Chicago Sun Times

Vandals spray-painted the words “Death to Israel’’ on two synagogues and a Jewish school early Saturday in three separate incidents police say could be linked and are being investigated as hate crimes.

In each case, the vandals — at times donning masks — used orange-colored paint, also shattering glass windows with bricks and rocks at two of the buildings.

A witness and security cameras identified the perpetrators as two men.

Moshe Perlstein, rabbi at Lubavitch Mesivta of Chicago, said cameras captured video of the men damaging his rabbinical school at 2756 W. Morse starting at around 4:40 a.m. The footage shows one man spray-painting the side of the building while the other ran around to the front and threw rocks at the front door, breaking a glass window, he said. The video has been turned over to police.

Similar graffiti was found at Anshe Motele Congregation, 6526 N. California, rabbi Alan Abramson said.

Lincolnwood police said vandals also scrawled “Death to Israel’’ and “Free Palestine’’ on the outside walls of Lincolnwood Jewish Congregation, 7117 N. Crawford. Mitchell Sandler, past president of the congregation, said they threw at least two bricks at the front doors, damaging four windows.

Lincolnwood Police Lt. Mark Brines said police were notified at 6:10 a.m. that a caretaker in the building heard a brick crash through a window at the temple. The caretaker saw “two unknown males running from the scene,’’ Brines said.

Because all three buildings were used by orthodox Jews, Sandler said it appeared the men were targeting more devout Jews.

“This was a cowardly act in the middle of the night,’’ Sandler said. “Obviously there is dismay because of what’s been happening in the Middle East.’’

Local Jewish leaders were alarmed by what they see as a “rash’’ of incidents targeting Jews.

“It’s disturbing,’’ said Jay Tcath, senior vice president of the Chicago Jewish Federation.

The incidents come a little more than a week after Ida Crown Jewish Academy, at 2828 W. Pratt, received a mailed bomb threat that also made reference to other Chicago-area Jewish institutions and day schools, said Jay Tcath, senior vice president of the Chicago Jewish Federation.

And police said they are investigating as a hate crime a Dec. 29 incident in which a man hurled a Molotov cocktail at Temple Sholom of Chicago, 3480 N. Lake Shore Dr., after making “derogatory comments’’ to a passerby.

The FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force has been notified, police said.

No arrests have been made.

Chicago has turned into Germany circa 1939.

Hat Tip: Gateway Pundit

UPDATE 1: More pictures from Atlas Shrugs.

NY Post

A waiter who shocked guests at a Jewish wedding by playing a recording of a crowd chanting in Arabic has pleaded not guilty to a felony harassment charge.

Nassau County police said Stephen Buttafuoco was working at the Woodbury Jewish Center on Long Island on Jan. 4 when he played the chant over a sound system.

He was arrested Friday and arraigned Saturday. He was scheduled to be released on $1,500 cash bail, said his lawyer.

Investigators said the 23-year-old West Babylon man made the recording when he attended a rally opposing the Israeli offensive in Gaza, during which protesters chanted, “Allah Akbar,” or “God is great.”

Buttafuoco said he was playing the recording for a co-worker and was unaware it was being amplified, according to his lawyer, Tom Spreer.

Spreer said Buttafuoco’s father is a former Marine and pastor of a church in Babylon, and the family was sorry about the incident.

“They are a good family and they are very upset about what happened,” Spreer said. “And they wish to apologize to everyone who attended the wedding.”

Police initially released a statement saying that Buttafuoco had also been charged with disrupting a religious service. Spreer said, however, that the charge was not introduced at his arraignment. Newsday reported a grand jury will consider whether to bring the charge.

Police said the defendant is not related to Joey Buttafuoco, who went to prison in the Amy Fisher scandal.

Dumb ass.

I bet this becomes a Saturday Night Live skit, though.

On behalf of the Scoop This editors - Ricky, Kelsey, LoneStar, and myself - I would like to wish all of our readers and friends a Merry Christmas!

And yes, even our liberal readers. Merry Christmas. Peace on Earth.

I would like to share a cartoon I grew up with. It is called Somewhere In Dreamland. This is a cartoon about the Great Depression, even though it has become a Christmas classic. This cartoon is 72 years old. (I am 27 years old, by the way.)

Also, I would like to wish a Merry Christmas to all of our troops!

If you have been naughty this year, make sure to check out Webcam Julia!

Merry Christmas!

The State

“We had been praying every day, my oldest daughter and I and Chelsea,” Colleen Banton said. “…Praying for a miracle.”

That miracle, Colleen believes, came Nov. 5 – seven weeks after Chelsea was admitted to the hospital for pneumonia.

What originally seemed like a bad cold nearly killed her.

“She was on life-support from the moment she got there,” her mother said.

That was Sept. 21. Over the next six weeks in the hospital, Chelsea faced one threat after another: pneumonia in her left lung, then her right lung, then sepsis, blood clots, staph infections, E. coli, a collapsed lung and feeding problems.

But a family meeting Oct. 31 was a turning point.

“At that point, the family… agreed that when she did come off the ventilator again, (they) weren’t putting it back in,” Colleen said. “Whatever happened, would happen.”

On Saturday, Nov. 1, “they took her off the ventilator and she did good,” her mother said. “She was breathing on her own.”

The next day, “her stats went down,” and doctors put her in an oxygen mask.

But over the next few days, Colleen noticed her daughter “wasn’t getting better. Things were kind of lingering.”

And Chelsea, who had been having anxiety attacks and crying throughout her hospital stay, was having more of them.

“I said, ‘She’s been through enough,’” Colleen remembers. “I said, ‘Can we just take her mask off? She’s been through enough.’

“I wanted to do what the Lord wanted me to do. And I really felt like I’ve had her for 14 years, and if it’s time for her to go to heaven, then I know she’ll be healed.”

The mask didn’t come off immediately, though. They waited until family members had a chance to come to see Chelsea – perhaps for the last time.

On the afternoon of Nov. 5, as family and friends prayed about the decision, a nurse practitioner called Colleen’s attention to a monitor showing the door to the pediatric intensive care unit.

“On the monitor, there was this bright light,” Colleen recalls. “And I looked at it and I said, ‘Oh my goodness! It looks like an angel!”

Colleen pointed her digital camera at the monitor to take a photo of the image, but the “first picture wouldn’t take.”

She tried again and succeeded. The image gave her a peace that stayed with her when hospital staff removed Chelsea’s oxygen mask.

And then, “when they took the mask off of her, her stats went as high as they’ve ever been.

“Her color was good, and the doctors and nurses were amazed,” Colleen said. “The nurse practitioner who saw the image in the monitor said, ‘I’ve worked here 15 years, and I’ve never seen anything like it.’”

Chelsea was removed from intensive care on Nov. 14 and went home three days later.

Her mother believes it was a miracle – attended by a very real angel bathed in light at the door to the pediatric intensive care unit.

“What was so ironic… is it was a rainy day,” Colleen said. “It had been overcast all day. And the sun only came out at that point.”

To those who doubt her story and photograph, Colleen Banton says: “If they doubt it, that’s fine. … But I know what I saw, and the picture’s untouched. I didn’t make it up. That’s just something that I believe.

“I believe that more people have changed since this happened. I know I have. I look at things differently than I used to – because I know God is in control.”

On Christmas Day, Chelsea will turn 15 – another miracle considering all of the medical trials she’s faced, according to her mother.

I believe it.

UPDATE 1: breitbart.tv

So, there is a cell phone picture, and a security camera picture.

Sweet.