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Leading Jewish security organizations form super group called the ‘Jewish Security Alliance’
(New York Jewish Week) — After police officers arrested two armed men at Penn Station last November and accused them of planning to attack Jews, it soon emerged that a local Jewish security agency had provided the tip that thwarted the attack.
In fact, the tipoff and arrest were due to the work of multiple Jewish security groups all active in the New York City area, leaders of those groups say. Evan Bernstein, the CEO of the New York-based Community Security Service, said it received intelligence about the men from a Jewish watchdog in the United Kingdom. It then passed that information on to the Community Security Initiative, which shared it with law enforcement agencies.
The Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism, meanwhile, found that one of the men had tweeted a stream of antisemitic and misogynistic messages, according to Gothamist.
Now that partnership between the organizations, which have similar missions and similar names, is being formalized, leaders of the groups announced at a press conference on Tuesday. A new umbrella coalition called the Jewish Security Alliance will aim to act as the central point of contact for New York City-area and New Jersey law enforcement on issues affecting the Jewish community. The organizations all signed a “memorandum of understanding” formalizing the partnership, which they said has existed informally for the past six months.
“Coordination and intelligence in moments of crisis is critical,” Bernstein said at the press conference. “It is something that needs to be replicated across the United States. We cannot afford to be operating in silos. This type of working partnership makes our Jewish community safer.”
The new alliance is a partnership between the ADL, a national antisemitism and anti-extremism watchdog; the Community Security Initiative, which coordinates security for local Jewish institutions; and the local branch of the Community Security Service, whose main mission is to train volunteer security patrols at synagogues. The partnership also includes a number of Jewish federations in metro New York City and New Jersey.
Tuesday’s press conference was held at the ADL’s investigative research lab, in front of a wall of computer screens highlighting incidents of hate across America that resembled the headquarters of a surveillance agency in a James Bond film.
“There may be an incident that happened in Rockland, Nassau County and New Jersey, and because of the different geographies and different jurisdictions, no one law enforcement agency would necessarily know about it,” said Mitch Silber, executive director of the CSI, who previously served as director of intelligence analysis at the NYPD. “Because we’re that connective tissue between the communities among the different agencies, we can connect those dots.”
In addition to liaising with law enforcement agencies, the partnership will provide security training and recommendations to Jewish institutions and their members, according to a press release. It will also aim to be a “reliable and inclusive source of information on threats or other security issues” and will collect incident reports from Jewish institutions and community members. The ADL has established several other partnerships with Jewish organizations, such as Hillel International and leading organizations of the Conservative and Reform movements, to facilitate reporting of antisemitic incidents.
The announcement of the partnership comes days after the ADL released its annual national audit of antisemitism for 2022, which reported a 36% rise in incidents relative to the previous year. More than a quarter of the 3,697 incidents included in the report took place in New York state and New Jersey. The audit also found that the majority of the 111 antisemitic assaults in 2022 targeted Orthodox Jews, and that nearly half of the assaults, 52, took place in Brooklyn, which the report called the “epicenter of assaults.” An additional 14 took place elsewhere in New York City.
At the press conference, ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt also highlighted another recent report by his organization that found that there are more people in the U.S. harboring antisemitic beliefs than anytime in the past 30 years.
“This is personal to me,” Greenblatt said. “I live here. This is my community. I go to synagogue every Saturday. My kids are at Hebrew school every week. I get angry. I’m outraged. We’re seeing those [antisemitic] beliefs create real harm.”
Scott Richman, the regional director of ADL’s New York-New Jersey office, called the partnership, “a formal declaration of a reality that has existed for some time.”
Bernstein said that before this partnership was formed, Jewish community organizations were “not really communicating” with one another.
“Everybody was repeating themselves and being off message a little bit,” Bernstein said. “As we react to something, if we have a unified force, for law enforcement to see that unification, and for the community to see that unification, and for it to have collectively the same voice across the board, is very important.”
After the press conference, Bernstein told the New York Jewish Week that this is “a pilot program” that he would like to see expand nationwide. According to a map of antisemitic incidents displayed at the press conference, Southern California and Miami were also hotspots of antisemitic activity. Bernstein said that CSS has branches in both those areas.
“This will be a case study,” Bernstein said. “If it does well, everybody is excited about this not becoming a one-off program. It’s gotta have some serious legs here to show that this really works long-term before we can think about other communities.”
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Eurovision Host Says It Will Not Drown Out Any Boos During Israel’s Performance
ORF executive producer Michael Kroen attends a press conference about the Eurovision Song Contest in Vienna, Austria, Dec. 16, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Lisa Leutner
The host broadcaster of the next Eurovision Song Contest, Austria’s ORF, will not ban the Palestinian flag from the audience or drown out booing during Israel’s performance as has happened at previous shows, organizers said on Tuesday.
The 70th edition of the contest in May will have just 35 entries, the smallest number of participants since 2003, after five national broadcasters including those of Spain, Ireland, and the Netherlands said they would boycott the show in protest at Israel’s participation.
What is usually a celebration of national diversity, pop music, and high camp has become embroiled in diplomatic strife, with those boycotting saying it would be unconscionable to take part given the number of civilians killed in Gaza during Israel’s military campaign following the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel.
“We will allow all official flags that exist in the world, if they comply with the law and are in a certain form – size, security risks, etc.,” the show’s executive producer, Michael Kroen, told a news conference organized by ORF.
“We will not sugarcoat anything or avoid showing what is happening, because our task is to show things as they are,” Kroen said.
AUSTRIA SUPPORTED ISRAEL PARTICIPATING
The broadcaster will not drown out the sound of any booing from the crowd, as happened this year during Israel’s performance, ORF’s director of programming Stefanie Groiss-Horowitz said.
“We won’t play artificial applause over it at any point,” she said.
Israel’s 2025 entrant, Yuval Raphael, was at the Nova music festival that was a target of the Hamas-led attack. The CEO of Israeli broadcaster KAN had likened the efforts to exclude Israel in 2026 to a form of “cultural boycott.”
ORF and the Austrian government were among the biggest supporters of Israel participating over the objections of countries including Iceland and Slovenia, which will also boycott the next contest in protest. ORF Director General Roland Weissmann visited Israel in November to show his support.
This year’s show drew around 166 million viewers, according to the European Broadcasting Union, more than the roughly 128 million who Nielsen estimates watched the Super Bowl.
The war in Gaza began after Hamas-led terrorists killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and seized 251 hostages in an attack on southern Israel.
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Antisemitism Allowed to Fester in Australia, Says Daughter of Wounded Holocaust Survivor
Victoria Teplitsky, daughter of a Holocaust survivor who was wounded at the Bondi shootings, stands at a floral memorial in honor of the victims of the mass shooting targeting a Hanukkah celebration on Sunday, at Bondi Beach, in Sydney, Australia, Dec. 16, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Jeremy Piper
Government authorities have not done enough to stamp out hatred of Jews in Australia, which has allowed it to fester in the aftermath of Oct. 7, said the daughter of a Holocaust survivor who was wounded at the Bondi shootings on Sunday.
Victoria Teplitsky, 53, a retired childcare center owner, said that the father and son who allegedly went on a 10-minute shooting spree that killed 15 people had been “taught to hate,” which was a bigger factor in the attack than access to guns.
“It’s not the fact that those two people had a gun. It’s the fact that hatred has been allowed to fester against the Jewish minority in Australia,” she told Reuters in an interview.
“We are angry at our government because it comes from the top, and they should have stood up for our community with strength. And they should have squashed the hatred rather than kind of letting it slide,” she said.
“We’ve been ignored. We feel like, are we not Australian enough? Do we not matter to our government?”
The attackers fired upon hundreds of people at a Jewish festival during a roughly 10-minute killing spree, forcing people to flee and take shelter before both were shot by police.
RISING ANTISEMITIC ATTACKS
Antisemitic incidents have been rising in Australia since the war in Gaza erupted after Palestinian terrorist group Hamas killed 1,200 Israelis in an attack on Oct. 7, 2023.
A rise in such incidents in the past sixteen months prompted the head of the nation’s main intelligence agency to declare that antisemitism was his top priority in terms of threat.
“This was not a surprise to the Jewish community. We warned the government of this many, many times over,” Teplitsky said.
“We’ve had synagogues that have been graffitied, graffiti everywhere, and we’ve had synagogues that have been bombed,” she added, referring to a 2024 arson attack in Melbourne in which no one was killed.
Teplitsky’s father Semyon, 86, bled heavily after being shot in the leg, and now is facing several operations as doctors piece bone back together with cement, then remove the cement from the leg, which he still may lose, she said.
“He’s in good spirits, but he’s also very angry. Angry that this happened, that this was allowed to happen in Australia, the country that he took his children to, to be safe, to be away from antisemitism, to be away from Jew hatred.”
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday that Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese “did nothing” to curb antisemitism.
Albanese repeated on Tuesday Australia‘s support for a two-state solution. Anti-Israel, pro-Hamas protests have been common in Australia since Israel launched its offensive in Gaza.
At a press briefing on Monday, Albanese read through a list of actions his government had taken, including criminalizing hate speech and incitement to violence and a ban on the Nazi salute. He also pledged to extend funding for physical security for Jewish community groups.
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No News on Whereabouts or Health of Iranian Nobel Laureate Narges Mohammadi, Supporters Say
Taghi Ramahi, husband of Narges Mohammadi, a jailed Iranian women’s rights advocate, who won the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize, poses with an undated photo of himself and his wife, during an interview at his home in Paris, France, Oct. 6, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Christian Hartmann
The brother and lawyer of Iranian human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi said on Tuesday they have no information on her whereabouts or health, four days after her arrest.
Mohammadi was arrested on Friday after denouncing the suspicious death of lawyer Khosrow Alikordi during his memorial ceremony in the northeastern city of Mashhad.
“We have very little information about her health and we are very worried about how she’s being held, where she’s being held, and how she’s treated,” Hamid Mohammadi told reporters. He spoke after another brother in Iran, who cannot be named for security reasons, briefly spoke to her Monday night.
Mashhad prosecutor Hasan Hematifar said Saturday that Mohammadi and Alikordi’s brother made provocative remarks at the memorial, encouraging “norm-breaking slogans” and “disturbing the peace.”
COLLUDING AGAINST THE REPUBLIC
Hamid Mohammadi said his sister had confirmed she had been beaten and said she expected to be charged for “colluding against the Islamic Republic.”
She was struck on the head, face, and neck by security forces and arrested along with at least 39 others at the memorial, Hamid Mohammadi said. He added that his elder brother had asked for an independent medical assessment, which authorities had refused.
Iran’s foreign ministry was not immediately available for comment.
Mohammadi won the Nobel Peace Prize whilst in prison in 2023, following her three-decade campaign for women’s rights and the abolition of the death penalty in Iran.
She has previously served multiple sentences on charges including spreading propaganda against the Islamic Republic. Late last year, she was released from Tehran’s Evin prison after the suspension of her jail term to undergo medical treatment.
Her French lawyer, Chirinne Ardakani, said authorities will likely reactivate suspended sentences and bring her before a judge soon. “They have committed no crime except for exercising freedom of expression,” Ardakani said.
She said she would present the case to the International Criminal Court as evidence of Iran’s crackdown on activists.