Less than a week after warning American Jews about an anonymous threat to kill Jewish executives and doctors, the FBI is now reportedly investigating letters threatening attacks on mosques and Muslim groups around the United States.
The letters, reportedly mailed from Birmingham, England, purport to come from a branch of the Jewish Defense League-Kahane Chai in Britain.
The Washington, D.C.-based Council on American-Islamic Relations has warned 1,500 mosques and religious institutions in the United States to remain on the lookout for the letters.
The FBI would not comment on the investigation, but Reuters quoted a spokesman as saying, “We do not know if the threat is real.”
A Kahane spokesman told Reuters he had no knowledge of the letter and said it was “a typical Muslim-style provocation to get [Muslims] to sharpen their swords.”
“Those letters are forgeries,” said Mordechai Levy, national director of the New York-based Jewish Defense Organization, a militant group which has called for retaliation against Muslim terrorist groups if they target Jews.
Last week the FBI issued an alert to Jewish groups after it received a threat to carry out attacks on Jewish executives and doctors unless Israel withdrew its military forces from Lebanon and paid $12 billion in compensation by May 5.
Levy said that after having one of the letters read to him, it could not have been written by a Jew. The letter, he said, contained references to the Jewish international banking conspiracy and other anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.
“We don’t agree with what’s in that letter,” Levy said. “We don’t support threatening all Muslims, but what I do believe is that we Jews have got to make clear that any terrorist group that lifts a hand to kill Jews will pay. There must be self-defense.”
The letter reportedly stated in part: “Our arm is long and if our people are attacked outside of Israel, we will respond against the Muslim community around the world.
“Be warned Muslims, your lives are ours like the sheep to the butcher,” it said, adding, “you will be delivered into our hands.”
The back of the letter reportedly contains a copy of photograph widely published last month of a man running through the streets of Lebanon, carrying his dead son and daughter in his arms.
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