Suspect held over threats to Cornell Jewish students

Police in New York are questioning a suspect after Jewish students at Cornell University were threatened with acts of violence over the weekend.

In a series of posts to a website called Greekrank, a user with the name Hamas threatened to shoot Jewish students at the prestigious university.

On Tuesday, Governor Kathy Hochul said police had identified a suspect who was taken into "custody for questioning".

The suspect has not yet been named by police.

Ms Hochul, who visited the Cornell campus on Monday, said in a statement that she was "committed to combatting hate and bias wherever it rears its ugly head".

The Cornell Daily Sun, the college newspaper, reported on a series of antisemitic comments left on the website Greekrank.

The platform, which is not affiliated with the university but is used by many of its students, covers fraternity and sorority life on several campuses.

On Sunday, posts on the platform threatened the Cornell Jewish community and included specific threats against the on-campus kosher dining hall.

The BBC could not immediately independently verify who posted the messages, and whether they came from a member of the student body or an outside source.

One post from a commenter named "hamas" was titled "if i see another jew".

The post used slurs to refer to Jewish people and threatened violence, stalking and rape against Jewish men, women and babies.

The user threatened to bring a gun to campus to kill Jewish people.

Molly Goldstein, co-president of the Cornell Center for Jewish Living told CNN: "Jewish students on campus right now are unbelievably terrified for their lives.

"I never would have expected this to happen on my university campus."

The threats against Cornell's Jewish community arrive amid reports of rising antisemitic incidents around the country.

Speaking to a congressional committee on Tuesday, FBI Director Christopher Wray told lawmakers that antisemitic abuse was reaching "historic levels" in the US.

"Our statistics would indicate that for a group that represents only about 2.4% of the American public, they account for something like 60% of all religious-based hate crimes," Mr Wray said of Jewish Americans, noting that the figure had likely risen since the Israel-Gaza conflict erupted on 7 October.

On Monday, the Biden administration announced that it was working to combat antisemitism and other hate speech on campuses by increasing communications with local, state and federal authorities.

The Israel-Gaza conflict has seen increasingly tensions among students on US campuses.

And an elite law firm recently rescinded job offers for three Ivy League students associated with letters that expressed support for Palestinians and blamed Israel for the Hamas attacks.