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Jersey City Officials Say Suspects In Shootout Targeted The Kosher Grocery Where 2 Jews Died. Some Local Residents Blame The Jews.

   DailyWire.com
A demolition and recovery crew works at the scene of the December 10, 2019 shooting at a Jewish Deli on December 11, 2019 in Jersey City.
Photo by Bryan R. Smith/AFP via Getty Images

According to Jersey City officials, the suspects who engaged in a massive shootout with police on Tuesday in which two innocent Jews in a kosher grocery were murdered targeted the store and intended to harm Jews inside.

Public Safety Director James Shea stated, “There were multiple other people on the streets. There were many other targets available to them that they bypassed to attack that place. So it was, clearly, that was their target, and they intended to harm people inside there,” as NBC News reported.

Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop told reporters on Wednesday that security footage showed the suspects slowly rode through streets in a U-Haul van, then stopped outside the kosher grocery. He tweeted:

Last night after extensive review of our CCTV system it has now become clear from the cameras that these two individuals targeted the Kosher grocery location on MLK Dr – the 2 JCPD officers that were on a foot post one block away immediately responded/engaged and prevented the perpetrators from leaving that location and harming any further civilians. At this time we have no credible further threats from this incident but out of an abundance of caution we will be increasing our police presence in the community.

NBC News noted that one of the two suspects, both of whom were killed in the shootout, had a social media page riddled with anti-Semitic and anti-police writings. Three sources told NBC News that the suspect with the anti-Semitic and anti-police writings had been a follower of the Black Hebrew Israelite movement. The sources added that the van used by the suspects contained a note with religious writings.

Two of the three Orthodox Jews who were murdered have been identified as Mindel Ferencz, 33, the wife of the market owner, and Moshe Deutch, a 24-year-old rabbinical student who lives in Brooklyn, according to The New York Times. The Times added of Deutch that he “helped lead a food drive this year during the Jewish holidays and helped to feed 2,000 people.”

Rabbi Mordechai Feuerwerker, a leader in the Jersey City Hasidic community, said through tears that Deutch was “extremely kind and generous” and a “go-to person when his peers needed help,” adding, “Can you imagine a few hundred bullets went into the body of a 24-year-old child? How can we as a people, a community, bear that?”

Ronald S. Lauder, founder of the Anti-Semitism Accountability Project, said the attack was “yet another example of how Jews are being violently targeted” across the country, adding, “It’s time to hold elected officials accountable: If you enable anti-Semitism or fail to take it seriously, we will see to it that you lose re-election. We will see to it before other communities become memorials. Looking the other way never has – and never will – end well.”

Many Hasidic Jews have moved into the neighborhood where the shooting took place. Former Democratic New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind, who used to represent Brooklyn’s Assembly district 48, issued a video of local residents in the Jersey City neighborhood where the shooting took place blaming the Jews for the murderous attack on them:

 

 

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