Shooting outside Jewish museum raises questions about shifts in political violence

"Only really since October 7th, the war in Gaza, the Israeli military campaign in the Middle East, have we seen this kind of uptick in what I would call far left militancy, far-left extremism surrounding the issue of Gaza," Clarke said. Examples of this violence include the killing of 11 people at a Jewish synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018; the 2019 killing of 23 people at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, by a shooter who reportedly said he was targeting "Mexicans;" and the murder of 10 Black people at a Buffalo, N.Y., supermarket by a white male whose apparent writings expressed racist and antisemitic beliefs. "What the research has shown is that when it comes to – and I don't think there's any other more direct way to say it than the death count – incidents that are typically affiliated with issues or ideologies that might fit in a more far-right bucket have been more lethal," said Katherine Keneally, director of Threat Analysis and Prevention at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a nonprofit that focuses on extremism and terrorism.

Author: Odette Yousef

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