Apart from the vandalism and swastika graffiti discovered in the United States during the past few days, quite a few Jewish centers have received bomb threats. Some 100 schools and community centers over recent weeks have received such warnings in 33 states, plus two more in Canada.
During a speech on Wednesday morning President Trump strongly condemned the anti-Semitism and vandalism: "We are a country that stands united in condemning hate and evil in all its forms," he said. Meanwhile US security forces launched an intensive investigation to find out who are the perpetrators behind the acts.
CNN received testimonies and various recordings of phone calls made to Jewish centers, including quite a bit of malevolent and anti-Semitic verbiage. One of these conversations came to a Jewish center in California: "It was a male voice, very robotic," said the representative of the Jewish community who answered the phone.
Similar testimony came from a Jewish center in Los Angeles, where Brian Green, who runs the state's Jewish Community Center website, answered the phone. "The man's voice was mechanical and distorted," he recalls, "He told me that we had an hour to evacuate the building, and would not tell us the exact location of the bomb."
The Maryland phone call was more oppressive, and carried distinct anti-Semitic motifs. The address was a Jewish school in the city of Rockville, where this reporter once lived and learned. Not much seems to have changed in the thirty years since he was beaten and locked in a shed by local Baptist children who "thought it would be funny because he's Jewish". "Exterminate all the Jews," said the voice on the other end of the call. Another call to the Jewish community in Maryland was traced by the police. "It sounds like the voice of an older woman, but it could be automatic distortion", they said.
"There is a bomb in one of the children's knapsacks that could explode at any moment", said another call, to a Jewish school in the state of Michigan, "it could explode at any moment." To the Jewish Community Center in Buffalo, New York, came a phone call saying: "There is a bomb in the building's lobby."