A man was arrested over the weekend for threatening to kill an Arizona rabbi and “every other JEW [sic] I can find tonight at midnight of your Sabbath”, the US Department of Justice announced in a news release on Monday.
Jeffrey Mindock, 50, of Tempe, Arizona, was taken into custody Saturday on federal charges. The news release does not specify what the charges were.
According to a complaint, Mr Mindock sent an email on Friday to a Rabbi at a local synagogue in Scottsdale asking the religious leader to “try to convince” a Utah judge to “drop the charges against” him in a state district court case.
The subject of the email was “HITLER WAS RIGHT”, the complaint stated.
“As I have watched the atrocities unfolding in Palestine, I have come to the realization that YOU people are to blame for everything evil in this world,” federal prosecutors say Mr Mindock wrote in an email.
The man continued the correspondence by stating that if the Rabbi did not have the charges dropped against him, he would “execute” him.
“If you wish to communicate with me further, I will only meet in person,” Mr Mindock continued, listing an address for an address in Tempe before signing the letter, “Shalom, Viktor Sitkevicz”, an alias.
Mr Mindock has been accused of making a series of threats in the past, according to the complaint.
In 2021, he threatened to “execute” others and had previously threatened to “hang” a judge in an email. He has also threatened another individual in Arizona, the release noted. He was arrested in 2021.
Ever since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas, antisemitic incidents have been on the rise, advocacy groups have noted. According to the Anti-Defamation League, the incidents have spiked by about 400 percent across the US.
In total, the advocacy group reported 312 antisemitic incidents between 7 October, when the war began, and 23 October.
