MONSEY, N.Y. — Police so far have found no solid evidence pointing to arson as the cause of a fire that destroyed the synagogue of a fiercely anti-Zionist group that is a source of tension in Monsey, a largely Jewish community north of New York City.Authorities were quick to say the fire that scorched the Neturei Karta building was suspicious in the hours after the Sunday night blaze, but they backed off Monday afternoon as they got a closer look at the charred house. Peter Brower, chief of the Ramapo Police Department, said that although officials had not ruled anything out, nothing emerged from the initial investigation to indicate that arson was the cause. No sign of accelerates was found, he said.
"Right now, we have an undetermined origin to the fire," Brower said.
The New York Post reported that investigators from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which investigates domestic terrorism, arrived at the site on Monday.
"I am 99 percent [certain] that this was a terrorist attack," Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss, a leader of Neturei Karta, told the Post immediately after the fire. "This was a hate crime."
Coming from one of the Holocaust deniers I'm seeing some just a modicum of irony in the situation.
The group had claimed the fire was deliberately set because of the group's anti-Israeli views. Yisroel Dovid Weiss, "would be forbidden for us to have a State, even if it would be in a land that is desolate and uninhabited".
Eh?