RSS
Security experts urge Jewish communities to prepare for possible High Holidays bomb threats
WASHINGTON (JTA) — As the High Holidays near, Rabbi Mara Nathan doesn’t expect the recent wave of fake bomb threats directed at synagogues to significantly change the way she and her congregation worship together.
After all, her synagogue will already have its usual, extensive array of security measures in place: from bomb-sniffing dogs and security checks for each attendee to coordination with the local police department and FBI office. But she said emotions were running high as news reports piled up about synagogues evacuated after facing threats, often while livestreaming services.
“I think we’re on high alert,” said Nathan, the senior rabbi at San Antonio’s Temple Beth-El, a Reform congregation, “maybe a little more than usual.”
Nathan’s approach underscores how synagogues across the country have responded to the reports of rising antisemitism in recent years, and how a recent wave of nearly 50 spurious bomb threats is affecting — and not affecting — their procedures. The bomb threats, which have led to the evacuation of congregations from California to Florida, come after many synagogues have adopted a posture of readiness following the 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue shooting and other violent antisemitic incidents.
“Law enforcement and the synagogues have to respond to it because you don’t ever know when it’s actually going to be the real thing,” said Evan Bernstein, the CEO of the Community Security Service, which trains volunteers to patrol their synagogues. “When multiple things like this happen, people become numb and maybe won’t respond in the same way if, God forbid, something is legitimate.”
That reality was laid out at a briefing on Capitol Hill Tuesday focused on securing Jewish institutions during the High Holidays, which begin with Rosh Hashanah on Friday night. The briefing focused on the false bomb threat incidents, which security consultants predicted would continue because they lead to significant disruption with minimal effort.
“The increase in the bomb threats and the swatting incidents are designed to get a law enforcement response,” Michael Masters, CEO of the Secure Community Network, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, using a term that refers to making prank calls in order to generate a police response. “They’re designed to create fear, they’re designed to create confusion.”
Leaders of the Secure Community Network, which coordinates security for Jewish institutions nationwide, told members of Congress and their staffers at the hearing that the bomb threats have become a popular tool for extremists. SCN and its partner organization, the Jewish Federations of North America, organized the 90-minute briefing.
“They actually targeted a livestreaming of the service so that they can witness the police coming in and disrupting the service during this swatting session,” said Kerry Sleeper, a former FBI assistant director who is now a senior adviser to Masters’ group, referring to a bomb threat during services in July at Beth Israel Congregation in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
(The Ann Arbor synagogue has for years been the target of anti-Israel and antisemitic protesters. Courts have rejected attempts by some of the congregants to stop the protests.)
“Here’s one my fren [sic] did yesterday,” said a message on Telegram, a social platform popular with extremists, which was attached to a video of a rabbi conducting services. “It’s funni [sic] bc when we swat them they have to shut down the synagogue for the day.”
One long-term result extremists are hoping for would be to inhibit Jewish expression, Sleeper said. “The question has to be obviously, do you have the comfort, the security to enter into a house of worship after there’s been a bomb threat or the threat of a shooting?” he said.
Masters said that ahead of the High Holidays, when sanctuaries see their highest attendance of the year, synagogues need to review security procedures in order to avoid panic if a threat is received.
He described methods that could head off panicked reactions during High Holiday services, including making contact with the local police department, reviewing an orderly evacuation plan and ensuring that police have officials in place to report whether an attack is indeed underway.
“In many jurisdictions, law enforcement is very proactive about sending someone to the synagogue, or at least doing a drive-by so … they know whether something or not is happening,” he said. “Having a point of contact at the synagogue that the law enforcement knows who they’re supposed to find, so they can do a coordinated response.”
The briefing also focused on a proposed increase of federal grants to protect synagogues and other religious institutions. The 18-year old program has grown exponentially in recent years as threats against Jewish and other institutions have increased, and there is an effort underway to raise funding from $250 million last year to $360 million.
“It is truly indispensable to the physical security of churches, synagogues, mosques, and all other faith based places of gatherings across the country,” Eric Fingerhut, CEO of the Jewish Federations of North America, said at the briefing. “There’s not a security camera or secure door that isn’t in some way costly and needing the help and support of these resources.”
Fingerhut added that Jewish federations have collectively spent hundreds of millions of dollars to enhance security for local institutions.
Sen. Chris Murphy, the Connecticut Democrat, said the briefing exhibited “the panoply of efforts we need to undertake in order to decrease the risk of physical harm to those who are in Jewish communities, for those who are showing up in synagogues, Jewish day schools.”
Increased preparedness due to the bomb threats is one of a few ways synagogues across the country are girding up ahead of the High Holidays. In New York City, the Community Security Initiative, which helps coordinate security for local institutions, is funding the purchase of one new patrol car each and other resources for four Jewish civilian security patrol groups that operate in heavily Orthodox neighborhoods in Brooklyn, where a rash of street-level incidents have added to safety concerns. Last week, Bernstein’s Community Security Service launched a partnership with the Orthodox Union, an umbrella group with hundreds of member synagogues nationwide.
The bomb threats have reverberated across the country. At the Chicago Loop Synagogue, president Lee Zoldan told JTA that local law enforcement — with whom Zoldan said the synagogue has a “very good relationship” — often keeps a presence in front of the building, which is located in downtown Chicago.
Zoldan said law enforcement officers are aware of the recent wave of bomb threats and that the synagogue has shared its holiday schedule so that police know when people will be in the building. In addition, a few months ago the synagogue purchased a metal detector, and is considering asking worshippers to be screened upon entrance for the High Holidays. Zoldan said the measure was a response to the rise of antisemitism in the United States, rather than any specific threat.
“Anything we can do to enhance security, we are going to do,” she added.
—
The post Security experts urge Jewish communities to prepare for possible High Holidays bomb threats appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
RSS
Vast Majority of US Jews Reject Jewish Voice for Peace, Other Anti-Zionist Groups, Polling Data Shows
Pro-Hamas protesters led by Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) demonstrate outside the New York Stock Exchange on Oct. 14, 2024. Photo: Derek French via Reuters Connect
A new poll released on Wednesday underscores how far removed Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and other anti-Zionist organizations that claim to represent Jews are from mainstream Jewish views on Israel, Zionism, and the ongoing conflict with the Palestinians.
Commissioned by The Jewish Majority, a nonprofit founded by a researcher whose aim is to monitor and accurately report Jewish opinion on the most consequential issues affecting the community, the poll found that the vast majority of American Jews believe that anti-Zionist movements and anti-Israel university protests are antisemitic.
The findings also showed that Jews across the US overwhelmingly oppose the views and tactics of JVP, a prominent anti-Israel group which has helped organize widespread demonstrations against the Jewish state during the war in Gaza.
Founded in 1996 at the University of California, Berkeley, JVP describes itself as “the largest progressive Jewish anti-Zionist organization in the world.” It was infamously one of the first organizations to blame Israel following the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, the deadliest single day for Jews since the Holocaust.
“Israeli apartheid and occupation — and the United States complicity in that oppression — are the source of all this violence,” JVP said as Israelis were still counting their dead and missing.
American Jews who responded to The Jewish Majority’s poll overwhelmingly reject this line of thinking. Seventy percent said they believe that anti-Zionism of any stripe is antisemitic; 85 percent believe that Hamas, whom JVP described as “the oppressed,” is a genocidal group; and 79 percent support vocally pro-Israel groups such as the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), an organization JVP has defamed as “not a credible source on antisemitism and racism.”
Additionally, JVP’s methods of protest are unpopular among American Jews, The Jewish Majority added, noting that 75 percent disapprove of “blocking traffic” and only 18 percent approve of protesters’ wearing masks to conceal their identities. Sixty percent also disagree with staging protests outside the homes of public officials, a common JVP tactic.
“Plain and simple, Jewish Voice for Peace is an extremist group that does not represent the views of the overwhelming majority of American Jews,” Jonathan Schulman, The Jewish Majority’s executive director, said in a statement accompanying the poll results. “American Jews share a strong and consistent stance against anti-Zionists as well as a deep concern over rising antisemitism and the tactics used by organizations like JVP.”
He continued, “It is high time people see through the charade: JVP is not representative of anyone but a marginal fringe, even if a few radical Jews are involved in their movement.”
The Jewish Majority’s poll was conducted by Public Opinion Strategies.
Jewish Voice for Peace’s inner workings, messaging, and political activities were recently documented in a groundbreaking report on the group published last month by StandWithUs, a Jewish civil rights group based in Los Angeles, California.
Titled, “A Shield for Hate, Not a Voice for Peace,” the report noted that JVP has promoted a distorted history of Zionism and Israel, accusing the movement for Jewish self-determination of everything from training US police officers to violate the rights of African Americans to abusing “Jewish history.” In doing so, it has allied with extremist groups such as WithinOurLifetime — whose founder has threatened to set Jews on fire and led a movement to harass Jews on New York City’s public transportation — and Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), which celebrated Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre and has proclaimed that “the Zionist entity has no right to exist.”
The report also stated that JVP has collaborated with anti-Israel entities such as Samidoun, which identifies itself as a “Palestinian prisoner solidarity network,” to hold rallies. Samidoun described Hamas’s Oct. 7 atrocities in Israel as “a brave and heroic operation.” The United States and Canada each imposed sanctions on Samidoun in October, labeling the organization a “sham charity” and accusing it of fundraising for designated terrorist groups such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).
JVP has also compared Zionism to Nazism.
“This is Holocaust inversion — an antisemitic tactic in which the genocide Jews faced in the past is used to promote baseless hatred against Jews today,” the StandWithUs report said. “The only group benefiting from JVP’s Holocaust inversion is Hamas — a truly genocidal terrorist group. JVP has helped shield them from accountability for launching the war, ruthlessly militarizing civilian areas across Gaza, stealing humanitarian aid, and rejecting nearly every proposed ceasefire and hostage release deal.”
In June 2024, the Anti-Defamation League filed a complaint with the US Federal Election Commission (FEC) accusing the political fundraising arm of JVP of transgressing federal election law by misrepresenting its spending and receiving unlawful donations from corporate entities, citing “discrepancies” in the organization’s income and expense reports.
The complaint lodged a slew of charges against Jewish Voice for Peace’s political action committee (JVP PAC), including spending almost no money on candidates running for office — a political action committee’s main purpose. From 2020-2023, JVP PAC reported spending $82,956, but just a small fraction of that sum — $1,775, just over 2 percent — was spent on candidates, according to the complaint. The money went elsewhere, being paid out in one case for “legal services” provided by a company which “doesn’t appear to practice law” and other expenses.
JVP continues to have the support of powerful friends in the world of progressive philanthropy, a formidable subset of the American elite, amid these scandals and controversies.
Since 2017 it has — according to a 2023 report by the National Association of Scholars — received $480,000 from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, a philanthropic foundation whose endowment is valued at $1.27 billion. Between 2014 and 2015 alone, JVP brought in over half a million dollars in grants from various foundations, including the Open Society Policy Center — founded by billionaire George Soros — the Kaphan Foundation, and others.
According to the recent StandWithUs report, JVP has received substantial financial assistance from organizations tied to Lebanon and Iran.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Vast Majority of US Jews Reject Jewish Voice for Peace, Other Anti-Zionist Groups, Polling Data Shows first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Turkey’s Erdogan Demands Israel Pay Reparations for Gaza, Says Palestinian State ‘Must Not Be Delayed’
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan speaks during a joint statement to the media in Baghdad, Iraq, April 22, 2024. Photo: AHMAD AL-RUBAYE/Pool via REUTERS
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday demanded Israel pay reparations “for the harm it inflicted through its aggressive actions in Gaza” and urged the immediate establishment of a Palestinian state.
During a press conference with Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto in West Java, as part of his Asian tour to Malaysia and Pakistan, Erdogan rejected US President Donald Trump’s plan to “take over” the Gaza Strip to rebuild the war-torn enclave while relocating Palestinians elsewhere during reconstruction efforts.
Like many other Middle Eastern leaders who rejected Trump’s proposal, Erdogan also advocated for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“The creation of a sovereign, territorially united State of Palestine within the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital cannot be delayed any further,” he said during the press conference, as aired by the Turkish TRT Haber TV channel.
“Any step, proposal, or project that undermines this matter is illegitimate in our view, and it means more conflicts, bloodshed, and instability,” he continued.
During Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to the White House last week, Trump called on Egypt, Jordan, and other Arab states to take in Palestinians from Gaza after nearly 16 months of war between Israel and Hamas.
“Until there is peace in Gaza, until the Palestinians achieve peace, peace in the region is impossible,” the Turkish president said.
With talks underway to extend the fragile Israel-Hamas ceasefire, Erdogan also demanded that Israel must pay reparations “for the harm it inflicted through its aggressive actions in Gaza.”
“The cost of Israel’s 15-month attacks in Gaza is about $100 billion,” he said. “The law dictates that the perpetrator must compensate for the damage.”
Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists started the war in Gaza when they murdered 1,200 people and kidnapped 251 hostages during their invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Israel responded with a military campaign aimed at freeing the hostages and dismantling Hamas’s military and governing capabilities in neighboring Gaza.
Last month, both sides reached a ceasefire and hostage-release deal brokered by the US, Egypt, and Qatar.
Under phase one, Hamas agreed to release 33 Israeli hostages, eight of whom are deceased, in exchange for Israel freeing over 1,900 Palestinian prisoners, many of whom are serving multiple life sentences for terrorism-related offenses.
So far, 16 of the 33 hostages have been released during the first phase, which is set to last six weeks.
During the press conference, Erdogan also announced that Turkey and Indonesia will join forces in the reconstruction of Gaza.
Last month, Erdogan met with Hamas leader Muhammad Ismail Darwish in Ankara.
Turkey has been one of the most outspoken critics of Israel during the Gaza war, even threatening to invade the Jewish state and calling on the United Nations to use force if it cannot stop Israel’s military campaign against Hamas.
Last year, Ankara also ceased all exports and imports to and from Israel, citing the “humanitarian tragedy” in the Palestinian territories as the reason.
Erdogan has frequently defended Hamas terrorists as “resistance fighters” against what he described as an Israeli occupation of Palestinian land. He and other Turkish leaders have repeatedly compared Israel with Nazi Germany and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with Adolf Hitler.
The post Turkey’s Erdogan Demands Israel Pay Reparations for Gaza, Says Palestinian State ‘Must Not Be Delayed’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Boston University Rejects Proposal to Divest From Israel
College students in the Boston, Massachusetts area hold dueling demonstrations amid Israel’s war with Hamas in April 2024. Photo: Vincent Ricci via Reuters Connect
Boston University has rejected the group Students for Justice in Palestine’s (SJP) call for its endowment to be divested of holdings in companies which sell armaments to the Israeli military, becoming the latest higher education institution to refuse this key tenet of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.
“The endowment is no longer the vehicle for political debate; nevertheless, I will continue to seek ways that members of our community can engage with each other on political issues of our day including the conflict in the Middle East,” university president Melissa Gilliam said on Tuesday in a statement which reported the will of the board of trustees. “Our traditions of free speech and academic freedom are critical to who we are as an institution, and so is our tradition of finding common ground to engage difficult topics while respecting the dignity of every individual.”
Gilliam’s announcement comes amid SJP’s push to hold a student government administered referendum on divestment, a policy goal the group has pursued since Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Its hopes were dashed on Tuesday when what SJP described as “technical difficulties” caused the referendum to be postponed indefinitely. However, SJP hinted that the delay may have been caused by its failing to draw a “representative sample of BU’s undergraduate population” to the polls.
SJP’s relationship with the university is poor, according to The Daily Free Press, Boston University’s official campus newspaper. In November, the Student and Activities Office issued the group a “formal warning” following multiple violations of policies on peaceful assembly. SJP, the Free Press said, occupied an area of the Center for Computing and Data Sciences for two days and tacked anti-Zionist propaganda — which included accusations that Boston University profits from “death” — on school property inside the building despite being forewarned that doing so is verboten. Following the disciplinary action, SJP accused the university of being “discriminatory towards SJP and our events.”
American universities have largely rejected demands to divest from Israel and entities at all linked to the Jewish state, delivering a succession of blows to the pro-Hamas protest movement that students and faculty have pushed with dozens of illegal demonstrations aimed at coercing officials into enacting the policy.
Trinity College turned away BDS advocates in November, citing its “fiduciary responsibilities” and “primary objective of maintaining the endowment’s intergeneration equity.” It also noted that acceding to demands for divestment for the sake of “utilizing the endowment to exert political influence” would injure the college financially, stressing that doing so would “compromise our access to fund managers, in turn undermining the board’s ability to perform its fiduciary obligation.”
The University of Minnesota in August pointed to the same reason for spurning divestment while stressing the extent to which the Israeli-Palestinian conflict polarizes its campus community. It coupled its pronouncement with a new investment policy, a so-called “position of neutrality” which, it says, will be a guardrail protecting university business from the caprices of political opinion.
Colleges and universities will lose tens of billions of dollars collectively from their endowments if they capitulate to demands to divest from Israel, according to a report published in September by JLens, a Jewish investor network that is part of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). Titled “The Impact of Israel Divestment on Equity Portfolios: Forecasting BDS’s Financial Toll on University Endowments,” the report presented the potential financial impact of universities adopting the BDS movement, which is widely condemned for being antisemitic.
The losses estimated by JLens are catastrophic. Adopting BDS, it said, would incinerate $33.21 billion of future returns for the 100 largest university endowments over the next 10 years, with Harvard University losing $2.5 billion and the University of Texas losing $2.2 billion. Other schools would forfeit over $1 billion, including the University of Pennsylvania, Stanford University, and Princeton University. For others, such as the University of Michigan and Dartmouth College, the damages would total in the hundreds of millions.
“This groundbreaking report approached the morally problematic BDS movement from an entirely new direction — its negative impact on portfolio returns,” New York University adjunct professor Michael Lustig said in a statement extolling the report. “JLens has done a great job in quantifying the financial effects of implementing the suggestions of this pernicious movement, and importantly, they ‘show their work’ by providing full transparency into their methodology, and properly caveat the points where assumptions must necessarily be made. This report will prove to be an important tool in helping to fight noxious BDS advocacy.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Boston University Rejects Proposal to Divest From Israel first appeared on Algemeiner.com.