ANT KATZ

“Kill Jews”

Two Jewish day schools in different US cities received threatening phone calls on Tuesday after some schools in Britain received a bomb threat on Monday. The threats prompted police investigations in both countries.

A caller to the Perelman Jewish Day School in suburban Philadelphia threatened to “kill Jews” before hanging up. The Perelman Jewish Day School is situated in Lower Merion, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia. It received a threatening phone call at 10:30 on Tuesday.

The Joseph and Florence Mandel Jewish Day School in Beachwood, Ohio, a Cleveland suburb, received an anonymous threatening phone call shortly after 10:00 on Tuesday, according to the Cleveland Jewish News. Police checked the school but found nothing suspicious. Local police, aided by the FBI and the Jewish Federation of Cleveland, investigated and determined there was no credible threat.

Perelman is a Conservative day school, while the other US school threatened, Mandel, is nondenominational.

In the UK, bomb threats were made to seven schools – among them Jewish schools. The calls were all made shortly after 08:00 on Monday. No explosive devices were found in the schools and they were not evacuated, according to reports.

The Community Security Trust, Britain’s Jewish community security umbrella, in a tweet advised the Jewish schools to “fully enforce all security procedures”.

A London Metropolitan Police spokesman told the Jewish Chronicle that police are not treating calls to Jewish schools differently from the rest. He said, however: “If it looks like it is focusing on faith schools or is inciting hate crime, then we will take a harder approach.”