US Jewish Agency on alert after attack
Haviv Rettig, THE JERUSALEM POST Mar. 16, 2008Posted on 16 March 2008 @ 15:25 GMTThe Jewish Agency's security apparatus in North America was on alert Sunday after the previous day's Molotov cocktail attack on the home of agency emissary to the Brown University campus Yossi Knafo.
No one was wounded in the attack, which took place just before 2:00 a.m. Saturday near the Brown campus in Providence, Rhode Island.
One firebomb hit an outside wall of the house and caused a fire in the yard, while a second firebomb passed through a window into the house, but failed to explode.
Knafo, who was awake in an adjacent room at the time of the attack, immediately alerted local police and Jewish Agency security personnel. Agency security transferred him temporarily to a hotel.
Police and the FBI opened an investigation into the attack.
A neighbor reportedly told law enforcement officials she saw two unidentified individuals near the house at the time of the attack. The unexploded Molotov cocktail was being examined for fingerprints and other possible clues to the identity of the assailants.
The motive for the attack is as yet unclear.
Knafo said he knew of no reason anyone would target his home, while Hermon and other agency officials believe the attack may mark an unparalleled escalation of anti-Israel campus activism.
"This is unprecedented," said Amos Hermon, a member of the Jewish Agency Executive and chair of its Task Force on Anti-Semitism. "A Jewish Agency emissary hasn't been attacked in America for decades, and we've never known a Molotov cocktail attack that came from anti-Israel or anti-Semitic groups."
Hermon confirmed the agency was "in direct contact with the FBI and Rhode Island police."
Agency officials, including Hermon, cite tensions that may have risen over the weekend due to a massive Jewish Agency campaign on dozens of university campuses and in hundreds of synagogues and schools in the US and worldwide to commemorate the March 6 terror attack on Jerusalem's Mercaz Harav yeshiva which killed eight students.
The agency has also received warnings from Israeli security services over possible retaliation attacks in the wake of the assassination in Damascus of Hizbullah mastermind Imad Mughniyeh on February 12.
At the time, Israeli officials welcomed Mughniyeh's death but did not claim responsibility for the operation.
Following the Saturday attack, Jewish Agency emissaries were briefed on the event and its security implications.
The Jewish Agency has a small security team of former Israeli security personnel. The team is responsible for the safety of emissaries, operates emergency telephone lines for its personnel and maintains contact with local police and the FBI.