WASHINGTON, Aug. 7 (UPI) -- Unknown persons threw a Molotov cocktail at a side door of Baltimore Hebrew University's Joseph Meyerhoff Library on Aug. 3.
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported Sunday that police quickly responded; they estimated the damage at about $200.
Arthur Abramson of the Baltimore Jewish Council said the community was aware of the need to protect its institutions and the current crisis in the Middle East had increased its concern over its properties.
Conservative synagogue Beth El Congregation of Baltimore executive director Gil Kleiner told Haaretz Friday that Shabbat prayers would take place in a state of "heightened alert." He said the firebombing was an isolated incident rather than being part of a trend.
The attack came a week after a gunman attacked Seattle's Jewish Federation offices. Naveed Afzal Haq, a Muslim-American with a history of mental illness opened fire inside the offices, killing federation official Pam Waechter and wounding five other sincludign a pregnant woman.
Since Haq's attack there have been other assaults on Jewish property, including an incendiary bottle being thrown in Queens, New York City. In addition, a number of vandalism incidents against Jewish property have been reported in Brooklyn, Miami and Chicago.
The rising tide of unrest has attracted the attention of the U.S. government. After Arab-Americans demonstrated in Detroit against the Israeli military campaign in Lebanon the Federal Bureau of Investigation said that security must be heightened in Michigan, which has a large Middle Eastern population.
The U.S. Congress is also addressing the issue. On Aug. 1, Sens. Arlen Spector, R-Penn., Barbara Mikulsky, D-Md and Patty Murray, D-Wash. met for talks about how to prod the Department of Homeland Security into allocating money to protect non-profit organizations, including synagogues,
Congress has allocated $25 million for such security, but the legislation is stalled at present.
Federal funding for security for Jewish institutions in the Washington-Baltimore area predates the current unrest. Since 2004 Jewish facilities in the Washington-Baltimore area have received more than $1.5 million.
In February and March the United States consulate's Public Access Center Unit in Peshawar received two bomb threats via e-mail.
One e-mail written by "Ajab Gul" to PACU on Feb. 22 discussed an American citizen of Pakistani descent, Rafiqullah Jan from Oakland, California who was allegedly buying weapons and food for the Taliban and supplying landmines for use against U.S. troops.
A source in Pakistan's Interior Ministry told the ANI news agency that in March Gul again wrote to PACU, alleging that Jan was also funding the Taliban and planned to blow up the Peshawar consulate.
ANI reproted Saturday that the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation has requested assistance from Pakistan's Interior Ministry in authenticating the two emails. FBI headquarters in Washington DC investigated the messages on the Internet searching for the Remote Internet Provider and determined the ISP's identity number to be 202.163.91.147.
The FBI also determined that Gul sent the two messages to CyberNet Peshawar, with the point of contact being Ansarul Haq in Lakson Building Karachi. The FBI has requested the assistance of the Interior Ministry to verify the authenticity of the information in the two e-mails.
PACU gives the public a secure channel for reporting information on terrorist and other criminal activities to the FBI via both the Internet and a toll-free telephone hotline. PACU also analyses and processes incoming information for FBI investigations and intelligence work and disseminates the material it collects to the appropriate international, federal, state and local and intelligence and law enforcement agencies.
PACU now receives and relays approximately 100 threat tips per month.
Five years after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks investigators are still uncovering new international leads about their perpetrators.
The New Zealand Herald reported Saturday that Rayed Mohammed Abdullah Ali Rayed Mohammed Abdullah Ali, a Saudi student expelled from New Zealand on May 30 as a national security threat knew two of the Sept. 11 hijackers, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Hani Hanjour. Both were abroad American Airlines Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon. American intelligence officials believe that Hanjour was the pilot of the hijacked American Airlines Flight 77.
An Immigration Service "Restricted" analysis was obtained by the Weekend Herald under the Official Information Act. The report mentions a "direct association" between Ali, al-Hazmi and Hanjour. Ali met and briefly roomed with Hanjour with when he arrived in the United States in late 1997.
The analysis helped to persuade the government decision to deport Ali, three months after he was allowed into New Zealand to attend an English language course.
The document does not detail Ali and al-Hamzi's relationship. Al-Hazmi reportedly was one of the first suicide-hijackers nominated by Osama bin Laden for the September 11 attacks, saying that their association "is not detailed and still not available in a discloseable report."
The analysis is based largely on interrogation transcripts of Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who was arrested in Pakistan in 2003 and subsequently handed over to United States custody.
The analysis is regarded of sufficient value that it was used as "substitute testimony" in the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui. In May a United States jury handed Moussaoui a life sentence for his role in the plotting.
The analysis noted the "effectiveness of (al-Qaida's) approach to operational security and their success in limiting knowledge of the operation to a small handful of people. Therefore, it is likely that (Ali) could claim no knowledge of the 9/11 plot and be essentially truthful...it is striking that (Ali) was close to, or associated with two of what may be described as the 'inner circle' of 9/11 hijackers."
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