FBI, police probe antisemitic flyers, harassment of Jews in Squirrel Hill

Pittsburgh police and the FBI are investigating who distributed antisemitic flyers and harassed Jewish residents over the weekend in Squirrel Hill — the most recent in a growing list of antisemitic incidents in the city.

The Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh said Monday in a statement that members of the Goyim Defense League distributed the flyers, which the group called “antisemitic and racist,” on Sunday.

Squirrel Hill, home to at least a dozen synagogues and three Jewish day schools, is the city’s center of Jewish life.

The Goyim Defense League is “a small network of virulently antisemitic provocateurs” formed in 2022, according to the Anti-Defamation League, whose name and logo the group references. “Goyim” is a Yiddish and Hebrew slur for non-Jews.

The flyers, some of which were thrown from a car or cars at neighborhood homes, were found in Ziploc-style plastic bags weighted down with corn kernels, police and Jewish officials said. Some individuals also shouted slurs at Jewish residents.

The federation, in its statement Monday, said it “strongly condemns” what it called the weekend’s “hate-fueled actions.”

“This kind of hate has no place in our neighborhoods,” said Laura Cherner, director of the federation’s community relations council. “Our community is strong, united and we will stand together to oppose these vile actions.”

The flyers also drew response Monday from elected leaders at the local, state and federal levels.

“The antisemitic materials that were distributed in parts of Squirrel Hill today are reprehensible and have no place in Pittsburgh,” Mayor Ed Gainey posted Sunday night on Facebook. “We will not stand for such hateful acts meant to intimidate our neighbors.”

Pittsburgh Councilwoman Barb Warwick, the Greenfield Democrat whose district includes Squirrel Hill, said in a statement Monday that she “repudiates this hateful act in the strongest possible terms.”

On social media, U.S. Rep. Summer Lee, D-Swissvale, called the flyers “cowardly” and “despicable” and stressed they “have no place in our neighborhoods.”

“I am sick and tired of these disgusting sentiments rearing their ugly heads and attempting to turn neighbors against each other,” state Sen. Jay Costa, D-Forest Hills, whose district includes the city’s East End neighborhoods, wrote Monday on Facebook.

“We have seen quite a bit of white supremacist activity in the region and, when I saw flyers were making the rounds in the Squirrel Hill area, I sadly was not surprised,” Anti-Defamation League regional director Kelly Fishman told TribLive Monday. She monitors incidents in Western Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia and Kentucky.

“There really has been a sense of entitlement, that it’s absolutely OK to share this kind of message,” Fishman said. “These groups have been emboldened. We’re seeing a swath of these incidents against Jewish folks, immigrants and people in the LGBT community.”

The Pittsburgh chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, also condemned what it described as “antisemitic propaganda” and “hate material” in Squirrel Hill.

“We join people of conscience of all faiths and backgrounds in condemning the distribution of this antisemitic propaganda in our community,” Christine Mohamed, the group’s executive director, said in a statement Monday. “We also express our solidarity with the Jewish community as it is targeted by hate-filled bigotry.”

As of Friday, 111 antisemitic incidents had been reported in Pittsburgh so far this year to the federation, according to Shawn Brokos, the federation’s director of community security and a former FBI agent. At this time last year, the total was 122.

In 2024, 283 antisemitic incidents were reported in Pittsburgh, federation officials said. There were 300 antisemitic incidents in 2023, 122 incidents in 2022 and 82 incidents in 2021.

In 2017, the year before 11 Jewish congregants were gunned down in Pittsburgh during an Oct. 27, 2018, Shabbat service at Tree of Life-Or L’Simcha synagogue, there were just 27 antisemitic incidents reported citywide.

A jury convicted the Squirrel Hill synagogue shooter in federal court in 2023; he remains on death row.

Anti-Defamation League statistics on antisemitism differ slightly from those self-reported to the federation locally, Fishman said. But, a 2024 ADL audit showed Pennsylvania recorded the fourth-highest number of antisemitic incidents last year when ranked by state.

Numerous incidents targeting Pittsburgh Jews have drawn headlines.

On Thursday, a Jewish woman accused of conspiring with an alleged Hamas sympathizer to vandalize two Jewish organizations in Pittsburgh last summer pleaded guilty in federal court.

Talya A. Lubit, 24, of Pittsburgh pleaded to misdemeanor counts of conspiracy and damaging or defacing religious property.

On Dec. 7, police were dispatched to investigate after racist and antisemitic graffiti, flyers and stickers were found along a riverwalk trail in Pittsburgh. A day earlier, police responded to reports of two people waving Nazi flags on the Liberty Bridge.

In August, two Jewish students from the University of Pittsburgh — both of them wearing Jewish yarmulkes or head coverings — were attacked near the school’s Cathedral of Learning in what authorities investigated as a possible hate crime.

In July, several city synagogues received at least five bomb threats deemed antisemitic, the ADL reported. An individual also sent one synagogue a shooting threat with a message referencing Robert Bowers, the man convicted in the 2018 synagogue shooting.

“I’m gonna kill you (Jewish slur) like Bowers did,” the individual wrote.

Pittsburgh police officers Sunday canvassed Squirrel Hill for suspects after receiving “multiple reports” about the flyers, a bureau spokeswoman said.

Anyone with information is asked to call police at 412-422-6520 or 911.