Temple De Hirsch Sinai was vandalized with hateful graffiti by a local bigot earlier this month. It was later covered up. Anti-Semitism is alive and well in the U.S.—and beyond.
Temple De Hirsch Sinai was vandalized with hateful graffiti by a local bigot earlier this month. The graffiti was later covered up. ASK

There have been more than 100 threats made against Jewish community centers and schools since January, reports show. An 18-year-old Israeli Jewish man, who holds dual U.S. and Israeli citizenship, was arrested in Israel and is suspected of having made many of these threats, The New York Times reports.

American and Israeli officials refused to say how many of the threats the suspect was accused of making. And some recent anti-Semitic acts were apparently committed by others, like threats against Jewish centers for which a Missouri man was charged, and the vandalizing of Jewish cemeteries.

But officials made it clear that they considered the teenager, who lived in the Ashkelon area of southern Israel, as the primary source of the threats, though they did not offer a motive. “This is the guy we are talking about,” an Israeli police spokesman, Micky Rosenfeld, said.

Rosenfeld alleged that the unnamed teenager also made threats in New Zealand, Australia, and to "at least one commercial airline flight, prompting an emergency landing."

The suspect's lawyer, Galit Bash, told the Times that her client has a brain tumor, which "can affect his cognitive abilities and lead to 'irrational' behavior" and led to him being denied from the military draft.

The teen, who has not been charged with a crime, will be held until March 30 and his father, who law enforcement officials believe may have known about the threats, will be held for eight days, the paper reports. The father denied the allegations.

The Guardian reports that the teen had equipment that included "a large antenna and unusually sophisticated computer hardware" and voice-altering technology.

An Israeli police official said sophisticated methods were used. Yaniv Azani, the head of technology in the Israeli police’s cyber unit, said several different means were used “to camouflage the various layers of communication mechanisms” to carry out the calls.

According to Nimrod Vax, a co-founder of the US-Israeli cybersecurity company BigID, the phone calls required a level of sophistication but were “not too difficult” for an experienced hacker.

Doron Krakow, the head of the JCC Association of North America, told The Atlantic that the organization was "troubled" to learn that the possible source of the threats was Jewish.