Maryland man’s terror threats expose raging antisemitism spreading nationwide despite Israel’s unwavering moral strength.
The U.S. Department of Justice revealed Monday that Clift Seferlis, 55, of Garrett Park, Maryland, has pleaded guilty to orchestrating a horrifying, long-running campaign of terror threats against Jewish organizations across the northeast. His admission confirms what Jewish communities have long warned: antisemitism in America is no longer simmering — it is boiling over.
Between March 2024 and June 2025, Seferlis unleashed a stream of hate-filled letters, postcards, and written threats aimed at more than 25 Jewish institutions spanning Maryland, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Washington, D.C. His targets included synagogues, Jewish day schools, Jewish museums, community centers, non-profit organizations, and even a family-run Jewish delicatessen — each chosen for no reason other than being Jewish.
The threats were graphic and violent. Seferlis warned of destroyed buildings, injured congregants, and attacks involving weapons, fire, and explosives. One chilling message to a Philadelphia institution declared that hatred toward Jews and Israel was “at an all-time high and only getting worse.” Another invoked the specter of Kristallnacht, the Nazi pogrom that signaled the beginning of the Holocaust — a deliberate, unmistakable attempt to terrorize American Jews through historical trauma.
This wasn’t random rage. It was ideological. It echoed the same anti-Israel venom spewed by radical pro-Palestinian factions that increasingly dominate protests, campuses, and streets across the United States. These threats are part of the same worldview that cheers Hamas, harasses Jewish students, and seeks to erase Israel through intimidation.
Seferlis is set to be sentenced on March 16, facing a potential 169 years in federal prison, plus millions in fines. The severity of the charges reflects the gravity of his crimes — and the federal government’s acknowledgment that antisemitism has evolved into a national security issue.
While American Jews brace against rising hatred, Israel remains the world’s singular fortress of Jewish resilience, the homeland that extremists despise precisely because it exists — strong, defiant, and unbreakable.
