Rabbi wounded in US synagogue shooting says Jews won't be cowed

A rabbi who carried on preaching despite being wounded in the latest deadly shooting at a US synagogue said Sunday that Jews would not be intimidated by the "senseless hate" of anti-semitism.

A 60-year-old woman, Lori Kaye, was killed and three people were wounded when a gunman burst into the synagogue in the southern Californian town of Poway on Saturday and opened fire on the final day of Passover.

Police identified the shooter as John Earnest, 19, who had posted angry anti-Jewish remarks online just before the shooting and claimed he was behind the arson of another mosque in the area weeks earlier.

According to San Diego County Sheriff's Department records, Earnest faces one charge of murder and three of attempted murder, and will appear before a judge to be formally indicted on May 1.

Coming six months to the day after a white supremacist shot dead 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue, it raised new questions about a nationwide rise in anti-Semitism and in hate crimes generally -- and about President Donald Trump's often controversial response to them.

Ahead of the funeral for Kaye, the synagogue's rabbi said authorities had to do more to protect places of worship.

"Terror will not win. As Americans we cannot cower in the face of the senseless hate that is in anti-Semitism," Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein said in an interview to NBC television from his hospital bed.

Later, he recounted the attack to reporters, saying he was finalizing his sermon when he heard a loud bang and stopped in his tracks.

"I turn around and I see a sight that I -- indescribable. Here is a young man standing with a rifle, pointing right at me," he said.

"And I look at him. He had sunglasses on, I couldn't see his eyes, I couldn't see his soul. I froze." Before he could reach Kaye, "more shots came" and he raised his hands -- eventually losing his right index finger to a bullet despite a four-hour operation to try to save it.

The rabbi saw children were still playing in the banquet hall and rushed to get them out -- including his own four-year-old granddaughter.

He was joined in this effort by Almog Peretz, who Goldstein said was a Israeli "war veteran." Peretz "ran into the banquet hall, gathered more children, he got a bullet in his leg, risking himself to save the children."
After Biden on Thursday brought up the comment when announcing his presidential bid, Trump doubled down, saying he had phrased his 2017 remarks "perfectly." Human rights groups say recent years have seen the biggest rise in anti-Semitic incidents in decades while some critics say