A teenager has been handed down an unusual punishment after he planned a mass shooting at an Ohio synagogue – to write a book report.
The 13-year-old, who is not being named due to his age, allegedly made a detailed plan to shoot members of Temple Israel synagogue in the city of Canton, south of Akron, Ohio.
The plot came to light after he shared the plan on Discord, an online chat platform that has been used by previous mass shooters, and he was arrested and hit with charges of misdemeanour inducing panic and misdemeanour disorderly conduct.
The 13-year-old pleaded “true” – the juvenile equivalent of a guilty plea – to all counts on Friday, NBC affiliate WKYC reported.
A family court judge then handed down the unusual penalty – ordering him to write a book report about Swiss diplomat Carl Lutz, who saved thousands of Jewish people during World War II.
Lutz is thought to have saved more than 62,000 Hungarian Jews by writing diplomatic letters of protection for Jewish Hungarian families.
Carl Lutz, a Swiss diplomat who saved thousands of Jews in Hungary from the Nazis during World War II— (Wikimedia Commons)
As well as writing the book report, the teenager was sentenced to a year of probation, is banned from having unsupervised use of the internet, and is ordered to continue seeing a licensed therapist.
Although the teenager’s plot and subsequent arrest unfolded before Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October, the teen’s sentencing comes at a time when there has been a rise in antisemitic attacks in the US.
Over the weekend, a man was arrested in Washington DC over an alleged antisemitic attack on two people outside a synagogue in which he allegedly sprayed a foul-smelling substance on two pedestrians and yelled “gas the Jews”.
That same day, police said that multiple synagogues in the city had received threatening emails, but that the threats did not appear to be related to the attack, reported CNN.
Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, a 44-year-old man was arrested earlier this month over an alleged antisemitic attack on a couple who were on their way to a synagogue.
The couple, identified only as Raphy and Rebecca, said the suspect ran up behind them and attacked them with a belt, leaving Raphy needing four staples on his head.
In the month since the 7 October attacks, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) said it had recorded a “significant spike in antisemitic incidents”.
Between 7 October and 7 December, antisemitic incidents reached the highest level ever for a two-month period since the ADL began tracking the figure back in 1979, topping 2,000.
“This terrifying pattern of antisemitic attacks has been relentless since the Israel-Hamas war began on October 7, with no signs of diminishing,” Jonathan Greenblatt CEO of the ADL, said in a statement.
Instances of Islamaphobia are also on the rise in the US. This month, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights organisation, said it had received 2,171 requests for help in the two months between 7 October and 7 December.
