A hostage crisis at a Texas synagogue ended Saturday with the hostages rescued and the perpetrator dead.
Summary
A man invaded a Colleyville, Texas synagogue Saturday and held its rabbi and three others hostage.
- The gunman attacked the Congregation Beth Israel synagogue during a Shabbat service and could be heard on a livestream.
- The 11-hour standoff at Congregation Beth Israel ended after an FBI Hostage Rescue Team stormed the synagogue and rescued the hostages. The hostage-taker was killed; his cause of death has not been released.
- Congregation Beth Israel’s rabbi, Charlie Cytron-Walker, reportedly “wowed” the FBI with his “calm, collected” demeanor during the crisis.
- The Washington Post reported the man who attacked the Dallas-Fort Worth area synagogue is a British national. US and UK police are investigating the man, whose identity has not been made public.
- The attack on Congregation Beth Israel is the latest in a series of terror attacks targeting Jewish Americans. The 2018 Tree of Life shooting in Pittsburgh, PA was the deadliest terror attack on the American Jewish community in American history, with eleven dead and six wounded.
- Since Tree of Life, there have been antisemitic attacks at a Poway, CA synagogue; a Jersey City, NJ kosher market; and a Hanukkah celebration in Monsey, NY that killed five Americans and wounded ten.
- The New York Times reported on the security concerns facing synagogues across America after this latest attack on the American Jewish community.
- The Forward profiled Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker, a “pillar of the community.”
- The Washington Post surveyed the global reaction to the attack on Congregation Beth Israel. The attack comes amid rising incidents of antisemitic violence in the US and around the world.
- Fox News profiled Aafia Siddiqui, the convicted al-Qaeda terrorist the hostage-taker allegedly wanted to free from prison.
- The Daily Mail captured the dramatic moment when two of the hostages escaped the synagogue, with the armed hostage-taker visible behind them.
- The Daily Wire criticized the Biden Administration for its initial statement about the hostage crisis that failed to mention it was an attack on a synagogue.
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© Dominic Moore, 2022
