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American synagogues are being forced into a terrible choice: Collaborate with ICE or risk our own safety
(JTA) — The occupation of Minneapolis by ICE is terrifying and ominous. Last month 1,000 clergy from around the country traveled to the Twin Cities to witness how armed agents daily sweep through neighborhoods, setting up checkpoints, abducting people, tear gassing witnesses, and threatening everyone’s safety. Houses of worship have gone into lockdown, transforming their sanctuaries into private spaces, putting a locked door between them and their neighbors.
As rabbis, one question has become urgent and immediate: What will we do when ICE comes to our door?
For hundreds of synagogues across the United States, that question may well already have been answered. They just don’t know it yet.
This year, as in years past, hundreds of synagogues across the country are set to receive grants through the Nonprofit Security Grants Program, a Department of Homeland Security initiative administered by FEMA. The program offers between $60,000 and $100,000 (sometimes more) in security funding to houses of worship and other nonprofits. The money goes toward security cameras, armed guards, and physical enhancements and more. For many synagogues facing antisemitic threats and stretched budgets, that’s a transformative amount of money that would be hard to turn down.
Many progressive communities like ours have long believed that depending on DHS to keep us safe is a problem, owing to the department’s surveillance of Muslims and the fact that the grants strengthen infrastructure that puts some community members at risk. But in 2025 the mismatch between Jewish communal values and practices and resources to ensure our safety became even more stark when the Trump administration slipped new language into the terms of the grant. The money now appears to come with strings that should alarm any Jewish community.
The grant now requires participating organizations to cooperate with ICE operations, forbids participating organizations from engaging in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programming, and bars participation in any kind of “discriminatory prohibited boycott” (an apparent reference to boycotts of Israel). To access the Nonprofit Security Grants, synagogues all over the country have agreed to become extensions of the apparatus now raiding American cities.
It’s not yet clear how many synagogues have applied for the grants with these terms or have gotten them. It’s also not clear whether many synagogues are even fully aware of what they’ve signed on to. Especially before Minneapolis, “cooperation with immigration enforcement” may have seemed like an abstraction or even acceptable to many communities, and perhaps they didn’t really expect their diversity programming to be audited. Think of it as the Terms of Service problem. How many of us actually read what we’re agreeing to when we click “accept” on Apple’s terms? We know there’s something in there we probably wouldn’t like, but we need the phone.
It’s possible many synagogues did the same calculation with DHS money. They assumed the restrictions wouldn’t really matter, whereas tens of thousand dollars in security money was a concrete and pressing need. Never mind the fact that for years Muslim organizations have been sounding this alarm.
Last August, my congregation in Philadelphia, Kol Tzedek, joined with dozens of synagogues and Jewish organizations along with over 100 communal leaders to refuse this funding, and we tried to sound the alarm. We signed a letter explaining why we couldn’t in good conscience trade security dollars for collaboration with an agency whose mission conflicts with our values. But many other synagogues applied to take the money anyway. They need the cameras. They need to keep their members safe. What choice did they have?
It didn’t help that the umbrella organization for Jewish federations urged synagogues to apply, assuring them that it believed the terms would not be applied to them and noting that they could always turn down the funds once offered.
But now the federations group is sounding the alarm about a continued lack of clarity around the terms, and those congregations are in a terrible situation, one they may not even realize they’re in.
Houses of worship are some of the most powerful sites of resistance to ICE operations precisely because we can provide sanctuary. For centuries, religious communities have stood between state violence and vulnerable people. DHS understood this threat to its mission, and that’s exactly why they attached these strings to their security money.
It’s a clever and effective scheme: The Trump administration leveraged our real security fears to neutralize an institution that historically has had the moral and legal standing to say no to state violence and provide actual sanctuary to refugees and immigrants.
If your synagogue, nonprofit or community center received a grant from the $270 million federal budget for this program (and statistically, it probably did) you need to know what you’re on the hook for. More importantly, you need to know you have a choice about what comes next.
When ICE comes to your city and demands your cooperation the only moral choice is noncompliance. Thirty-six times the Torah instructs us to protect the ger – Hebrew for the sojourner, the immigrant, the most vulnerable in our midst. So when the time comes, refuse to cooperate, even if you signed that agreement and risk losing tens of thousands from your budget.
But it’s not too late. There are things you can and should do now. Find out if your congregation or organization sought or took this money. Ask for transparency about where your community stands. Tell your leadership that you didn’t sign up for this, that collaboration with ICE operations is not compatible with your community’s values, that there are opportunities for community safety that don’t require collaboration with the apparatus being used to terrorize and punish American cities.
To my fellow rabbis, synagogue executive directors and board presidents, I truly understand the impossible calculations you have to make and why the money seems irresistible. But this is the moment to make a different choice, even if it’s costly.
Consider the alternative: What happens when ICE shows up in your town and at your door, and your contract obligates you to cooperate? What happens when your own congregant is targeted? Or when a congregant learns their synagogue helped enable a raid on their neighbor’s family, their school, a place of worship? What happens when history looks back at this moment and asks what we did?
Jewish federations, and specifically the Secure Community Network, bear a lot of responsibility here. They put us in this position by lobbying for this fund’s creation and tying themselves to DHS. They facilitated these agreements, distributed this money, made it seem normal and necessary. They could have made a different choice: They represent billions of dollars in assets that could have chosen a different security model for our communities, and they still can.
The federations should bail out congregations that choose noncompliance by creating a fund for synagogues that refuse or break their DHS contracts. They should work to build the security infrastructure we actually need, one that protects us and our neighbors.
This moment is a test of our values. The question isn’t whether you took the money last year (many did, for reasons that made sense at the time). The question is, knowing what you’re on the hook for, and knowing after Minneapolis what ICE is about, what will you do now? Will you comply when ICE comes knocking? Will you check their paperwork, provide access, facilitate raids?
Or will you remember why houses of worship exist in the first place? We are here to be places where the vulnerable find protection, where we are accountable to each other, where we answer to something higher than federal enforcement agencies.
Sanctuary means something, or it means nothing. This is the moment to decide which it will be.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of JTA or its parent company, 70 Faces Media.
The post American synagogues are being forced into a terrible choice: Collaborate with ICE or risk our own safety appeared first on The Forward.
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What It’s Like to Be on ‘Silent Alert’ in Israel
Rescue personnel work at an impact site following a missile attack from Iran, in Bat Yam, Israel, June 15, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
It’s a very Israeli “thing” — so much a part of our identity that we don’t even have a word for it. I call it the “silent alert.”
When the Israeli government prefers to not cause panic or tip off its enemies, when it wants to project confidence and strength, it sometimes announces … nothing at all. And yet somehow, we all know to prepare.
Despite the threats emanating from the situation in Iran, the Israeli government has not put out an official warning or any particular instructions to all of us here on the “Home Front” — even at points when a military response from Iran seemed very likely.
Yet still, we’re already double checking our bomb shelters. When away from home, we’re aware of our surroundings, and we note the location of the nearest shelters, as we did for almost two years during the Gaza war. We’re just a little more careful about keeping our phones charged, and our kitchens stocked.
Why?
The superficial, intellectual reason is this: If the United States strikes Iran, then Iran will likely respond by striking us. There’s precedent: after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1991, Saddam Hussein fired massive Scud missiles on Israel, an absurd response given that Israel was one of the only countries in the Western world that had NOT joined the international strikes on Iraq.
Yet there is another significant and more Israeli reason: we just know.
Entrance to the bomb shelter at the RealityCheck offices in Tel Aviv. Photo: RealityCheck.
Israel is a small country, where everyone knows everyone — not literally, but almost.
Soldiers are not unknown figures on some distant base or overseas — they are our parents and children, our neighbors and co-workers, our friends — and in my case, many of my students. Small talk by the פינת קפה (Israel’s equivalent of the “water cooler”) or discussions over family dinner, are basically low-key intelligence briefings.
Of course we don’t know the specifics of secret capabilities in advance, such as the stunning “pager operation” against Hezbollah in 2024, or the myriad of tools brought to bear against Iran last June, but we know when “something’s up.”
This happened numerous times in the last few years — around conflicts with Hezbollah, and Iran. And we always come back to our “Silent Alert.”
Intellectually, we remember that some of Iran’s most deadly attacks during June’s “Twelve Day War” came in during its final days, with notable improvements in both targeting and munitions power. If the Iranian regime is truly nearing its end, it may decide to use the most powerful weapons it has been holding in reserve. Even chemical weapons, though not expected, are not entirely out of the question. On the other hand, Israel’s defenses have improved as well, including the unveiling of Iron Beam, the IDF’s new laser-based missile defense system.
Yet beyond intellect, we all “just know.” Like Hezbollah’s plan to wipe out Israel’s civilian infrastructure, these concerns might not come to pass. Yet for now, the danger is real, and Israeli civilians remain on “Silent Alert.”
Our thoughts are primarily with the astonishingly brave Iranian protesters, risking their very lives just to march and speak out — but in Israel, the threats are always real.
Daniel Pomerantz is the CEO of RealityCheck, an organization dedicated to deepening public conversation through robust research studies and public speaking.
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On Canadian Campuses, Intimidation Is Becoming Policy
Anti-Israel mob moments before it shattered glass door to storm Jewish event featuring IDF soldiers near Toronto Metropolitan University. Photo: Provided by witness of incident
Canadian universities like to describe themselves as guardians of free inquiry. But across the country, they are quietly training students to learn a different lesson: that some ideas are simply not worth debating, defending, or discussing.
Over the past two years, pro-Israel events have become uniquely difficult to hold on Canadian campuses — not controversial in the abstract, not banned outright, but rendered practically impossible through a combination of administrative obstruction and tolerated disruption.
Whether this pattern stems from ideological sympathy or institutional cowardice matters less than its effects. The result is the same: one set of students learns that their speech is a liability, while another learns that intimidation works.
The incidents are not isolated anomalies; they have become the norm over the past two years. Since late 2023 and continuing through 2025, anti-Israel protestors have repeatedly shut down or derailed campus events.
At Toronto Metropolitan University, anti-Israel protestors disrupted a pro-Israel event to the point of chaos. At Concordia, a student group was barred from holding an Israel-related event on campus entirely. When the event was moved off campus, protestors followed and physically blocked entrances.
In Winnipeg, a pro-Palestinian group protested an IDF soldier event at a community centre with children and families present, after the event was forced out of a college campus.
Less visible, but just as telling, are the quieter administrative encounters that epitomize how pro-Israel activity is increasingly treated as a problem to be managed rather than an expression to be accommodated.
Universities often respond by insisting that they’re merely enforcing neutral policies: security requirements, space approvals, risk assessments.
But neutrality collapses when the same scrutiny is not applied evenly. Pro-Israel events routinely face heightened security fees, last-minute conditions, location changes, or outright cancellations, while other politically charged programming often appears to proceed with fewer obstacles.
In practice, this amounts to a quiet “Jewish tax” on participation: higher security bills, more paperwork, more scrutiny, and more risk simply for wanting to host an event connected to Jewish identity or Israel.
In several cases, approvals are granted only to be quietly reversed days later, with vague references to new policies and no clear explanation, leaving students with no appeal and no timeline.
When the price of speaking is predictably higher for one community, exclusion no longer needs to be explicit to be effective.
Over time, this selective enforcement reshapes campus life in ways administrators rarely acknowledge. Student leaders internalize risk aversion. Event organizers self-censor choices, titles, and themes in the hope of slipping under the radar. Jewish and pro-Israel students stop expecting equal treatment and start planning around institutional resistance as a given.
What looks like peace from an administrative office is actually a culture of withdrawal. Students quickly learn that persistence brings scrutiny, while retreat brings quiet relief, and many choose accordingly.
Even more troubling is what this normalization teaches those who oppose these events. When protestors can disrupt, blockade, or intimidate with little consequence from the school directly, they receive a clear signal that escalation is rewarded.
The cost-benefit analysis becomes obvious. Why argue, debate, or organize a competing event when shouting loudly and causing enough chaos can make the opposition disappear? By failing to enforce their own rules consistently, universities in Canada and the US convert protest from expression into ideological enforcement.
This is not how pluralistic institutions are supposed to work. Universities exist precisely to host contested ideas without allowing one faction to exercise a heckler’s veto to another. Once administrators begin quietly calculating which viewpoints are too expensive, too disruptive, or too politically inconvenient to accommodate, the university ceases to be an arena for debate and becomes a manager of reputational risk.
The consequences extend beyond Israel. Today, it is Jewish activism. Tomorrow, it might be foreign policy dissent, religious expression, or unpopular research. Precedents do not remain neatly confined.
Universities will insist they are under immense pressure, and that may be true. But pressure is not an excuse; it is the test. Institutions that pride themselves on courage and independence cannot outsource their values to whomever shouts the loudest or threatens disruption most effectively.
This is where students, parents, alumni, and donors should step in. Silence has costs. Universities respond to incentives, not press releases or paltry condemnations. When unequal treatment becomes reputationally and financially uncomfortable, policies change. When it does not, administrative drift hardens into doctrine.
The demand here is not special treatment for pro-Israel students. It is equal treatment. Clear rules, enforced consistently. Events allowed to proceed without ideological filtering. Protest protected, but disruption penalized. Safety ensured without turning one group’s existence into a logistical burden.
If universities cannot guarantee that, they should stop pretending they are neutral forums. And if Canadians care about the future of higher education as a space for genuine debate rather than managed conformity, now is the moment to insist that campuses live up to the principles they so eagerly advertise.
Because once students learn that they can shut down ideas they disagree with, the damage is already done.
Adam Katz is a 2025-2026 CAMERA on Campus fellow and a political science and history student at the University of Manitoba.
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Palestinian Authority Just Disguised 6,000 More Pay-for-Slay Terrorists as Innocent Pensioners
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen delivers the State of the European Union address to the European Parliament, in Strasbourg, France, Sept. 10, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Yves Herman
In the first week of February 2026, the Palestinian Authority (PA) camouflaged the files of 6,000 Pay-for-Slay recipients.
The PA turned some of those terrorists into “pensioners,” and others are now being paid salaries in the civil service for fictitious jobs, so the payments are obscured from international scrutiny and impossible to monitor.
Palestinian Media Watch has acquired original copies of the following three conversations held between recipients of Pay-for-Slay.
Conversation #1: PA disguises 6,000 prisoners and injured terrorists as pensioners:
Recipient One: “Has anyone received a call from any government office and been asked to provide a bank account number in the last two weeks?”
[There was no response.]
“How many times have we told you: demand, demand, demand [your payments]. And what happened? The whole matter was reduced to only 6,000 cases that were transferred to [government] offices, and now they’re verifying their names, calling them, and asking for active bank account numbers to deposit their salaries.”
Member A: “Who told you?”
Member B: “Who is this about?”
Member C: “On what basis did they choose the 6,000?”
Member B: “No one knows.”
Recipient One: “This is the issue: The wounded and prisoners — 6,000 of them [had their files] transferred to pensions in different offices, and they are now registered there, and they are calling them one by one, asking them for bank account numbers to confirm them as pensioners.”
There was great frustration that no one in this particular group of Pay-for-Slay recipients had been notified that they were among the 6,000 new camouflaged members.
Conversation #2: Released prisoner: I went to the Commission of Prisoners’ Affairs and they confirmed that salaries for released prisoners are being paid and “all matters will be resolved:”
I was at the [PLO] Commission [of Prisoners’ Affairs], I went to have them sign my insurance and asked them about the salaries. They told me word for word that there are currently salaries for those who served 5 years, meaning for released [prisoners] who served 5 years or more.
They are given a salary of 1,500 [Israeli] shekels ($500 – ed.), and those who served 10 years are given a salary of 3,000 shekels ($1,000 – ed.), as he told me. I asked him, what about someone who is under 5 years. He told me word for word, come back to us in a month, Allah willing the issues will be resolved. In other words, don’t [complain] every day: ‘The salaries, the salaries, the salaries.’ Allah willing, from now on the matters will be resolved.
Conversation #3: All families of Martyrs and wounded will be moved to government offices
Member A: “Good morning. We have learned that the issue with the last payment is being fixed. There will be allowance payments soon, Allah willing. And we have learned that the committee that was established is studying several proposals to handle the matters definitively. When approval and agreement on a procedure [is reached], we will inform you about it … and coordinate the necessary steps with you, with Allah’s help. Explicitly, they are going to divide up [the families of] the Martyrs and the wounded across government offices.”
Member B: “Okay. So we understand from this that there will be a payment soon[?] … At the same percentage. Will they commit[?]”
Member A: “The old percentage of your salary. The [PA] Labor Ministry took on some of those [Martyrs and wounded] who weren’t paid. Other government offices also took on those about whom there is no [information]. PNEEI is done with; this is the last salary we receive from them. Do you understand? Be well.”
Member B: “That’s what I meant.”
Member A: “Sure, the [old] percentage of your salary.”
Member B: “Okay. The distribution to government offices [will be] under which clause [?]”
Member A: “There will be a payment before Ramadan.”
All of these authentic conversations among recipients of Pay-for-Slay confirm beyond a doubt that the PA is intentionally lying to the US, the EU, France, and other Western countries, claiming to have stopped Pay-for-Slay, while working around the clock to find ways to secretly continue rewarding Palestinian terrorists.
The author is the Founder and Director of Palestinian Media Watch, where a version of this article first appeared.