Plot to Bomb Jewish Museum Foiled

Hrag Vartanian, Editor-in-Chief and Co-founder of Hyperallergic, is in custody after a tense standoff.

The Jewish Museum in New York City. (source)

April 1, 2024—Disaster was barely averted at the Jewish Museum on Monday when a would-be suicide bomber entered the lobby at 1109 Fifth Avenue. Hrag Vartanian, vocal anti-Israel critic and Editor-in-Chief of the art blog Hyperallergic, is in FBI custody.¹

Museum visitors looked on in horror as Vartanian removed his coat to reveal a suicide bomb vest, which Vartanian later told the FBI he built according to instructions found in a third-grade math textbook for Palestinian children supplied by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).

“Free Palestine!” he yelled, then depressed the trigger on the explosives.

Fortunately, the ignition system on the bomb, like so much writing at Hyperallergic, failed to connect.

“God help us if he actually knew how to make anything,” said a spokesperson for the museum.

Jewish Museum security quickly subdued Vartanian, which Vartanian later characterized as “a racist violation of my free expression” and “an attempt to deflect from the real issue, which is the genocidal murder of 2.5 million Palestinians in Gaza, 90% of whom are noncombatant infants with immediate need of food, water, shelter, and cancer treatment,” citing recent figures from the Palestinian Ministry of Health.

Despite his targeting a Jewish institution, and having been found with a copy of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and a tattoo across his back that incorporates a Nazi swastika and the Palestinian flag, Vartanian insisted that the attempted attack was not antisemitic. “Jews are always characterizing criticism of Israel as antisemitism,” Vartanian remarked to federal agents.

“Besides, Hyperallergic frequently features the writing of Jewish authors and the work of Jewish artists, on the condition that they long for the fiery destruction of Israel as much as we do,” he added.

Although Vartanian had livestreamed himself on Facebook as he tried to detonate the suicide vest, he subsequently denied his involvement to federal agents, saying that the video had been “faked” by the “genocidal occupiers of Palestine.”

New York City District Attorney Alvin Bragg moved to have Vartanian released when the Consulate General of Qatar offered to post bail, but the terroristic nature of the attempted bombing put the matter into federal jurisdiction. Nevertheless, sources close to United States Attorney General Merrick Garland said that Vartanian could be freed as early as Wednesday, due to the lack of any connection of the incident to the protests of January 6, 2021.

In the meantime, an FBI spokesperson said that Vartanian was “gibbering incoherently,” then issued a correction when agents realized that Vartanian was composing his next essay for Hyperallergic.

Content at DMJ is free but paid subscriptions keep it coming. Please consider one for yourself and thank you for reading.

Our current book for the Asynchronous Studio Book Club is Aesthetics of the Familiar: Everyday Life and World-Making by Yuriko Saito. Obtain your copy and jump in. For more information see the ASBC schedule.

Dissident Muse’s first publication, Backseat Driver by James Croak, is available now at Amazon.

Aphorisms for Artists: 100 Ways Toward Better Art by Walter Darby Bannard is out now at Allworth Press. More information is available at the site for the book. If you own it already, thank you; please consider reviewing the book at Amazon, B&N, or Goodreads.

1. April Fool’s pranks are not really my bag, but on the occasion of Hyperallergic making mirth at the expense of more than a thousand murdered Israelis and the associated victims of rape, torture, and infanticide by Hamas terrorists and numerous Palestinians in Gaza, as well as 134 Israeli hostages now in their 177th day of captivity, namely here and here, this post is warranted. UPDATE: Archived here and here in case they take them down.