Tentacles?

Was the use, by the NYTimes, of the term "tentacles" here:

Weysan Dun, the special agent in charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Newark office, said the rabbis arrested — including the grand rabbi of the Syrian Jewish community in the United States, Saul Kassin of Brooklyn — were part of a vast money-laundering conspiracy with tentacles in Israel and Switzerland.

proper? Ethical? Non-discriminatory?

Or was it just a bit unnecessary and quite pejorative?

"Links" couldn't have been used, for example?