Police hunt New Year shul attackers
MALKA LEIFER, the former headteacher suspected of sexually abusing her students at a Melbourne school, is to remain in Israeli custody pending a further review of her case, a judge ruled last week.
She remains the subject of an Australian extradition request for trial over 74 complaints of sexual assault of female students under her charge in the 1980s.
There were a number of reversals in her case last week after the Jerusalem District Court ruled that state prosecutors had failed to prove she is fit to stand trial.
The court ordered her release to house arrest, pending another psychiatric assessment. But a further appeal to the Supreme Court led to her release order being revoked.
Mrs Leifer will remain in Neve Tirza women’s prison until a further ruling.
POLICE IN New York are searching for a group caught hurling a milk crate at a Brooklyn synagogue during Rosh Hashanah services last week.
Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York state, ordered state officers to assist in an investigation after the building’s windows were broken in the attack.
CCTV footage on September 30 showed a group approaching the Rivnitz synagogue in Williamsburg, with two members of the gang then throwing crates at the windows of the shul before running away.
At least one of the windows was broken; congregants were inside praying at the time.
Mr Cuomo said he was “disgusted and outraged by yet another antisemitic act of vandalism, the desecration of a synagogue in Williamsburg over Rosh Hashanah, one of the holiest days in the Jewish calendar.
“It is simply unconscionable.” Bill de Blasio, Mayor of New York City, called it “a shocking act of hate”, vowing to find the perpetrators”, adding that city police were “protecting Jewish institutions during [the] High Holy Days.”
A spokesperson for the Anti Defamation League said it was “extremely upsetting...at a time when the Brooklyn Jewish community is already on edge in the wake of a series of antisemitic incidents.”
The incident is the latest of a series of attacks on Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn, in which a number of Jewish residents have been hurt.
The previous evening, a Jewish woman in Williamsburg was assaulted by thugs who attempted to pull of her headscarf and the wig she wore for religious reasons.