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Jury Imposes Sentence Of Synagogue Attacker

By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News

PITTSBURG (Worthy News) – A jury imposed the death penalty on a man who spread antisemitic hatred before fatally shooting 11 worshippers at a synagogue in the deadliest attack on Jews in U.S. history.

Robert Bowers, a truck driver now 50 years old, perpetrated the attack on Jews on October 27, 2018, prosecutors say.

Entering the Tree of Life synagogue, he opened fire with an AR-15 rifle, shooting everyone he could find in a mass murder clearly motivated by religious hatred, according to investigators.

Bowers used a slur for Jews some 400 times on social media to share his hatred of them and remains proud that he killed Jews.

“Do not be numb to it. Remember what it means. This defendant targeted people solely because of the faith they chose,” Eric Olshan, U.S. attorney for the western district of Pennsylvania, claimed during the court case.

Yet victims’ families were divided on whether Bowers should be sentenced to death.

As described by the Death Penalty Information Center, “the New Light and Dor Hadash congregations, including Rabbi Jonathan Perlman, who was wounded in the attack, and Miri Rabinowitz, whose husband was killed, urged [US attorney general Merrick] Garland to forego the death penalty and instead seek a life sentence.”

On Wednesday, a statement from Stephen Cohen and Barbara Caplan, co-presidents of New Light Congregation, which lost three members in Bowers’ attack, said: “Many of our members prefer that the shooter spend the rest of his life in prison, questioning whether we should seek vengeance or revenge against him or whether his death would ‘make up’ for the lost lives.”

But the congregation as a whole, Cohen and Caplan wrote, “agrees with the government’s position that no one may murder innocent individuals simply because of their religion … New Light Congregation accepts the jury’s decision and believes that, as a society, we need to take a stand that this act requires the ultimate penalty under the law.”