Miami: Jewish man shot and wounded while waiting outside synagogue
A Jewish man waiting outside the Young Israel of Greater Miami synagogue for afternoon prayers on Sunday evening was wounded in a drive-by shooting, apparently an antisemitic attack.
The victim, 58, sustained several gun-shot wounds in the leg and was taken to Aventura Medical Center in stable condition, according to Miami-Dade police. He is not in a life-threatening situation, reports say.
The shooter, who fired six times at the synagogue, is still at large.
Officials have not yet determined if the incident will be categorized as a hate crime.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) said it was “closely monitoring the situation in North Miami Beach where a man was shot outside a synagogue this evening. We’re grateful the victim is in stable condition and praying for his complete recovery.”
Yaacov Haguel, Deputy Chairman of the World Zionist Organization, called on US authorities to “put an end to antisemitic terrorism being committed against Jews in the US so that they can live their lives like any other citizen. ”
The year 2018 was one of the worst years in the last decade with regards to antisemitism and anti-Jewish violence, the Antisemitism Worldwide 2018 Annual Report, published by Tel Aviv University’s Kantor Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry and the European Jewish Congress (EJC), showed.
The report, released in April, showed a staggering 13 percent increase in violent attacks against Jews in the past year which left 13 Jews dead, including 12 in the US.
The number of major violent cases documented by the team has increased from 342 in 2017 to 387 in 2018.
The countries with the highest number of cases are the US with over 100 cases, the United Kingdom with 68 cases, and France and Germany with 35 each.
In April, John Earnest, a 19-year-old self-declared anti-Semite, entered the Poway, California, synagogue shooting and killed Lori Gilbert Kaye and wounded three others.
A mass shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in November claimed 11 lives of Jewish worshippers.
