The U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the FBI issued a public service announcement on Thursday highlighting “potential public safety concerns related to ongoing threats to Jewish and Israeli communities.”
The department and the bureau noted that a gunman murdered two Israeli embassy staffers last month outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington and that, on June 1, an attacker used a makeshift flamethrower and threw Molotov cocktails at participants in a Boulder, Colo., gathering in solidarity with the Hamas-held hostages in Gaza.
“The ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict may motivate other violent extremists and hate crime perpetrators with similar grievances to conduct violence against Jewish and Israeli communities and their supporters,” the bureau and the department stated.
“Foreign terrorist organizations also may try to exploit narratives related to the conflict to inspire attacks in the United States,” they added, urging “the public to remain vigilant and to report any threats of violence or suspicious activity to law enforcement.”
