutions open to the public, face a balancing act in providing security while maintaining a welcoming atmosphere, said Jesus Villahermosa, a former law enforcement officer in Washington state who teaches classes nationwide on deterring and reacting to active shooters.

“All the mechanical security in the world isn’t going to change that anyone in America can walk in to any place in America and open fire,” he said. “It’s difficult because I don’t think there is a perfect solution.”

Even installing metal detectors merely makes those gathered there the potential initial target, he said.

Villahermosa said synagogue leaders were wise to ask officers to come armed and agreed with them about the danger of untrained people bringing weapons to services for fear they will shoot bystanders.

Layers of security would be best, he said, including professional armed guards at entrances, embedded in the congregation and at the front of the worship area.

Government help for that makes sense because millions of Americans attend places of worship, Backman said.

“I understand the concern for separation of church and state, but this is not about the government supporting one religious institution over another,” he said. “It’s about the government protecting its citizens.”

___

Thompson reported from Sacramento. Associated Press writer Adam Beam in Sacramento contributed to this story.

Holocaust Survivor Faces Evil, Cheats Death For Second Time

In this Monday, Oct. 29, 2018 photo, Holocaust survivor Judah Samet, 80, sits in his living room in Pittsburgh. Samet survived the infamous Bergen-Belsen concentration camp as a boy, and he was in the parking lot at Tree of Life synagogue Saturday as a gunman rampaged through the halls, killing Samet's fellow congregants. (AP Photo/Allen G. Breed)

BY ALLEN G. BREED

PITTSBURGH (ASSOCIATED PRESS) — Sitting in the handicapped lane outside Tree of Life synagogue, Judah Samet watched as a plainclothes officer traded gunfire with the man at the temple door. He was caught in a crossfire and, yet, instead of ducking down, he craned his neck to get a glimpse of the gunman.

“The guy was very focused,” he said, pointing his finger like the barrel of a gun and mimicking the staccato clacking of semiautomatic fire. “I saw the smoke coming out of his (muzzle).”

The 80-year-old Hungarian native had come face to face with evil once before, in a Nazi concentration camp. He had cheated death then, and on this Sabbath morning, he had a feeling that God was not finished with him just yet.

When the shooting stopped Saturday, 11 people lay dead inside the bunker-like concrete synagogue in Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill neighborhood, the heart of the city’s Jewish community. In the days since, many have expressed shock that a place that seemed so safe for 150 years could become the scene of the worst attack on Jews in the nation’s history.

But Samet is surprised that something like this hadn’t happened sooner.

“I didn’t lose the faith in humanity,” he said. “I know not to depend on humanity.”

Samet was just 6 years old in the spring of 1944 when the Nazis came to his house around the noontime meals and told them to pack. They were given 15 minutes to be outside “with our valuables and one change of underwear.”

Sitting in his sunny apartment in a jade-green building a few blocks from the synagogue, the retired jeweler recalled the long march to the trains.

“What bothered me most is that there were Hungarians walking both sides, to and fro on the sidewalks,” he said, curling his mouth into a grimace and shaking his head. “Nobody paid attention. Nobody cared. They were as bad as the Nazis.”

At one point, he watched in horror as a Gestapo sergeant put a pistol to his mother’s head — for daring to ask for better treatment for the weary travelers. She was spared only because she spoke fluent German, and the commander wanted to use her as an interpreter.

They were supposed to be going to Auschwitz, but partisans had destroyed the rail lines. After several months of wandering, they arrived at Bergen-Belsen, the northern German camp where Anne Frank died.

“First thing we saw at the gate, there were about almost two stories of corpses, lying on top of each other,” he said. “They’d clear them away. Next day, again, they have the same.”

Weakened by starvation, the population was ravaged by disease.

“People were actually lying down and dying,” he said, “because they lost hope.”

Samet did not lie down.

His father died of typhus two days after being liberated. But by some miracle, the rest of his family survived.

After the war, Samet went to Israel, where he served as a paratrooper. He later relocated to Pittsburgh.

He has been a member of the Tree of Life synagogue for 54 years.

Samet tries to go to “shul” — a synagogue — every day, and prides himself on his punctuality. But on Saturday, he was running late.

“My housekeeper kept me for four minutes,” he said.

He began pulling into the lot when somebody knocked on his window. In a gentle, hushed voice, the man said: “You can’t go in the synagogue. There’s a shooting going on.”

Samet tried to back out, but there were too many other cars trying to do the same. Suddenly, out the passenger window, he saw what he later realized was a detective.

“He was shooting at the fellow,” he said. “And the fellow was shooting back with a rapid fire. Da-da-da-da. Da-da-da-da.”

Samet would later be able to identify Robert Bowers to the FBI, so close was he to the action.

Following his surrender, the wounded Bowers reportedly told officers he wanted to “kill all the Jews.” In online posts, Bowers hurled Jewish slurs and raged at synagogues like Tree of Life for supporting refugees, calling them “hostile invaders.”

“I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered,” Bowers allegedly posted online shortly before entering the synagogue. “Screw your optics, I’m going in.”

Like many, Lauren Bairnsfather thought Pittsburgh was immune from such violence. She’s the director of the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh, located in Squirrel Hill.

“I was shocked. But I also thought, ‘Why not here?’ It’s happening everywhere. Why wouldn’t it happen here?’”

Bairnsfather said the center’s mission is to show the relevance of the Holocaust today. Saturday’s massacre was a “stark, concrete example” of how important that work is.

“It’s not just Jewish history,” she said. “It’s human history. And it’s still happening obviously. It happened here.”

Auschwitz-Birkenau survivor Magda Brown, of Skokie, Illinois, was scheduled to speak at the Pittsburgh center Monday. As she watched news of the tragedy unfold, she turned to her daughter and said she wouldn’t dream of canceling.

“Now they need to hear our story even more,” she said. “Let’s go.”

Brown’s speech to a large group of high school students also included a live webcast.

On Brown’s 17th birthday, she and her family were loaded on cattle cars and shipped to the dreaded camp, located in present-day Poland. Of an extended family of 70, only eight survived.

The Hungarian woman, now a sprightly 91, believes that anti-Semitism never dies, it just goes “dormant,” until a leader like Hitler comes along to reawaken it. But unlike Samet, she is counting on humanity.

And that is why she shares her story.

“I still believe there are more good people than bad,” she said. “So I’m hoping that the good people are listening.”

'I'm Going To Die:' Survivors Relive Horrors At Tree Of Life

A person stands in front of Stars of David that are displayed in front of the Tree of Life Synagogue with the names of those killed in Saturday's deadly shooting in Pittsburgh, Monday, Oct. 29, 2018. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke

BY ADAM GELLER, ALLEN G. BREED & MARYCLAIRE DALE

PITTSBURGH (AP) — Up in the choir loft, alone, Rabbi Jeffrey Myers whispered to a 911 dispatcher on his cellphone.

Below him, down in the sanctuary, eight of his congregants had been felled by a gunman’s bullets. Up here, though, Myers couldn’t see them — or any of the other horrors going on beyond his hideaway. He could only listen. He waited for another round of semiautomatic gunfire, but all was silent. Then he heard what he feared even more.

Could that be footsteps?

Myers rushed into the loft’s bathroom, barricading himself inside.

Days earlier he had used a blog posting to urge members of his Tree of Life congregation to celebrate life’s moments while they had the chance: “None of us can say with certainty that there is always next year,” he wrote. Now, Myers wondered if he should hang up with 911 and make a video to tell his wife and children he loved them, while he still had time.

“I’m going to die,” he thought.

Saturday morning — the time when Jews in communities like this one come together to celebrate the miracle of the earth’s creation and the day of rest that followed — had barely begun.

As a light rain fell over the Tudors and Victorians of Pittsburgh’s leafy Squirrel Hill, the parking lot at the Tree of Life Synagogue had been slow to fill in. There was nothing unusual about that. Officially, services begin at 9:45 for Tree of Life and the two other congregations that share its large stone building — New Light and Dor Hadash. Worshippers from all three were filtering in, many of them older, taking their time.

The synagogue has long been one of the touchstones of Squirrel Hill, a rolling neighborhood about five miles east of downtown that is the center of the city’s large Jewish community. Founded in 1864, Tree of Life prides itself as a warm, welcoming place, “where even the oldest Jewish traditions become relevant to the way our members live today,” it says on its website.

On Saturdays, the day of the Jewish Sabbath, its doors are unlocked and open to all. On this day, the New Light congregation gathered in a basement room. Upstairs, toward the front of the building, the worshippers of Dor Hadash prepared for a ceremony to name a newborn boy. And in the main sanctuary, Myers convened about a dozen of his congregants.

Outside the building, though, Robert Gregory Bowers was also mindful of the Saturday rituals. For months, the 46-year-old truck driver had been posting angry rants against Jews on the Gab social media site, to little apparent notice. He blamed Jews for plotting against society, contaminating it in order to destroy it.

At 9:49 a.m. Saturday, he posted again.

“I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered,” Bowers wrote. “Screw your optics. I’m going in.”

Inside the synagogue, New Light’s rabbi, Jonathan Perlman, was just a few minutes into morning prayers when his congregants heard a loud bang. Barry Werber, an Air Force vet who was there to help mark the anniversary of his mother’s death, thought at first that someone might have walked into a cart upstairs stacked with glassware and whiskey meant for the baby-naming ceremony. To Myers, it sounded like somebody in the hallway had knocked over a coat rack.

Then the sounds came again, this time in a burst.

Werber and other worshippers opened a door leading into the basement hallway. A body lay on the staircase. Their rabbi quickly closed the door and pushed Werber and fellow congregants Melvin Wax and Carol Black into a large supply closet. As gunshots echoed upstairs, Werber dialed 911 but was too afraid to say anything, for fear of making any noise.

The first call to an emergency dispatcher came in at 9:54: Active shooter at Tree of Life. Twenty shots fired in the lobby, maybe 30.

Nine minutes had passed since worship was scheduled to begin.

In the main sanctuary, Myers told his congregants to drop to the floor. “Don’t move. Be quiet.”

Although he was their leader, Myers was still new to Tree of Life. A native of Newark, New Jersey, he had been trained as a cantor — the clergyman charged with leading Jewish congregations in song. For years, he worked in the New York area, then near Atlantic City. But watching some synagogues close and others consolidate, he decided to broaden his resume and sought ordination.

When his previous congregation eliminated the cantor’s post because of budgetary pressures, Myers found his first job as a rabbi in a city he knew little about. He and his wife, Janice, had moved to Pittsburgh a year earlier to start a new and somewhat unlikely chapter for a couple whose two children were already grown.

Now, still near the front of the sanctuary, he led a group of worshippers through some nearby doors that he knew would get them outside, to safety.

Then he turned back. Eight congregants remained inside, near the back of the room closest to the lobby — where the gunfire was getting louder.

“I knew at that point there was nothing I could do,” Myers would say later.

From the front of the sanctuary, Myers scrambled up the narrow stairs leading to the choir loft.

Unseen to him, the stocky, square-jawed Bowers stalked the building, armed with an AR-15 assault-style rifle and three handguns.

In an upstairs bathroom, custodian Augie Siriano heard four or five distinctive pops and went to investigate, threading through a sanctuary and lobby toward the chapel where Tree of Life’s service had been cut short.

“I turned and looked and there was a gentleman lying face down, coming out of the doors of the chapel, and he had blood coming out of his head,” Siriano said in an interview with Pittsburgh television station WTAE. “As soon as I seen that, I turned and headed in the other direction, toward the exit doors.”

In the pitch black of the basement closet, all turned silent. Could it be over? Werber and the others hidden there waited, before the elderly Wax decided to check and opened the door. A blast of bullets drove him backward, and those inside the closet watched their friend fall to the floor. The gunman, stepping over his body, moved toward them.

In the darkness, Werber held his breath. He still had the 911 operator on the line. But his old flip phone had no light on it, and he and the others were drawn deep in the shadows.

They could see, framed in a sliver of light from the doorway, the stock of Bower’s rifle and his jacket, but little else. Could he see them? As the seconds ticked by, Werber waited for the gunman to spray the closet with bullets. “I’m barely breathing,” Werber would later recall. Then Bowers turned his back and walked away.

Outside, police cruisers and tactical vehicles flooded into the blocks around the intersection of Shady and Wilkins avenues. Nearby, Michael Aronson, a long-ago paramedic turned accounts manager, ordered his daughters, ages 6 and 8, into the basement, asking them to remember what they’d learned in school lockdown drills. He flipped through channels on his police scanner, as chatter ramped up in intensity.

“We’re under fire,” an officer radioed in at 9:59 a.m.

“Every unit in the city needs to get here now!” another officer said minutes later.

Judah Samet, a member of the Tree of Life congregation for 54 years, is almost always on time for services, but his housekeeper had delayed him. The 80-year-old, who survived the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, was just pulling into a handicapped spot when a man knocked on the window: “You can’t go into the synagogue. There’s a shooting.”

Samet saw what he later realized was a plainclothes officer, pistol drawn, exchanging fire with an assailant. For the second time in his life, Samet was face-to-face with evil.

Back inside, Werber and the others waited. The closet had a back door, Werber recalled, but in the darkness he could not see it. Perlman, the rabbi, managed to find his way out at some point. But the other two remained until police came to lead them out.

“I lost my yarmulke in the process,” Werber said. “I still had my prayer shawl.”

When police tactical teams entered the synagogue, a spent ammunition magazine lay in the hallway — and four bodies were sprawled across the atrium.

Bowers exchanged more gunfire, then retreated to the third floor. Four officers were wounded before authorities cornered the gunman.

At 11:08, Bowers, bleeding from wounds, crawled from his hiding place and raised his hands.

“All these Jews need to die,” he said to an officer.

In the end, 11 people did lose their lives at Tree of Life in an attack officials have labeled the worst single act of violence against Jews in America since the country’s founding. The victims included Dor Hadash congregant Jerry Rabinowitz, who reportedly went in to try to help the wounded, as well as three members of New Light: Richard Gottfried, a dentist looking ahead to retirement; Dan Stein, a new grandfather; and Wax, a retired accountant who was a “gem and gentleman,” Werber said.

Seven of the eight Tree of Life congregants who couldn’t make their way out of the sanctuary also were slain, and one was wounded but lived. The killed include brothers Cecil and David Rosenthal, who are to be laid to rest Tuesday, and a couple, Bernice and Sylvan Simon, both in their 80s.

On Monday morning, Myers stood at a street corner outside of the synagogue, where memorials shaped like the Star of David had been placed along the sidewalk — one to honor each of those killed. He talked about the funerals to come and the difficult days and weeks ahead, but vowed: “Here in Pittsburgh, hate will not triumph. Love will win out.”

Then he pointed to the building named for the tree at the heart of the Old Testament’s Garden of Eden.

“I looked at this and I said, ’Oh my God, this is a giant mausoleum,” he said. But then, he realized, he was wrong.

“Tree of Life has been in Pittsburgh for 154 years. We’re not leaving this corner,” he said. “We will be back and will rebuild, even stronger.”

Also contributing were AP reporters Mark Scolforo, Mark Gillispie and Claudia Lauer.

For AP’s complete coverage of the Pittsburgh synagogue shootings: https://apnews.com/Pittsburghsynagoguemassacre

Anti-Semitic Incidents Were On The Rise Even Before Shooting

In this Feb. 27, 2017, file photo, Rabbi Joshua Bolton of the University of Pennsylvania's Hillel center surveys damaged headstones at Mount Carmel Cemetery in Philadelphia. The shooting rampage that killed more than 10 people at Pittsburgh's Tree of Life Synagogue on Saturday, Oct. 27, 2018, is being decried as the deadliest attack on Jews in U.S. history. Yet the carnage, however unprecedented, is not an aberration: Year after year, decade after decade, anti-Semitism proves to be among the most entrenched and pervasive forms of hatred and bigotry in the United States. (AP Photo/Jacqueline Larma, File

BY DAVID CRARY

NEW YORK (AP) — Swastikas scrawled into Jewish students’ notebooks. Headstones toppled and desecrated by vandals at Jewish cemeteries. Jews falsely blamed for challenges facing the nation.

The shooting rampage that killed 11 people at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue on Saturday is being decried as the deadliest attack on Jews in U.S. history, allegedly carried out by a virulently anti-Semitic gunman. The carnage, however unprecedented, is not an aberration.

Year after year, decade after decade, anti-Semitism proves to be among the most entrenched and pervasive forms of hatred and bigotry in the United States.

Jews make up only about 2 percent of the U.S. population, but in annual FBI data they repeatedly account for more than half of the Americans targeted by hate crimes committed due to religious bias. The Anti-Defamation League identified 1,986 anti-Semitic incidents in the U.S. in 2017, up from 1,267 in 2016, and also reported a major increase in anti-Semitic online harassment.

Anti-Semitism surfaces often in the research conducted by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks various U.S. hate groups, including neo-Nazis, white nationalists, skinheads and others.

“They’re all anti-Semites — that’s the tie that binds them,” said Heidi Beirich, director of the center’s Intelligence Project. “They believe Jews are pulling the strings behind bad things happening in this country.”

Of the thousands of anti-Semitic incidents in the U.S. in recent decades, only a handful were deadly. Among the most recent:

—In June 2009, a gunman who had anti-Semitic writings in his car killed a security guard while trying to enter the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

—In April 2014, Frazier Glenn Miller Jr. fatally shot a 69-year-old man and his 14-year-old grandson at a Jewish community center in suburban Kansas City, then killed a woman at the nearby Village Shalom retirement center.

Long before those incidents, many synagogues and Jewish organizations in the U.S. had been ramping up security measures.

Fifteen years ago, the Anti-Defamation League issued a 132-page guidebook titled, “Protecting Your Jewish Institution: Security Strategies for Today’s Dangerous World.”

It includes detailed advice on controlling access to the premises, and also urged leaders of institutions to think carefully about whether or not they wanted to hire armed guards.

After hearing news of the Pittsburgh shooting, President Donald Trump speculated that the death toll would have been smaller if an armed guard had been in the building.

Stephen Cohen, a co-president of one of the congregations that used the Tree of Life Synagogue, said leaders of the facility had conducted active shooter drills in the past, and considered themselves well-trained in how to handle security crises. However, a rabbi-emeritus at the synagogue, Alvin Berkun, said guards — while used during the major Jewish holy days — were not on duty Saturday.

Many U.S. synagogues do employ armed guards; others have taken alternative measures to tighten security.

“I doubt there’s a synagogue in the US that doesn’t think seriously about security,” said Beirich of the Southern Poverty Law Center. “It’s really sad that you can’t go to a house of worship without thinking you’re taking your life in your hands.”

Anti-Semitism has deep roots in many places far from the U.S., including Western Europe.

In Germany, which recorded 1,453 anti-Semitic incidents in 2017, police officers are often stationed outside synagogues and other Jewish institutions. Similarly in France, where anti-Semitic violence increased by 25 percent last year, police and military patrols are deployed to help protect synagogues.

Matthew Berger of Hillel International, a worldwide Jewish student organization, said there has been an increased focus on security in recent years.

“By and large, we want to be an open and engaging community,” he said. “We work tirelessly to balance that desire to be available and open with the security needs of our community.”

According to the Anti-Defamation League, anti-Semitic incidents on college and university campuses in the U.S. nearly doubled in 2017, rising to 204 from 108 in 2016. At K-12 schools, 457 anti-Semitic incidents were reported, including swastika graffiti and playground bullying.

In a separate report, released last week, the ADL said far-right extremists have ramped up an intimidating wave of anti-Semitic online harassment against Jewish journalists, political candidates and others ahead of the Nov. 6 midterm elections.

ADL researchers analyzed more than 7.5 million Twitter messages from Aug. 31 to Sept. 17 and found nearly 30 percent of the accounts repeatedly tweeting derogatory terms about Jews appeared to be automated bots. But accounts controlled by real-life humans often mount the most “worrisome and harmful” anti-Semitic attacks, sometimes orchestrated by leaders of neo-Nazi or white nationalist groups, the researchers said

Associated Press writers Allen Breed in Pittsburgh, Geir Moulson in Berlin and Sylvie Corbet in Paris contributed to this report.

Enough Is Enough: Fed-Up Americans Crave Unity Amid Violence

Meeka Grayer, radio talk show host and liberal from Omaha, poses for a photo in Omaha, Neb., Friday Oct. 26, 2018. As authorities intercepted bombs addressed to Trump's critics, political scientists and ordinary Americans wondered if this latest violence might be the moment that the country would collectively consider how poisonous its political culture had become, and decide to turn the other way. Grayer lost friends over the divide. One conservative friend posted on Facebook about the migrant caravan heading toward the United States from Central America, parroting the president's vilification of the group. She objected, and the vitriol turned her way. (AP Photo/Nati Harnik)

BY CLAIRE GALOFARO AND MARGERY A. BECK

LOUISVILLE, KY. (AP) — She flipped through television channels and radio stations, scanning from conservative to liberal media, searching for any sign that the polarized nation had finally reached its tipping point.

For days, Elisa Karem Parker had been seeing updates in the news: A pipe bomb sent to liberal political donor George Soros. One delivered to CNN. More to former President Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and other prominent political figures villainized by those on the right — a bizarre plot unfolding just ahead of the midterm election that will decide which party controls Congress.

“It’s like our country is becoming ‘The Hunger Games,’” Parker, who considers herself squarely in the middle of the political divide, told her husband and teenage son over dinner.

As authorities intercepted more than a dozen pipe bombs addressed to President Donald Trump’s most ardent critics, political scientists and ordinary Americans observed, again, that rabid partisanship had devolved to the point of acts of violent extremism. Many wonder whether this latest spasm might be the moment that the nation collectively considers how poisonous the political culture has become and decides to turn the other way.

“If this isn’t it, I’d hate to think about what it will take,” said Parker as she cast her ballot in early voting last week in Louisville, Kentucky.

The mail-bomb plot is merely the latest in a series of stunning attacks to test how much political animosity Americans are willing to accept: the shooting of a Republican congressman at a baseball practice , the white supremacist rally that turned deadly in Virginia, the recent ricin scare-letters mailed to Trump and other top members of his administration.

On Friday, authorities arrested a suspect in the bomb probe — a 56-year-old registered Republican and Trump enthusiast who “appears to be a partisan,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said when asked about motive. By then, politicians and talking heads had already backed into the usual corners: Both parties blamed the other, and the president called for unity, then again described liberals and the media as villains. The hope Parker had that this might be a turning point faded.

And then, on Saturday, news broke of a mass shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue, an attack likely to cause ugly partisan debates over gun control, hate speech and more.

The volatile tribalism now so ingrained in American life will eventually right itself, says Robb Willer, a sociology professor at Stanford University, but not until the public decides it’s had enough and stops rewarding politicians who use incendiary language and demonize the other side. It’s impossible to guess, he notes, how much damage will be done in the meantime.

“That is the question of our time: Are we going to choose to continue the war, or are we going to choose peace? And we don’t know yet what the answer to that will be, because while a majority of Americans are fed up with the extremity of our political divisions, it does feel like we’re stuck here,” Willer says. “It will get worse before it gets better.”

Animosity between parties has been growing for decades now, to the point that studies showRepublicans and Democrats don’t want to date one another, don’t want their children to marry one another and don’t want to live in the same neighborhoods at a rate unprecedented in modern America. At the same time, politicians began using increasingly apocalyptic language. Willer says those two forces — the splintering of society along party lines and the ascent of vitriolic campaigning — merged to create a breeding ground for violence.

“It was simmering,” says Parker. “It’s like the gas burner was on, then Trump lit the fire.”

The president vaulted to political prominence by promoting the racist and false conspiracy theory that Obama was not born in the United States, launched his presidential campaign by calling Mexicans rapists and murderers, and routinely describes his enemies, including the intended recipients of the pipe bombs, as “evil,” ″dangerous,” ″the enemy of the American people.”

“That let loose a period of incivility, which is too mild a word; it’s potentially explosive anger that can turn into violence,” says Bob Shrum, a former Democratic strategist who last month started the Center for the Political Future, a program at the University of Southern California designed to restore sanity and bipartisanship in politics.

He’s watched with frustration as some liberal politicians respond to Trump’s presidency by imitating his divisive style. He describes it as a “cold civil war,” where people consider those who disagree with them bad, un-American — their enemy.

“Is there a tipping point? I don’t know,” he says. “I do believe we’re in a dangerous moment, unlike anything I’ve seen in my lifetime, and I’m 75 years old.”

There is little evidence the tide will turn soon.

Moderates are becoming increasingly rare in Washington, D.C., and Republicans willing to criticize Trump’s rhetoric, such as Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona and Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, are not running for re-election.

“You don’t really have those reasonable voices kind of trying to bring everybody together,” says Tom Freeman, a Republican attorney in Lincoln, Nebraska. “It’s just kind of round and round we go, and the sides just get more and more extreme, and you don’t have that rational leader in the crowd saying, ‘Hey, let’s dial it back.’ The sad thing is, if you did have that person, I don’t know that anyone would listen to them.”

The polarization is bleeding into everyday Americans’ personal lives.

Robert Major, a 51-year-old electrician and Republican from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, says he once moved because his landlord, a liberal, screamed at him for watching conservative news channels.

Meeka Grayer, a 38-year-old radio talk show host and Democrat from Omaha, Nebraska, lost friends over the divide. One conservative friend posted on Facebook about the migrant caravan heading toward the United States from Central America, parroting the president’s vilification of the group. Grayer objected and was attacked for her comments, prompting her to block her friend.

Though on opposite sides politically, Grayer and Major agree: The political climate is toxic and tiresome, but they have little confidence it will change because it’s too useful to politicians who want to stay in power.

“I think it’s time for the little guy to take control, but will that happen?” says Randy Wick, a 68-year-old Republican in Bloomingdale, Illinois, who blames Republicans, Democrats and the media for the division. “It seems like a good ol’ boys club up there in Washington. It’s all about money.”

Willer, the Stanford sociologist, says the absence of political leaders brave enough to try to steer the country onto a better path means it will be left up to voters to break the cycle. Until then, the divisions will only get deeper.

Some already casting votes for the Nov. 6 midterm election say they hope the system can self-correct. The future of the nation, the very concept of democracy, is at stake.

“America is resilient; we find a way even in our darkest days,” 36-year-old Cordell Lawrence said as he voted last week in Louisville. Lawrence described himself only as a moderate, preferring not to make public what party he leans to because he worries that could hinder personal and professional relationships.

“Maybe we have to hit rock bottom before we find how to get back up,” he said. “We’re probably pretty close to rock bottom today. At least I hope we are.”

Galofaro reported from Louisville, Kentucky. Beck reported from Omaha, Nebraska. Also contributing were AP writers Martha Irvine in Bloomingdale, Illinois; Ellis Rua in Coral Gables, Florida; Nicholas Riccardi in Denver; and Hannah Grabenstein in Little Rock, Arkansas.

For AP’s complete coverage of the mail-bomb scare: https://apnews.com/PipeBombAttacks

For AP’s complete coverage of the Pittsburgh synagogue shootings: https://www.apnews.com/Shootings

Police: Gunman Said Jews Were Committing Genocide

People gather for a vigil on Murray and Forbes Avenues, blocks from where an active shooter shot multiple people at Tree of Life Congregation synagogue on Saturday, Oct. 27, 2018, in the Squirrel Hill section of Pittsburgh. (Stephanie Strasburg/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette via AP

BY MARK SCOLFORO, ALLEN G. BREED & CLAUDIA LAUER

PITTSBURGH (AP) — The suspect in the mass shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue told officers that Jews were committing genocide and that he wanted them all to die, according to a charging document made public early Sunday.

Robert Gregory Bowers killed eight men and three women inside the Tree of Life Synagogue on Saturday during worship services before a tactical police team tracked him down and shot him, police said in the affidavit, which contained some previously unreported details on the shooting and the police response.

Calls began coming in to 911 from the synagogue just before 10 a.m. Saturday, reporting “they were being attacked,” the document said. Bowers shot one of the first two officers to respond in the hand, and the other was wounded by “shrapnel and broken glass.”

A tactical team found Bowers on the third floor, where he shot two officers multiple times, the affidavit said. One officer was described as critically wounded; the document did not describe the other officer’s condition.

Two other people in the synagogue, a man and a woman, were wounded by Bowers and were in stable condition, the document said.

Bowers told an officer while he was being treated for his injuries “that he wanted all Jews to die and also that they (Jews) were committing genocide to his people,” the affidavit said.

Bowers was charged late Saturday with 11 counts of criminal homicide, six counts of aggravated assault and 13 counts of ethnic intimidation in what the leader of the Anti-Defamation League called the deadliest attack on Jews in U.S. history.

It wasn’t clear whether Bowers had an attorney to speak on his behalf. Law enforcement officials planned to discuss the massacre at a news conference Sunday morning.

The nation’s latest mass shooting drew condemnation and expressions of sympathy from politicians and religious leaders of all stripes. With the midterm election just over a week away, it also reignited a longstanding and bitter debate over guns.

Pope Francis led prayers for Pittsburgh on Sunday in St. Peter’s Square.

“In reality, all of us are wounded by this inhuman act of violence,” he said. He prayed for God “to help us to extinguish the flames of hatred that develop in our societies, reinforcing the sense of humanity, respect for life and civil and moral values.”

President Donald Trump said the outcome might have been different if the synagogue “had some kind of protection” from an armed guard, while Pennsylvania’s Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf, up for re-election, noted that once again “dangerous weapons are putting our citizens in harm’s way.”

Calling the shooting an “evil anti-Semitic attack,” Trump ordered flags at federal buildings throughout the U.S. to be flown at half-staff in respect for the victims. He said he planned to travel to Pittsburgh, but offered no details.

In the city, thousands gathered for a vigil Saturday night. Some blamed the slaughter on the nation’s political climate.

“When you spew hate speech, people act on it. Very simple. And this is the result. A lot of people dead. Senselessly,” said Stephen Cohen, co-president of New Light Congregation, which rents space at Tree of Life.

Little was known about Bowers, who had no apparent criminal record but who is believed to have expressed virulently anti-Semitic views on social media. Authorities said it appears he acted alone.

Worshippers “were brutally murdered by a gunman targeting them simply because of their faith,” said Bob Jones, head of the FBI’s Pittsburgh office, though he cautioned the shooter’s full motive was not yet known.

Scott Brady, the chief federal prosecutor in western Pennsylvania, pledged that “justice in this case will be swift and it will be severe.”

The gunman targeted a building that housed three separate congregations, all of which were conducting Sabbath services when the attack began just before 10 a.m. in the tree-lined residential neighborhood of Squirrel Hill, about 10 minutes from downtown Pittsburgh and the hub of Pittsburgh’s Jewish community.

The synagogue door was unlocked on the Sabbath “because people are coming for services, and the bell would be ringing constantly. So they do not lock the door, and anybody can just walk in,” said Marilyn Honigsberg, administrative assistant for New Light. “And that’s what this man did.”

Michael Eisenberg, the immediate past president of the Tree of Life, said synagogue officials had not gotten any threats that he knew of before the shooting. But security was a concern, he said, and the synagogue had started working to improve it.

Zachary Weiss, 26, said his father, 60-year-old Stephen Weiss, was inside the synagogue but was unharmed. Weiss said his father told him that he and Tree of Life’s rabbi helped congregants take shelter and follow the active shooter response training they’d received months earlier. Stephen Weiss made it out of the building and used a janitor’s cellphone to call his family at home.

The attack, his son vowed, “will not define our congregation and will not define our city.”

Breed reported from Raleigh, North Carolina, and Lauer reported from Philadelphia. Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Mark Gillispie and Gene Puskar in Pittsburgh, Eric Tucker and Michael Balsamo in Washington, Marc Levy in Harrisburg, Michael Kunzelman in Silver Spring, Maryland, and Michael Rubinkam in northeastern Pennsylvania.

For AP’s complete coverage of the Pittsburgh synagogue shootings: https://www.apnews.com/Shootings

For American Jews, Pittsburgh synagogue massacre Is Culmination Of Worst Fears

People hold candles outside Tree of Life synagogue after a shooting there left 11 people dead in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh. A heavily armed gunman opened fire during a baby-naming ceremony. Image: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty

BY JOE HEIM AND SAMANTHA SCHMIDT

PITTSBURG (WASHINGTON POST)--This is what they had long been fearing. As the threats increased, as the online abuse grew increasingly vicious, as the defacing of synagogues and community centers with swastikas became more commonplace, the possibility of a violent attack loomed over America’s Jewish communities.

On Saturday, the worst of those fears was made real as a gunman stormed a Pittsburgh synagogue, killing at least 11 of its members and injuring many more, reportedly shouting “All Jews must die” during his rampage. It is the worst single attack on American Jews in the history of the country. And it is one that many who have been monitoring anti-Semitic activity in the United States have been dreading.

“Unfortunately, in the atmosphere we are in, as shocking as these incidents always are, they are not surprising,” said Oren Segal, director of the Anti Defamation League’s Center on Extremism. “Anti-Semitism is the lifeblood of extremism, and violence is never that far behind.”


In its annual Audit of Anti-Semitic incidents in the United States, the ADL chronicled a 57 percent rise of incidents in 2017 over the previous year. That included everything from bomb threats and assaults to vandalism, desecration of cemeteries and the flooding of college campuses with anti-Semitic posters and graffiti.

Saturday’s deadly attack took place against the backdrop of a particularly toxic era in American political and social life. Many Americans believe that the increase in anti-Semitism, xenophobia and racism over the past two years has been stoked by the rhetoric of some of the nation’s top leaders, particularly President Trump, whose ongoing rallies are marked by denunciations of immigrants and the deriding of “globalists,” which is viewed as a code word for Jews. Most recently, he has declared himself a “nationalist,” thrilling some of his followers who identify themselves as white nationalists.

It has been just 14 months since white supremacists protesting the removal of a Confederate statue marched through the University of Virginia campus chanting, “Our blood, our soil!” and “Jews will not replace us!” They were met not with an unconditional rebuke by Trump but a claim by him that there were “very fine people on both sides.” On the far right, the president’s words were taken as an endorsement of their behavior and their ideas and encouragement to pursue them.

“The response was not at all satisfactory,” Segal said. “It’s not hard to condemn Nazis or anti-Semites unequivocally. That’s the expectation the Jewish community has. That’s the expectation all communities have.”

Although anti-Semitism is surging, it is not new in the United States. The country’s Jewish groups and organizations have long been targets of zealots and bigots. But for much of American history, there have been relatively few large-scale violent attacks. And nothing on the order of Saturday’s mass murder. That it took place in such a politically poisoned atmosphere is also significant, observers say.

“We have seen acts of violence. What’s new is the context of the acts of violence,” said Eric Ward, executive director of the Western States Center, an Oregon-based progressive group focused on social and economic justice.

“I have never seen this coupling of political violence with political rhetoric before,” said Ward, who has been studying anti-Semitism for the past 30 years. “It has primarily come out of the margins, and what’s different about this moment and chilling about this moment is that the rhetoric is now coming out of the mainstream, and it’s giving permission to people on the margins to act out.”

Deborah Lipstadt, a professor of Jewish History and Holocaust Studies at Emory University, said that in previous decades, such as when she was growing up in the 1950s and 1960s, anti-Semitism was more structural, in the form of discrimination in employment and education. “I knew I had to be twice as good as the non-Jewish kids” to get into college, for example, she said.

Attacks would happen on a personal level, for example. “Kids would be beaten up in the street if you lived in the mixed neighborhood,” she said. But Lipstadt said she was taken aback by the scale and horror of the Pittsburgh rampage.

“This is beyond anything we’ve experienced,” Lipstadt said.

She said it and the recent wave of anti-Semitic incidents over the past two years are the result of “anti-Semitic dog whistles” from leaders — for example, she said, rhetoric painting George Soros as a “21st century Rothschild” — that have emboldened neo-Nazis and other white supremacists intent on committing acts of violence.

The increase in anti-Semitic attacks and harassment online, particularly on popular social media platforms, has been an acute concern in recent years for those monitoring far-right hate groups and white supremacists.

“The rise of the far right in America and Europe is tied to both the spread of anti-Semitic conspiracies about Jewish global domination and increased calls for stronger borders and nationalist policies in majority white countries,” said Joan Donovan, media manipulation research lead at Data and Society Research Institute, an independent nonprofit in New York. “Attention to conspiracy theories about Jewish people, especially Soros, has reached new mainstream audiences through Internet memes and right-wing news outlets. This has led to increased harassment and calls for social media companies to ban topics such as Holocaust denial.”

Although there are increasing demands for platforms to aggressively monitor and remove such material, not every social site has been vigilant in addressing the problem.

“Such failures to act on the propagation of these conspiracies is dangerous,” Donovan said.

Rabbi Jack Moline, president of the Washington-based Interfaith Alliance, said the current public display of anti-Semitism “is like nothing that I have seen in my lifetime, and I go back to the early ’50s.”

For Moline, the marches in Charlottesville last year were the first public demonstrations of anti-Semitism he had seen since the late 1970s, when American neo-Nazis fought in court to march in Skokie, Ill. After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, he remembers synagogues and Jewish centers requiring identification from visitors and erecting barriers to prevent car bombers. Some of the precautions may have seemed excessive. Not anymore.

“I don’t know a Jewish institution who hasn’t considered the new security requirements of a dangerous world,” he said. “I think we have gone from theoretical to practical in a matter of minutes today.”

For the ADL’s Segal, who has spent 20 years tracking anti-Semitic violence and intimidation, Saturday’s deadly news was met with sorrow, but not despair.

“You can’t do this work without maintaining a healthy dose of hope that things will get better,” he said. “We have to hope that this moment in time will not be remembered solely for the haters and the violence, but for what people did in response. Already we’re seeing people coming out in the streets saying that this does not represent us, this does not represent this country. That’s a good first step. Now we need our elected officials and community leaders and business leaders to push back against this hate more than ever.”

The Latest: FBI: Pittsburgh Suspect Not known To Authorities

A crowd of media wait in the street two blocks from the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, where a shooter opened fire Saturday, Oct. 27, 2018, injuring multiple people, including three police officers. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)

PITTSBURGH (AP) — The Latest on a deadly shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue (all times local):

4:25 p.m.

An FBI official says the man suspected of killing 11 people at a Pennsylvania synagogue was not known to law enforcement.

Bob Jones, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s office in Pittsburgh, says investigators believe Robert Bowers was acting alone.

He says Bowers’ full motive still isn’t known.

Jones said the scene of Saturday’s shooting at the Tree of Life Congregation was “the most horrific crime scene I have seen” in 22 years with the FBI.

Police say 11 people were killed and six people, including four police officers, were injured.

3:50 p.m.

President Donald Trump has decided to go ahead with his Illinois political rally on Saturday.

He’d considered canceling it because of the Pittsburgh synagogue attack in which at least 10 people were killed.

But in remarks to young farmers in Indiana, Trump said “we can’t let evil change our life and change our schedule.”

He says he’ll go with a “heavy heart.”

Earlier, the president called the attack at a baby naming ceremony on Saturday morning a “wicked act of mass murder” that “is pure evil, hard to believe and frankly something that is unimaginable.”

3:40 p.m.

The social media site Gab.com says the shooter at a Pittsburgh synagogue had a profile on their website.

The company says the account was verified after Saturday’s shooting and matched the name of the gunman mentioned on police radio communications.

A law enforcement official identified the shooter to The Associated Press as Robert Bowers.

A man with the same name posted on Gab before the shooting that “HIAS likes to bring invaders in that kill our people. I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, I’m going in.”

HIAS is a nonprofit group that helps refugees around the world find safety and freedom. The organization says it is guided by Jewish values and history.

President and CEO Mark Hetfield says he wasn’t aware of the shooter’s “obsession with HIAS until this morning.”

Gab said in a statement that it suspended the alleged gunman’s account, backed up the content and notified the FBI.

Gab says its mission is to defend free expression and individual liberty online for all people.

The social media site is popular with far-right extremists.

3:30 p.m.

President Donald Trump is condemning the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting in which at least 10 people were killed, saying “there must be no tolerance for anti-Semitism in America.”

Trump is addressing the shooting as he speaks at a Future Farmers of America convention in Indianapolis.

Trump is calling the attack at a baby naming ceremony Saturday a “wicked act of mass murder” that “is pure evil, hard to believe and frankly something that is unimaginable.”

He says the nation and the word are “shocked and stunned” by grief and is calling on the country to come together.

Trump has at times been accused by critics of failing to adequately condemn hate, such as when he blamed “both sides” for the violence at a Charlottesville white supremacist rally.

He says that anti-Semitism “must be confronted anywhere and everywhere it appears”

3 p.m.

People with knowledge of the investigation are telling The Associated Press that at least 10 people have died in the shooting at Pittsburgh synagogue.

Authorities say the gunman opened fire during a baby naming ceremony Saturday morning at the Tree of Life Congregation in Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill neighborhood. Six people were wounded, including six police officers.

The people spoke to the AP anonymously because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the shooting.

— Marc Levy in Harrisburg, Pa., and Eric Tucker in Washington

14:50 p.m.

Authorities say they’ve increased security at Jewish centers in New York City and elsewhere in the state in response to the deadly shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue.

New York Police Department officials say they are dispatching heavy weapons teams and squad cars to check on houses of worship across the city.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo is saying in a statement that he also was directing state police to increase patrols at synagogues throughout the state.

The Democratic governor and the NYPD said that there were no specific threats and that the security measures were a precaution.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel says authorities there are doing the same.

14:40 p.m.

President Donald Trump says he may cancel a political rally in Illinois on Saturday after a deadly shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue.

He tells reporters aboard Air Force One: “You can say we’re considering it.” Trump has arrived in Indianapolis to speak at the Future Farmers of America convention.

Trump says he has spoken with Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf and Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto. He also has discussed the shooting with his daughter and son-in-law, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner.

Before departing Andrews Air Force Base, Trump told reporters that the shooting was “devastating” and suggested that the outcome would have been different if the synagogue employed an armed guard.

14:30 p.m.

President Donald Trump says “a lot of people” were killed in the shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue Saturday and it “looks definitely like it’s an anti-Semitic crime.”

Trump tells reporters at the airport in Indianapolis that what “happened today is a horrible, horrible thing.”

He says the FBI is now involved and there were “a lot of people killed” and “a lot of people very badly wounded.” He also says the crime scene is one of the worst many professionals have seen.

Police have a suspect in custody after Saturday’s attack at the Tree of Life Congregation.

A shooter opened fire during a baby-naming ceremony, killing an unknown number of people and wounding six others, including four police officers who dashed to the scene.

2:15 p.m.

Shocked reactions are pouring in in response to the deadly shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburgh.

Richard Cohen, president of the Southern Poverty Law Center, is deploring “another horrific act of hate at a house of worship.”

He says the Saturday morning shooting is reminiscent of “the slaughter of nine African American worshippers at Charleston’s Mother Emmanuel Church in 2015, the killings of six Sikh worshippers at a temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, in 2014, and, of course, the bombing of Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church in 1963 that left four young African American girls dead.”

Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt has tweeted: “We are devastated. Jews targeted on Shabbat morning at synagogue, a holy place of worship, is unconscionable. Our hearts break for the victims, their families, and the entire Jewish community.”

1:50 p.m.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has condemned the attack on Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue.

“I was heartbroken and appalled by the murderous attack on a Pittsburgh synagogue today,” Netanyahu said in a video message posted on Twitter shortly after the attack, which has killed at least two people and injured six.

Netanyahu says all of Israel is grieving with the families of the dead.

He adds: “We stand together with the Jewish community of Pittsburgh. We stand together with the American people in the face of this horrendous anti-Semitic brutality. And we all pray for the speedy recovery of the wounded.”

Netanyahu posted the same message in Hebrew on Twitter minutes later.

1:30 p.m.

A law enforcement official has identified the suspect in a shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue as Robert Bowers.

The official said Bowers was in his 40s.

The official wasn’t authorized to discuss an ongoing investigation and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

Authorities said the gunman opened fire during a baby naming ceremony Saturday morning at the Tree of Life Congregation in Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill neighborhood.

City officials said six people, including four police officers, were injured. They said several people were also killed.

The synagogue is located about 10 minutes from downtown Pittsburgh in a neighborhood that is the hub of Pittsburgh’s Jewish community.

By Michael Balsamo in Washington.

1:25 p.m.

City officials say the shooting at the synagogue in Pittsburgh is being investigated as a federal hate crime.

A visibly moved Wendell Hissrich, Pittsburgh’s Public Safety Director, says six people were injured, including four police officers.

Hissrich called it “a very horrific crime scene” and said it is one of the worst he has seen, including some plane crashes.

Hissrich says there is no active threat to this community now that the shooter has been taken into custody.

1:10 p.m.

Pennsylvania’s Attorney General Josh Shapiro is saying that the shooter at the synagogue in Pittsburgh ‘shooter claimed innocent lives — and injured first responders — at a baby naming.’

Three officers were shot in the Saturday morning attack at the Tree of Life Congregation in the city’s Squirrel Hill neighborhood, and a local hospital said it was treating multiple victims.

It was not immediately known how many people had been injured or killed, though Shapiro’s statement appeared to show that at least two people had died.

12:50 p.m.

President Donald Trump is responding to what he’s calling the “devastating” shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue, saying: “It’s a ’terrible thing what’s going on with hate in our country.”

Trump spoke to reporters at Andrews Air Force Base before traveling to Indianapolis.

He told reporters the violence “has to stop.”

Trump also said the outcome might have been different if the synagogue “had some kind of protection” from an armed guard and suggested that might be a good idea for all churches and synagogues.

He also said such shooters should receive the death penalty and “suffer the ultimate price.”

Three officers were shot in the Saturday morning attack at the Tree of Life Congregation in Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill neighborhood. It was not immediately known how many people had been shot or killed.

12:30 p.m.

Israel is expressing its shock and concern and offering assistance to the local community following the shooting at the synagogue in Pittsburgh.

Minister Naftali Bennett, Israel’s Cabinet minister for diaspora affairs, made the comments following a Saturday morning shooting that police say has left several people dead.

Bennet says he is “following the news with concern,” and has instructed Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs to prepare to assist the community in every possible way.

He adds: “Our hearts go out to the families of those killed and injured. May the memory of the murdered be blessed.”

12:15 p.m.

The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center system says it’s treating multiple victims from a shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue.

Paul Wood, the chief communications officer for the hospital system, said the patients are receiving care at UPMC Presbyterian, but he would not say how many.

Pittsburgh police say a shooter is in custody after an attack at the Tree of Life synagogue that left multiple casualties, including several injured officers.

12:05 p.m.

Pittsburgh’s sports teams, the Pittsburgh Steelers and Pittsburgh Penguins, are expressing their condolences for the deadly shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburgh.

Authorities say the Saturday morning shooting caused “multiple casualties,” and a suspect is in custody.

The Pittsburgh Steelers and the Pittsburgh Penguins are saying in separate statements on their Twitter pages that their “thoughts and prayers” are with all those affected by the shooting.

A police spokesman says police have no more information at this time because they were still trying to clear the building and determine if any more threats exist.

__

11:50 a.m.

President Donald Trump says he’s been monitoring a shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue that police say has left multiple people dead.

In a tweet Saturday, Trump encouraged people to shelter in place and says “looks like multiple fatalities.”

Trump ended the tweet by saying “God Bless All!”

The shooting happened at the Tree of Life Synagogue in the city’s Squirrel Hill neighborhood.

11:40 a.m.

Police are reporting a suspect is in custody after a shooting that caused “multiple casualties” at a Pittsburgh synagogue on Saturday.

Three officers were also shot in the attack at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill neighborhood.

Police spokesman Chris Togneri says police have no more information at this time because they are still trying to clear the building and figure out if any more threats exist.

The synagogue is located at the intersection of Wilkins and Shady avenues. The tree-lined residential neighborhood of Squirrel Hill, about 10 minutes from downtown Pittsburgh, is the hub of Pittsburgh’s Jewish community.

President Donald Trump says he’s been monitoring the shooting. In a tweet, Trump encouraged people to shelter in place and said “looks like multiple fatalities.”

Gunman Attacks Pittsburgh Synagogue, Killing 11 People

Law enforcement officers secure the scene where multiple people were shot, Saturday, Oct. 27, 2018, at the Tree of Life Congregation in Pittsburgh's Squirrel Hill neighborhood. (Alexandra Wimley/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette via AP

BY MARC LEVY & MARK GILLISPIE

PITTSBURGH (AP) — A shooter opened fire during a baby naming ceremony at a Pittsburgh synagogue on Saturday, killing 11 people.

At least six other people were wounded, including four police officers who dashed to the scene, authorities said.

Police said a suspect was in custody after the attack at the Tree of Life Congregation in Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill neighborhood. A law enforcement official identified the suspect as Robert Bowers and said he is in his 40s. The official wasn’t authorized to discuss an ongoing investigation and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

Bob Jones, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s office in Pittsburgh, said investigators Bowers was not known to law enforcement and that they believe he was acting alone. He said Bowers’ full motive still isn’t known.

The social media site Gab.com said the alleged shooter had a profile on its website, which is popular with far-right extremists. The company said the account was verified after the shooting and matched the name of the gunman.

A man with the same name posted on Gab before the shooting that “HIAS likes to bring invaders in that kill our people. I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, I’m going in.”

HIAS is a nonprofit group that helps refugees around the world find safety and freedom. The organization says it is guided by Jewish values and history.

Bowers also recently posted a photo of a collection of three semi-automatic handguns he titled “my glock family,” a reference to the firearms manufacturer. He also posted photos of bullet holes in person-sized targets at a firing range, touting the “amazing trigger” on a handgun he was offering for sale.

City officials said the shooting was being investigated as a federal hate crime. It comes amid a rash of high-profile attacks in an increasingly divided country, including the series of pipe bombs mailed over the past week to prominent Democrats and former officials.

The shooting also immediately reignited the longstanding national debate about guns: President Donald Trump said the outcome might have been different if the synagogue “had some kind of protection” from an armed guard, while Pennsylvania’s Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf noted that once again “dangerous weapons are putting our citizens in harm’s way.”

The people who provided the death toll spoke to The Associated Press anonymously because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the shooting.

The attack took place during a baby naming ceremony, according to Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro. It was unknown whether the baby was harmed.

“It is a very horrific crime scene. It’s one of the worst that I’ve seen and I’ve been on some plane crashes,” said a visibly moved Wendell Hissrich, the Pittsburgh public safety director.

The synagogue is located in the tree-lined residential neighborhood of Squirrel Hill, about 10 minutes from downtown Pittsburgh and the hub of Pittsburgh’s Jewish community.

Jonathan Greenblatt, chief executive officer of the Anti-Defamation League, said the group believes it is the deadliest attack on the Jewish community in U.S. history.

“Our hearts break for the families of those killed and injured at the Tree of Life Synagogue, and for the entire Jewish community of Pittsburgh,” Greenblatt said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he was “heartbroken and appalled” by the attack.

“The entire people of Israel grieve with the families of the dead,” Netanyahu said. “We stand together with the Jewish community of Pittsburgh. We stand together with the American people in the face of this horrendous anti-Semitic brutality. And we all pray for the speedy recovery of the wounded.”

World Jewish Congress President Ronald S. Lauder called the shooting “an attack not just on the Jewish community, but on America as a whole.”

Trump called the shooting a “wicked act of mass murder” that “is pure evil, hard to believe and frankly something that is unimaginable.”

Trump has at times been accused by critics of failing to adequately condemn hate, such as when he blamed “both sides” for the violence at a Charlottesville white supremacist rally.

On Saturday, he said that anti-Semitism “must be confronted anywhere and everywhere it appears.”

In 2010, Tree of Life Congregation — founded more than 150 years ago — merged with Or L’Simcha to form Tree of Life (asterisk) Or L’Simcha.

The synagogue is a fortress-like concrete building, its facade punctuated by rows of swirling, modernistic stained-glass windows illustrating the story of creation, the acceptance of God’s law, the “life cycle” and “how human-beings should care for the earth and one another,” according to its website. Among its treasures is a “Holocaust Torah,” rescued from Czechoslovakia.

Its sanctuary can hold up to 1,250 guests.

Michael Eisenberg, the immediate past president of the Tree of Life Synagogue, lives about a block from the building.

He was getting ready for services when he received a phone call from a member who works with Pittsburgh’s Emergency Services, saying he had been notified through scanner and other communications that there was an active shooter at their synagogue.

“I ran out of the house without changing and I saw the street blocked with police cars. It was a surreal scene. And someone yelled, ‘Get out of here.’ I realized it was a police officer along the side of the house. ... I am sure I know all of the people, all of the fatalities. I am just waiting to see,” Eisenberg said.

He said officials at the synagogue had not gotten any threats that he knew of prior to the shooting. The synagogue maintenance employees had recently checked all of the emergency exits and doors to make sure they were cleared and working.

“I spoke to a maintenance person who was in the building and heard the shots. He was able to escape through one of the side exit doors we had made sure was functioning,” Eisenberg said.

Jeff Finkelstein of the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh said local synagogues have done “lots of training on things like active shooters, and we’ve looked at hardening facilities as much as possible.”

“This should not be happening, period,” he told reporters at the scene. “This should not be happening in a synagogue.”

Just three days before the shooting, Rabbi Jeffrey Myers posted a column on the congregation’s website, noting that people make time to attend funerals, but not for life’s happy occasions.

“There is a story told in the Talmud of a wedding procession and a funeral procession heading along parallel roads, with the roads intersecting,” Myers wrote on Wednesday. “The question asked is: when they meet at the fork, which procession goes first, funeral or wedding? The correct answer is wedding, as the joy of the couple takes precedence. In fact, the funeral procession is to move out of sight so that their joy is not lessened.”

Myers ended his column with words that now seem all too prescient.

“We value joy so much in Judaism that upon taking our leave from a funeral or a shiva house, the customary statement one makes (in Yiddish) is ‘nor oyf simches’ - only for s’machot,” Myers wrote. “While death is inevitable and a part of life, we still take our leave with the best possible blessing, to meet at joyous events. And so I say to you: nor oyf simches!”

Associated Press writers Eric Tucker and Michael Balsamo in Washington, Claudia Lauer in Philadelphia, Gene Puskar in Pittsburgh and Allen G. Breed in Raleigh, N.C., contributed to this report.

Da Week and Da Happening

Whoo boy, what a week that had begun from checking out an eatery and learning a whole lot about the cowardice Yoruba nation that collaborated in slaughtering my kith and kin to ending up in a forum I have been asked to play a significant role in organizing The Fat Waller Musical Show conceived by Richard Maltby, Jr. and Murray Horwitz; and musically staged and choreographed by Arthur Faria. The Tony Award winning Fats Waller Musical "Ain't Misbehaving" at the Ahmanson Theatre on Temple Street in Downton Los Angeles will run through May 31, 2009, and then following would be the Summer jams and the line-ups.

Well, it's good to know that Ronke Bernadette, owner of Lagos Cafe, has admitted showing some improvements after my visit there a week ago. She has been paying homage to the local churches here in Los Angeles invoking my write-up that God sent me. Patrons have been flooding her eatery ever since that piece, "Lagos Cafe's Arrogance and Horrible Services is a Culinary Disaster." I hope her customer relations has improved, too, because it was zero during my visits. It's time to appreciate the fine work of investigative journalism even though the dummies who had no idea what they were writing about will never realize that.

There has been talk that Seun Kuti will be visiting the City of Angels again following his fantastic and successful performance last Summer at the California Plaza in Downtown Los Angeles. I'm yet to confirm that but when I'm in the know, you surely will get every detail. Seun is just the carbon copy of Baba, the Chief Priest, Fela Kuti, and the flow of his music is awesome.

With a series of activities as the summer jams approaches, a Jewish friend of mine did not find it funny why I missed the Fun and Wacky Passover Adventure at the Shalom Institute in Malibu, California, last week. The event featured Carl Weintraub and music performed by Robbo and Cindy Paley. This guy is a fellow we hold intellectual discourse into the night about the Holocaust six million Jews perished and the pogrom in which the Hausa-Fulanis in collaboration with the Yoruba nation that stinks slaughtered innocent civilians, eviscerated pregnant women, and coerced and stole Igbo properties. Like a Jew learning from the Synagogue that "to forget is to proclaim Hitler innocent," so also is to forget is to proclaim the Hausa-Fulanis and the Yorubas innocent after slautering my people in the most brutal way.

The Twitter nation is waxing strong by the second. It is the real deal. It is the talk of town. Even my good friend, Austen Oghuma, talks about it all the time and how America is a great nation with its brilliant pattern of creativity. That I agree. He is hooked to it and so is everybody. It's Twitter and nothing else. If you follow me, I will follow you. How about that and a way to connect?

For some reasons, I haven't been following up with the few remaining games in the NBA and I'm quite sure it's because of Lakers' inconsistency, allowing King James and his gang to take the lead, overall. But I still pick my LA Lakers to come out smoking, in the long run. We'll see, as the whole drama unfolds. Go Lakers, go!

Oh, before I forget, Ugandan model, actress and performer, Imat Akelo-Opio will be gracing the cover of our debut magazine in an exclusive interview.

Bruce Springsteen who turns 60 in September is now on the road with his E Street Band to support their latest project "Working on a Dream." I haven't watched the guy live lately but I sure do have the ticket for his April 16 jam at the Los Angeles Sports Arena. I will be there. That's my hood and I know it's going to be a hell of a show knowing Bruce for his activism and the way he's loved.

That's da happening and whatever happens keep on twitting. It's good for the soul.

The Tragedy of the Igbo Intellectual

Wake up everybody No more sleeping in bed

 No more backward thinking Time for thinking ahead

 The world’s change so very much 

For what it use to be 

There is so much hatred War and poverty

 ----Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes

 If you fast-forward the Kenneth Gamble-Leon Huff production on The Sound of Philadelphia Records label released by Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes with that powerful voice of Theodore Pendergrass way back in 1973 now, there will be a whole lot to tell the world has not gotten any better based on if one should ask me coming that afar thirty-something years ago when technology had just begun in making life better from every aspect of society. 

We haven’t seen much change over the years because the entire world is still compounded by the same old problems; problems now worse than ever seen before. Thirty-something years ago when the Blue Notes envisioned a fragile world if I still remember, was after the pogrom in a fast pace, took place in Nigeria when pregnant women were eviscerated and disemboweled and the world looking the other way as if nothing happened which is reason enough the Igbo intellectual is seen as lacking a sense of belonging in taking the lead putting into perspective all that happened during the pogrom and the ominous consequences that followed. 

On the other hand, it had been presumed what happened over forty years ago should be forgotten by moving on and I will be coming to that in a minute. Perhaps I may not have a problem with such gruesome acts of unnatural taste committed against humankind for the fact Igbo people as one observer noted are just “stupid” because if you walk into any bookstore today some Armenian who wasn’t born during the Armenian genocide of 1915 has written a book provoking greater popular outrage around the globe; one Jew born about twenty-seven years ago and has learned from the Synagogue that to forget is to proclaim Hitler innocent has compiled a book on a witness to the truth – the Holocaust; a South African who found his way escaping Apartheid to the woods around Mississippi has jotted down his experience of injustice; a teenager somewhere in the Lebanese community in Michigan is writing about the Beirut massacre of 1982; a Brit having no clue of 17th Century England has written a detailed account on the Gunpowder Plot orchestrated to bring the British empire to its knees during the Elizabethan era; a Chinese immigrant whose forebears were demolished and plundered writes about the Nanjing massacre; a Cambodian puts into perspective the Cambodian genocide of the 1970s; a Balkan writes about the Bosnian massacres of the 1990s; a then seven-year-old is reflecting and piecing together the Rwandan genocide of 1994 and a curious minded being documents on the death of Anne Frank and the Concentrations Camps, and construction of the Holocaust museums as the list goes on and on. 

But nowadays, encounter an Igbo anywhere especially at a beer parlor, isi-ewu joints and places like that, the theme of such forums would sound much normal as in any regular bar – hanging out in those Armani suits and spewing out nonsense on the grounds of alcohol and loose women being involved. The irony though is that none comes out with something of substance, some kind of brilliant and meaningful stuff even though altered minds in an environment alcohol and women are involved can still have decent debates and argue intellectually. My point here is precisely about we who have embedded ourselves into the American social system which is unlike any other in the world, a nation that has emerged from nations all over the world, and a nation pragmatically created, never seen before to have not taken advantage like other immigrants in building community and being concretely part of a system where collectivity ultimately leads to utopia. 

My attempt here is a studied survey based on different accounts regarding the Igbo guardian, the so-called “intellectual” and how it is today a tragedy. Is there an instance where some thought has been put in place how we explored the shores of America over forty years ago like our other immigrant counterparts and yet have nothing, absolutely nothing to show for it? Has anyone thought about what would be the position of our children fifteen years from now in a faster changing environment resourced through community, put it this way, a historic problem that absorbed so much effort to resolve and finally brought about change by electing a second generation immigrant Barack Obama president of the United States? And did anyone think about how we could have established ourselves here in Diaspora as a powerhouse in every aspect, in such a way we could influence the “power brokers” in our native land permanently putting to a stop riff raffs running the show? Has anyone reflected, studied and investigated the most blood soaked event in its era where our women were raped by Islamic hoodlums who were also nihilists, killed en-masse infants and children; and then murdered our men in the most brutal of circumstances in an attempt to wipe out a specific ethnic group which amounts to genocide by any accepted definition? Besides a very notable few like scholar Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe whose extensive and exhaustive writings on the pogrom and Biafra is out there; Oguchi Nkwocha as a vivid witness who consistently maintained his ground on the status quo in evaluating and studying the ominous consequences of the pogrom; Emeka Amanze whose movement is quite revealing on a sorry state of the Igbo nation and lessons learned during the pogrom; M. O. Ene’s unrelenting effort and the book Jaundiced Justice, and most recently an inspiring novel Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie who wasn’t yet born during the said conflict, no Diaspora Igbo has emerged to author an analysis regarding the atrocious nature of what the Islamic Jihadists deliberately did to the Igbo people in a “premeditated and diabolical act” programmed to wipe out the Igbo nation from the face of this planet. 

 The Diaspora Igbo intellectual’s inability to deal solidly with home-abroad realities is characteristic of the peculiar failure of the Igbo intellectual and so also is a failed leadership back home resulting to being compelled to give up and quieted in exchange for cash and other treasures by gangsters who overnight hijacked and destroyed every aspect of Igbo ideals. Since the Igbo intellectual has been flattened and cannot deal adequately with a hijack of Igbo ideals on moral grounds by a group of imbeciles and thuggish elements who are now thriving on a confused and chaotic Igbo nation, the option left for the Igbo intellectual becomes obvious which is ultimately succumbing on the basis of being vulnerable and gullible. 

A situation like that is a dangerous one especially in a society that is still on its path for a structure required to make the availability of social programs a basic as in all civil and organized societies. It is only in banana republics checks and balances are negated to track the records of public office holders; and the trouble of the Igbo intellectual, in this case, is abandonment of responsibilities because the Igbo intellectual is no longer interested on the welfare of the people supposedly to be guided, thus relying heavily on individualism and bent on a selfish gain based on what his surroundings are feeding him.

The following statements are typical confessions one hears constantly from supposedly Diaspora Igbo intellectual: “Look, our mates are now running the show in Igbo land and they are chopping. I have no choice than to join the bandwagon.” “Did you hear he has been appointed as assistant to the local government chairman? I just spoke to him on the phone not too long ago and he was full of life because he is now chopping, talking big and things like that.” Or “I have been dreading in this country for too long with nothing to show for it but bills and all kinds of troubles including my marriage which seemingly is heading to Splitville. This country has been a nightmare. I have to go so I can join the chopping class… Naija money still dey nyafunyafu… make I go join them before the scramble and grab is over. Make you dey there now.” Even, “In Nigeria you are served like a king with the women kowtowing and you can have as many women as you wish, and as long as your pocket is loaded you’ve got it all, and that’s the way it goes.” And listen to this, “I am building a castle.” Yes, of course, the castles on dusty alleys with no street numberings, serfdom, servitude, coercion and prostitution and all that amoral in this modernity for a people who once were top notch in utopia and republican ideals in an about face paved way for ndi gburu ozu, the money bags who destroyed every aspect of Igbo values and cultural relativism. It is hard to believe running into an Igbo intellectual is like meeting a generation of airheads who have no clue the importance of determining their contribution to creation and why they are in this universe, in the first place. It is also disturbing that the Igbo intellectual from every scope rejected Igbo values for materials not necessary in establishing a profound leadership based on the concept of how it all began when our forebears had the vision of what the Igbo should be in today’s society. 

The pragmatic and egalitarian Igbo envisioned by Michael I. Opara, Mazi Mbonu Ojike, Francis Akanu Ibiam and other great Igbo visionaries of the time which was drawn from the Igbo guardian and the days of the Igbo Union, and its principles of making the Igbo nation the best it could be to parallel the Western Hemisphere in all standards of social programs and infrastructures distressingly vanished overnight because the Igbo intellectual succumbed to the ways and means of Omemgbeoji 1 of Igbo land, the societal nouveau riche whose elevation to prominence is questionable and whose socio-economic status shouldn’t have arrived had the Igbo intellectual been firm keeping his composure and principles been respected for the fact the social programs are all out there for all and sundry to see as evidence of good leadership; and as beneficiaries of a sound socio-cultural and political order, no question, the sudden eruption of empire and an ensuing anarchy wouldn’t have also arrived. 

Under normal circumstances, such titles as Eze Igbo Gburugburu should be done by merit based on community service – building of schools, offering free education, equipping the libraries, providing basic amenities (water and light), providing healthcare by way of dispensary facilities, abundant food by helping farmers through some kind of subsidies and creating many other provisional social programs including parks and recreation. And as a result of failed leadership, the young intellectuals have been asked to take over the mantle of Igbo leadership. Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu at the 2000 World Igbo Congress Convention held in Dallas, Texas, speaks: 

I am now an old man. I have done mine. I have not seen who will take that baton from me. I was 33 years when I did it. That the old did not agree to hand over power is not true. Come and take the baton. If we refuse to give it to you, grab it by force. You Igbos abroad are the window of the world to us. Don't turn your back on anything Igbo. Come and join. Our time is gone... My people, I will not lie to you. We came from home, we laugh and embrace, but I can tell you that big rain is falling. Our land is not good. Our condition is like a war. Nobody loves Igbos. The person who is scared of you will not love you. But we are not loved is Nigeria's problem not ours. If they love you, it is good. But the greatest is to be feared. We want to be feared. 

But what can be expected of the young intellectuals when the old intellectuals such as Okenwa Nwosu who runs the Physician Omni Health Group in Maryland write articles that do not reveal the issues of their own political and cultural history? What can be expected of the young intellectuals when Kevin Osondu, the first black man, I repeat, first black man to earn a PhD from the State University of New York at Buffalo way back and nobody knows much about him? What can be expected of the young intellectuals when the old ones have lost every sense of purpose in keeping the Igbo ideal intact for generations to come? What really can be expected of the young intellectuals when a confused bunch of old intellectuals parleys with demonic gangsters in the likes of Orji Uzor Kalu who in broad day light took Igbo assets hostage and courageously on the humbleness of a paralyzed Igbo intellectual, got away with it? And what can be expected of the young Igbo intellectual when the old Igbo intellectual has shown nothing other than have outsiders in the likes of Nowamgbe Omoigui write its history while Appalachian State University political science professor Emmanuel Ike Udogu is writing on Nigeria fiscal economy and political compromise in Nigeria in the Twenty-First Century: Strategies for Political Stability and Peaceful Coexistence and photo journalist Ike Ude writes on Style File: The World’s Most Elegantly Dressed? For some reason, while combing through Ude’s new book, I decided to give him a call to find out what drove him into writing a book on style and furthermore to find out a little bit about him. Ude was born in Okigwe and grew up in several Northern cities before the Civil War. After the war his parents relocated to Enugu where his father worked for the Nigeria Railway Corporation. He sojourned to the shores of America in the 70s and began what would be a long journey. In Style File: The World’s Most Elegantly Dressed, Ude, without a doubt, displayed a symbol of excellence on style of which he eloquently illustrated the fifty-five people in this world he mostly admired and considers to be stylists in their respective rights. Ude’s work, an impressive list which includes a handful of designers like Oscar de la Renta, Christian Louboulin, Carolina Herrera, John Galliano, Barnaba Fornasetti; journalists in the likes of Vogue editor-at-large Andre Leon Talley and Hamish Bowles; and photographers such as Coreen Simpson, Francesco Scavullo and a touch to the Motown look. Ude’s work also includes celebrities and the creative types ranging from perfumer Frederic Malle and actress Isabella Ferrari to burtesque dancer Dita von Teese. Malian-born photographer during the colonial era, Seydou Keita, made the list, too. Sculptor Andrea Logan, vintage couture dealer Didier Lindot, and London-based fashion designer Amechi Ihenacho whose 18th Century outfit graced the pages with biographical datas. In all the occasions I spoke with Ude and in my attempt to pick up some understanding regarding his awareness toward a failed Igbo leadership, his interest in anything Igbo seemed to have waned and for the record he never talked back to me in Igbo despite my approach in many instances where I spoke Igbo fluently. As the case has been, Ude’s taste for style and perhaps neglect of his cultural heritage may be two different things and as a matter of choice, but a society whose cultural background is lost definitely has no place in history. In any society and as in the case of Diaspora, it is the intellectuals who come to the fore as the molders and shapers of what is now vital and relevant in terms of social, cultural and political opinion. It is the intellectuals who give form and content to mass liberation movements that change society. It is the intellectuals who, because of their déclassé position, can see objectivity and clearly which way class forces are actually moving or aspiring to move, and which classes are advancing or retarding that advance. It is the intellectuals who detect and resolve conflicts in its community by recommending patterns from around which such problems would not be repeated again. 

To be Continued.