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Synagogues reportedly see 541% increase in threats: ‘Disturbing and unnerving’
Rabbi Dan Horwitz, CEO of Jewish Federation of Greater Nashville and Rep. Phillip Ensler, D-Ala., discuss the exponential increase in threats against synagogues across the U.S., including some in their own neighborhoods.
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EXCLUSIVE – Before a tunnel under a New York City synagogue was national news, an X user – @FrumTikTok – posted a video thread showing extremist Orthodox Hasidic students clashing with the NYPD.
David, whose last name is being withheld for his safety, had no clue that his post would go viral and spiral into personal threats against him and fuel antisemitic conspiracies and propaganda.
“I started a thread with videos and a brief explanation of what was going on. I thought it was a small story, and maybe a few people would be interested, but lo and behold, it took off like crazy,” David told Fox News Digital in an exclusive interview.
“I shut my phone off for the night and when I woke up, the thread had over 50 million combined views, and the news media was starting to report the story.”
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Hasidic Jewish students observe as law enforcement establishes a perimeter around a breached wall in the synagogue that led to a tunnel dug by students. (Bruce Schaff/AP)
The Brooklyn synagogue at the center of attention – the Chabad Lubavitch World Headquarters – is one of the holiest houses of worship for people who follow the Chabad-Lubavitch faith.
It’s a small, insular sect of the Orthodox movement that only about 16% of American Jews follow, according to the Jewish news outlet Forward.
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Last week, America watched sensational videos of a wild riot and a dark, “secret” tunnel under what’s known as “770,” after its 770 Eastern Parkway address, and concocted conspiracy theories about human trafficking networks and child sacrifices.
Those nonsensical theories spread throughout social media as facts, and were used as antisemitic propaganda, David said.
“Age-old antisemitic conspiracy theories were being spread with hate-filled rhetoric percolating in both extremist and mainstream spaces and across the ideological spectrum,” he said. “But that’s when I discovered the pitfalls of social media, and X in particular.”
World Headquarters of the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic movement, located on Eastern Parkway in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, New York. (Google Street View)
As Fox News Digital previously reported, a group of “extremist students,” as Chabad spokesperson Motti Seligson called them, believed they were carrying out a decades-long vision by the former head of the Chabad movement, Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson.
Potential expansion projects have never come to fruition because of decades of litigation between mainstream members of the Chabad movement and a splinter sect, as each side claims they’re the rightful owner of “770.”
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But shocking videos of an underground tunnel and wild clashes with police “turned a story about expansion and ownership of a Holy Synagogue into heinous rhetoric that dates back to the Middle Ages,” David said.
The hate and threats got so out of hand, David deleted the entire thread and explained why in a Jan. 9 tweet: “I will NOT allow my account to be used by antisemitic Jew haters to promote their pathetic hatred of religious Jews.”
WATCH DAVID’S VIDEO OF SOMEONE GIVING A TOUR OF 770
“When people started telling me that known antisemites were retweeting my videos, I made the decision to delete the entire thread,” David said during his chat with Fox News Digital.
“I wasn’t going to let these Jew haters use my account to spread their hateful and disgusting venom.”
But the dam had already broken at that point, David said, and hate continued to flood his timeline and messages.
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One person told him, “Why are you defending Pedos(sic)? Cause they have the same filthy blood like yours? Delete the Christian from your bio. We Orthodox Christians DEFEND our children, we don’t sacrifice children.
“If you decided to delete the thread about the tunnels of your peers used for satanist rituals and child trafficking it means you are a part of the scheme. Where is your Holy Place? Let’s dig under it, shall we? F—-n child predators. Your day is coming. Y’all pushed it and pushed it and everyone accepted your crimes. But people will stand for their children. And y’all gonna get to prison. And you know what they do in prison to child offenders, right?”
A majority of rabbis, including several who spoke to Fox News Digital or sent emailed statements, denounced the students’ actions. In total, nine students were arrested and charged with misdemeanor disorderly conduct, according to the NYPD.
NYPD officers arrest a student after he was removed from a breach in the wall of the synagogue that led to a tunnel dug by students. (Bruce Schaff/AP)
Rabbi Yehuda Krinsky said they’re “pained by the vandalism of a group of young agitators” in a statement on behalf of the Chabad-Lubavitch Headquarters. (Chabad Lubavitch HQ/X)
David said he created his account “to spread entertaining and insightful videos, with a good dose of Jewish humor and wit mixed in.”
“I was never in it for the fame,” he said.
Before the riot in 770, he had about 11,400 followers, which swelled to nearly 17,000 followers, and none of his tweets had more than 600,000 views, which was a drop in the ocean compared to the 50 million-plus that watched his video over about 24 hours.
“The fight against antisemitism, terror and hate is not a Jewish fight alone,” he said. “A world that has no place for Jews and Israel, has no place for humanity. Every good person will suffer in the end. So all good people must unite to win this war.”
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When asked if he regrets posting the videos, David said he doesn’t because the videos “exposed many of the pro-Palestinian accounts as nothing more than plain-old Jew haters, who propagate age-old antisemitic conspiracy theories.”
“The only thing that needs to change, is X has to do a better job of not allowing these antisemites to continually spread their hateful and disgusting antisemitic conspiracy theories.”
Chris Eberhart is a crime and US news reporter for Fox News Digital. Email tips to [email protected] or on Twitter @ChrisEberhart48.