WHAT WAS CLAIMED
A photo shows rabbis who were arrested over plans to bomb a university and start a race war.
OUR VERDICT
False. The image used to support the claim is from an unrelated 2009 corruption probe.
AAP FACTCHECK - A post spreading across social media uses a photo from 2009 to falsely claim rabbis were involved in a recent plot to blow up a historically black US university.
The image is from an entirely unrelated investigation and there is no indication the university has received any recent bomb threats.
The claim appears to have emerged on X, posted by an account that features anti-Semitic posts, including Holocaust denials.
The post shares a photo of a group of men, some of whom are wearing Jewish kippahs (skull-caps) and appear to be handcuffed, emerging from a building accompanied by other men wearing suits and carrying what look like folders with documents.
The post says: "BREAKING 9 rabbis arrested after plotting to blow up Howard University and blame it on white people, with the intent to start a race war."
Another post says "How wars begin Zionists meet and plotting."
The photo has been shared by Facebook users in New Zealand and Australia.
But the photo has nothing to do with a recent bomb plot and a reverse search on TinEye reveals it was first indexed on the archive website in August 2009.
The Wall Street Journal published a story on July 24, 2009 about the charging of 44 people, including rabbis, by federal agents following a decade-long investigation into public corruption and international money laundering.
A video news report embedded in the page includes the same scene from the photo at about the 1:30 minute mark.
TinEye separately links to a story on a USA Today archive that includes the same image from the social media post. There is no date on the article but the URL contains the date 23.7.2009.
The caption on the image, which is attributed to an AP photographer, reads: "A group of unidentified men walk outside FBI offices Thursday in Newark, N.J., on their way to a bus for their court hearing."
AAP FactCheck also searched for evidence of recent bomb threats against Howard University in Washington, DC - a private, historically black university.
It most recently received a bomb threat on the last day of Black History Month in February 2023.
Several bomb threats were made against the university in the 12 months from February 2022, according to Howard president Wayne Frederick in an update on the university website.
There was no indication any rabbis were involved in or accused in relation to those threats.
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