The Associated Students of UC Irvine (ASUCI) Senate indefinitely tabled a resolution that would have called on the university to divest from “entities and institutions that support the genocide of Palestinians.”
If passed, the resolution would have required that the ASUCI disclose “in quarterly public reports, all companies and products from which purchases were made, ensuring transparency and accountability in avoiding companies complicit in the occupation of Palestine” and adopt a prohibited suppliers list as a governing document. The ASUCI would have issued a statement demanding “that the University of California Board of Regents and UC Irvine administration fully divest from all companies and entities complicit in the apartheid, genocide and occupation of the Palestinian people and all Arab lands.”
Nova Sari, a senior at UCI, told The Journal that it was “the first time in quite a few years” in which the student government didn’t pass a divestment resolution, which she said was the result of “errors” in the resolution. “The most fundamental error,” in Sari’s view, is that one of the ASUCI members who proposed the resolution admitted that they made up their own definition of it. The resolution defined Zionism “as the settler-colonial ideology that seeks to colonize all Palestinian lands by means of the ethnic cleansing and forced displacement of Palestinians.” Another ASUCI member asked if the student body, which is part of a taxpayer-funded institution, should be using the definition of Zionism that the State Department uses; one of the members who proposed the resolution replied that America and Israel shouldn’t be defining Zionism, only “people who are being killed define it,” according to Sari.
Rabbi Daniel Levine, senior Jewish educator at Orange County Hillel and a lecturer of the university’s Center for Jewish Studies, told The Journal that one of the more neutral members of the ASUCI Senate had asked for clarification about the definition after “student after student on the Jewish side were” objecting to the resolution’s definition of Zionism, “and that’s when the person said, ‘I don’t know where I got that definition from.’”
During public comment, Sari, who has a Muslim father and Jewish mother, asked for clarification on the academic boycott, pointing out that 25% of students at Israeli universities are Arabs and that UC Irvine has had a partnership in the past with the University of Haifa, where 30% of their student populace is Arab. Sari claimed that the members who proposed the bill “didn’t really address anything.”
Sari claimed that the resolution listed organizations that are not registered campus organizations, which is not allowed and that the resolution called for boycotting Zionist business in Irvine; according to Sari, an ASUCI member asked how anyone would be able to distinguish between a Zionist business and a Jewish business, as ASUCI has worked with various vendors who are Jewish. One of the members who co-authored the bill “basically said nothing,” she said.
Ultimately, the ASUCI decided to table it indefinitely. No ASUCI members outside of those who proposed the resolution expressed support for it, according to Sari.
In Levine’s view, the main reason why the resolution was tabled was because “tons of Jewish students came out, both online and in person, to give statement[s], so I think the student government actually listened to them, which is surprising given what’s been happening on other campuses. … We are immensely proud of our courageous students leaders for standing up to this antisemitic BDS proposal,” he said. “Their speeches and commitment to fighting back speaks to passion and spirit of our next generation of Jewish leaders. Hillel at UCI is proud to have helped cultivated a campus environment of robust Jewish and Israel education – culminating in both Jewish and non-Jewish students standing up against this resolution.”
Anti-Defamation League Orange County/Long Beach Regional Director Matthew Friedman said in a statement that the resolution was “harmful and performative” and lauded “the brave UCI students who stood up for their community and spoke out against this divisive resolution.”
ADL Orange County/Long Beach congratulates @UCIrvine's students who opposed a divisive boycott, divestment and sanctions resolution. pic.twitter.com/34Pmc50NMi
Sari has been studying abroad for the past two quarters, but feels that “this quarter has been more quiet … compared to last year… you definitely don’t see the environment that we saw last year, which was incredibly traumatic for many students.” She added that “you don’t feel the passionate violence as much.” As an example, Sari pointed out that when the resolution was tabled indefinitely, the anti-Israel protesters who showed up simply walked out. Last year, they would have interrupted the speeches, chanted and maybe even engaged in violence, Sari contended.
“It’s night and day compared to last year,” Levine said. “There’s still been a couple of anti-Israel things,” pointing to big anti-Israel marches that occurred on the anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023 massacre and on “Nakba Day.” “But both the quality and quantity of these are much smaller.” Last year, he said “there would be five, 600 people for a march — and this was multiple times a month — plus the encampment, which was hundreds of people. And this year, maybe they had 70 people during Nakba Day, so definitely night and day.”
Sari also said that the university is taking the concerns of Jewish students seriously and “were there for us” when Jewish students expressed concern over the bill. “I feel more secure on campus,” she said.
The ASUCI did not immediately respond to The Journal’s request for comment.
Two young diplomats were murdered in Washington, D.C. while leaving an event at the Capital Jewish Museum. Sarah Milgrim, 26, and Yaron Lischinsky, 30, served at the Israeli embassy. They had fallen in love; Yaron had bought a ring. He planned to propose to Sarah on an upcoming trip to Jerusalem.
I read the FBI affidavit, scrolling through the lurid details while fighting back tears. I spoke on a panel at the Israeli Embassy last month about the denial of and disinformation surrounding the conflict-related sexual violence that Hamas and other terrorists committed on and after Oct. 7. I imagined the 26-year-old woman, whose bright smile and strong hug had welcomed me and my guests, frame by gruesome frame.
“I remember her. She was beautiful,” one friend texted me. “She was so much more than that too, of course. I just remember being struck by how pretty she was that night.”
She was. And not just on the outside.
Rage and anger are appropriate emotions to such a vile act, one so clearly motivated by the violent antisemitic vitriol that motivates much of the ostensibly “anti-Israel” and anti-war discourse. When two young people are murdered just for being Jewish, anger and anxiety may be the only logical emotions. But what we do with those emotions determines everything that follows.
Sarah and Yaron spent their short lives working on peacebuilding efforts between Israel and its neighbors, sometimes at great personal cost. When Sarah joined the staff of the Israeli embassy, she found that many of her friends from graduate school turned their backs on her and refused to remain friends with her. Since Oct. 7, they had both done their diplomatic duties knowing full well that a growing segment of their fellow countrymen would justify or deny their deaths if they were ever killed, as many online commentators had done of Israelis murdered by terrorists on Oct. 7.
Sarah and Yaron spent their short lives working on peacebuilding efforts between Israel and its neighbors, sometimes at great personal cost.
And sure enough, online commentators did: various posters on social media have called the murders a false-flag operation and an inside job, or a justified killing of murderers. Overnight sleuths publicly picked apart every aspect of their lives, seizing on any signs of their devotion to Israel and the Jewish people (there were many) as evidence that these two diplomats were indeed better off dead.
“He was a terrorist,” one of the nicer commenters posted in response to a moving tribute to the two by influencer Montana Tucker. “Rest in piss you won’t be missed!” wrote another.
The shooter emptied two magazines into Yaron and Sarah, firing 21 bullets in all. He continued to fire at Sarah as she attempted to crawl away, as she attempted to sit up. He even stopped to reload his handgun.
After killing Sarah and Yaron, the shooter entered the museum and told the police, “I did it for Palestine, I did it for Gaza.” He pulled out a red keffiyeh and shouted “Free Palestine” as they escorted him out of the building. After being read his Miranda rights, he added that he admired the 25-year-old “martyr” who set himself on fire in front of the Israeli embassy last February.
Mourners attend a vigil for the victims of the Capital Jewish Museum shooting outside of the White House on May 22, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
Thursday morning, local rabbis scrubbed Sarah and Yaron’s blood from the sidewalk. “They didn’t know these young people personally,” Attorney General Pam Bondi told reporters at a press conference. “And they came out here, and they’re cleaning their blood. They put it in a bag, and then that bag will be buried with these two beautiful young people.”
Eight years ago, Sarah’s high school in Prairie Village, Kansas was vandalized with swastika graffiti. “I worry about safety at my synagogue and I have to worry about safety at school and that shouldn’t be a thing,” a teenage Sarah told a local reporter. Just three years prior, a 14-minute drive away, a white supremacist known to the FBI shot and killed three people at an Overland Park Jewish community center and retirement home. “I hope that they learn their lesson,” Sarah said of the swastika vandals, “and I hope that they learn to be more tolerant people and nicer people. It’s so ignorant that you would bring out a symbol like that that brings so much pain to a lot of people and it’s not okay.”
Following our panel at the Embassy last month, an audience member had asked a question. Why, he asked the embassy’s diplomatic staff, did Israel not circulate footage of the atrocities of Oct. 7 — recorded by terrorists on GoPro cameras, uploaded onto Telegram, even live-streamed from the victims’ cellphones — more broadly? Why, when the other side has no problem sharing images of their dead with the world, would the Embassy’s PR team so willingly cede ground in the visual information battle?
There is a debate between Americans and Israelis who work in the field of gender-based violence, as I do, concerning the matter. The Israeli position, essentially, is that the dead deserve better than our lurid curiosity. The families deserve better, the survivors deserve better, the world deserves better. The American perspective, one I held until recently, is that we must share what we have, or else the world will never see the Jewish people as victims, only as perpetrators of violence.
There is another level to consider. What does it do to the souls of the living to be subjected to such content? While reporting in Israel in October 2023, an active Telegram channel opened by Israeli first responders was filled almost constantly with lurid images of the bodies they found among the ashes, sharing their raw pain and shock in real time. Reporting from the scene of death, which I have done, is one thing. Having a visual reminder of the experience available in your cell phone at all times is quite another.
Following the massacres, the IDF compiled available footage into a 45-minute compilation that it screened privately to journalists at the beginning of the war, and eventually, more broadly. “The videos show pure, predatory sadism; no effort to spare those who pose no threat; and an eagerness to kill nearly matched by eagerness to disfigure the bodies of the victims,” one Atlantic reporter who was shown the compilation said.
Is sharing such graphic visuals truly necessary to convey the evil of slaughtering thousands of innocent people, raping, torturing and burning them alive?
In the eyes of the Israeli government, the video was shown in an effort to prevent journalists from any moral equivalency-making between the terrorists, who infiltrated Israel and slaughtered civilians in intimate and evil ways, and the Israeli army, whose acts they see as entirely in self-defense. “We are not looking for kids to kill them,” the IDF spokesperson told the reporter. “We have to share it with you so no one will have an idea that someone is equal to another.”
I have not seen the compiled footage, though I have seen many of the clips as they were uploaded to Telegram in those early days. Nor have I watched any of the prominent documentaries on the atrocities that followed — and I do not intend to. I spent October sitting with families of those who had been killed or kidnapped, with those responsible for bringing the kibbutzim back to life and feeding the country, walking through the killing fields while the acrid smoke of smoldering bodies still clogged the air. I do not need a reminder that Hamas is evil. I do not need a soundtrack to my pain beyond the birdsong that mingled with the sound of artillery fire in those dark days. I have seen and heard enough.
To be a Jew these days is to have lived through a series of personal and communal tragedies. We must take seriously the Hamas leaders’ threats to rise “like a phoenix” from the ashes, their vows to repeat the attacks of Oct. 7 “again and again” until Israel is “annihilated.” We must take seriously the more than 10,000 antisemitic hate crimes reported to the ADL last year, the very real fear and security threats that Jews and Jewish communities around the world now face.
It’s not always clear what the next right response is. But there are certainly clear wrong ones. There are real and persistent threats to the physical safety of Jews around the world right now. There are also urgent moral ones.
“Words lead to deeds,” as Michael Sfard, a prominent Israeli lawyer, put it. “Words that normalize or legitimize serious crimes against civilians create the social, political and moral basis for other people to do things like that.”
When the news spread last November that Shiri Bibas and her two young boys, who were kidnapped during the massacres of Oct. 7, 2023, had been murdered by Hamas terrorists, some in the Jewish community fell into justifying terrorist acts of our own.
“There are no innocent Palestinians,” they raged. “Rabbi Meir Kahane, of blessed memory, was labeled as a violent extremist, but he was right. This is the truth right here. The only language the Arabs understand is force and fear,” one self-styled influencer who attends my synagogue wrote of the rabbi so extreme that Israel’s Knesset banned his political party, and whose follower massacred 29 Palestinians praying in a mosque Hebron, wounding hundreds of innocent civilians.
My own reaction to Wednesday night’s murders, and to those murders, was Genesis-like in the depths of its rage — ”What have you done? Hark, your brother’s blood cries out to Me from the ground!” God cries in the Book of Genesis after Cain kills Abel. “You shall be more cursed than the ground, which opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand.”
And yet. I think of Ofri Bibas, aunt of Kfir and Ariel Bibas, and her reaction to the news of her loved ones’ murders: “We are not seeking revenge now.”
Neither, I think, would be Sarah and Yaron, who continued to be so deeply dedicated to peace with Israel’s neighbors even after everything they’d witnessed. Jews shouldn’t need to be peaceniks for the world to mourn their deaths. But who Yaron and Sarah were should shape our reaction to their murders.
In this time of rising antisemitism, we do not have the luxury of falling into anger and despair, of turning inward on our pain. We need each other. And we are responsible for creating and sustaining communities strong enough to survive this.
In this time of rising antisemitism, we do not have the luxury of falling into anger and despair, of turning inward on our pain. We need each other. And we are responsible for creating and sustaining communities strong enough to survive this.
“We are shaken. We are not OK. But we will bounce back,” then-antisemitism envoy Deborah Lipstadt wrote after a Texas congregation was held hostage in their synagogue in 2022. “We are resilient because we cannot afford not to be. That resiliency is part of the Jewish DNA. Without it, we would have disappeared centuries ago. We refuse to go away. But we are exhausted.”
We have witnessed time and again what blind rage does to those whose hearts are infected with rage that turns to hatred of the Jewish people. It has made them excuse away this tragedy and every murder of Jews that came before it. It has enabled them to see in antisemitic murders an act of legitimate anti-Israel protest, a praiseworthy globalization of the intifada. And last week, it enabled a 31-year-old man with no criminal record and no connection to the conflict to murder two people for the high crime of being Jewish in public.
I won’t speak for Sarah and Yaron. But I will speak for myself: being Jewish is not about these moments of darkness. It is about building strong communities and lives that are a glorification of the divine.
Most Abrahamic traditions hold that Seth, the brother of the slain Abel, is the progenitor of all of mankind. But he is, too, the brother of Cain.
We all hold within us the capacity to make the world a brighter or more terrible place.
May we each have the courage to make the braver choice.
Laura E. Adkins is a writer based in New York and an associate vice president at Jewish Women International.
Jews love to think in centuries and millennia. These exceptionally long stretches of time, after all, have shaped the Jewish identity. We waited 19 centuries to return home to Zion; we received our holy Torah 3,300 years ago at Sinai; this coming Rosh Hashanah, while the world will still be in 2025, we’ll be celebrating the year 5786.
Here in Los Angeles, it’s a big deal when a new restaurant stays open for five years. Jews have stayed open for five thousand years and counting.
So yes, it’s inherent to the Jewish experience to see our stories through the historical lens of centuries.
There are some Jews, however, who see life through the lens of the humble, measly second– the smallest time frame of our daily lives.
I heard one of those Jews speak at a private home the other night. It was Eli Beer, founder of United Hatzalah of Israel, an emergency response operation that has little patience for anything that takes more than a few minutes.
Although Beer spoke sweetly and casually, every story he told was infused with a mad sense of urgency.
His stories invariably came down to seconds— a few seconds later and it would have been too late, we must get to any emergency within 90 seconds, we can’t afford to waste any time, and so on.
One his earliest experiences at an accident site was seeing a man bleed out through a major wound in his neck. Beer took his yarmulke, folded it up and pressed as hard as he could on the wound until the medics arrived. The man’s life was saved—with a few seconds to spare.
By now, United Hatzalah has become a household name in the Jewish world. Most people know what they do. They have chapters around the world. They’re known for their ambucycles that can speed through traffic and cut down the time to reach emergencies. They treat every life the same—Jewish or non-Jewish. Their galas attract major names and donors.
But I’m not writing to describe their operation.
I’m writing because the way Beer spoke the other night made me reflect on the very idea of the lowly second, and how that tiniest of time frames may connect to our lives and our Jewish tradition.
Beer’s view of the second was clearly and concretely connected to his life mission– which is saving lives.
But how else does the second play itself out? It struck me that just as one second can save a life, it can also destroy one. One second is all it takes to take your eyes off the road or to slip in a bathroom.
One second is all it takes to say something hurtful to someone you love and forever poison a relationship. A stage performer can be thrown off by the tiniest distraction.
Indeed we underestimate the power of a second because it’s so tiny. But what is life if not the accumulation of seconds?
When I’m in the company of someone wise, someone I admire, I usually feel this continuous flow to their presence. They’re not performing for the occasion; this is who they are, second after second.
I wonder if my ancestors in Morocco were the same way. They had no smart phones grafted to their hands or Instagram posts interrupting their days. I wonder if they lived lives where every little moment counts because they were so keenly aware of these little moments.
I wonder also if our affinity to think in terms of centuries and millennia connects somehow to an appreciation for these smallest of moments.
If the Jewish tradition is so concerned with the precise application of God’s commandments, and if our Talmudic sages were so careful with the smallest details and the smallest of gestures, doesn’t that suggest recognizing the value of the smallest individual moment? Isn’t a sacred view of time part of our miraculous ability to keep the Jewish flame alive?
When a Hatzalah volunteer jumps on an ambucycle and races to an emergency, he or she knows instinctively that every second counts.
But hearing Eli Beer speak the other night, I wondered if the same idea also holds true in our lives, and whether it has held true for our people for centuries.
In 2012, when President Barack Obama was running for his second term, I said to a friend who was working on his campaign: “The Democrats need to stop treating him like a monarch who can’t be criticized.”
It was the beginning of cancel culture, and if you dared to criticize any Obama policy you were treated as though you had said something racist, which is of course racist itself, but the left, which had already abandoned classical liberalism, couldn’t understand that. They also didn’t understand that in a democracy, it is our duty as citizens to hold all politicians accountable, whether we voted for them or not.
A dozen years later we now have a Republican in the White House, and if you dare utter a word of criticism his most fervent fans will immediately call you a “moron,” “libtard” and, if you happen to be female, “emotionally hysterical.” The latter is part of the right’s neo-misogyny, echoing Andrew Tate’s movement to view all women as sex slaves.
As a classical liberal who has taken a decade of heat for daring to point out the multiple ways the left has become illiberal, I have to admit to, well, shock at the response of the right to the tiniest of criticism of President Trump. In my first post on Facebook about Trump’s misdeeds in Qatar, I was hit with what could only be called a gang attack from nasty, intellectually challenged Trump fanatics.
The right has now become a mirror image of the left, but in a very different way. The intense conformity on the left stems from a desire for ideological orthodoxy or “purity,” precisely the opposite of classical liberalism. On the right, Trump’s supporters worship him like a cult leader: no matter what he says or does, he can do no wrong. And if you dare offer the slightest bit of criticism, they are intent on beheading you, learning quickly from their new Islamist friends in Qatar.
This is taking our already hyperpolarized country to the next level. I suppose if I lived in a red state, I could be shot for daring to say that we shouldn’t be snuggling up to a state sponsor of terror (Qatar), let alone actual terrorists (Syria). The fact that Qatar has spent nearly $40 billion since 2012 trying to indoctrinate both our kids and Congress on the “beauty” of jihad and the “evil” of Israel suddenly doesn’t matter to those on the right who complain non-stop about our universities.
If Trump says it’s “spectacular,” then it must be spectacular! And if you can’t understand that, “you” are the problem.
One would think that this level of idolatry would be anathema for Jews. But Jews are some of Trump’s most rabid fans. Even when Trump does and says things that are potentially harmful to Israel. Just yesterday these Jews on the far right were mocking Jews on the far left for claiming authority “as a Jew.” Now Trump cultists are basically saying the same thing, defending Trump’s passionate hook-ups in Qatar and Saudi Arabia, and even his deceptive claim that “a lot of people are starving” in Gaza.
Trump has become the golden calf who can do no wrong. Precisely as he predicted in 2016: “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters.” But not on Fifth Avenue. New Yorkers, Jewish and not, are furious with his sudden love for the jihadists who tried to destroy this city.
Last week I saw the excellent new film “Hannah Arendt: Facing Tyranny.” Arendt is a controversial figure in the Jewish world, largely because of her phrase “the banality of evil.” The film provides some insight into why she would discount the glee of the Nazis — the same glee Qatari-funded Islamists are so proud of they actually film themselves raping, murdering, beheading.
The discussion afterward focused more on her book “The Origins of Totalitarianism” and its relevance today. I thought there were a few inappropriate comparisons to the 1930s, but one that can’t be discounted: mass conformity and incessant lies that are accepted without thinking.
We now have that on both sides. Are we heading toward a new form of totalitarianism, where the left seeks to control every facet of our private lives while the neo-reactionary right seeks control over our public lives? Perhaps. Or civil war.
But nearly 100 years later we are able to recognize what’s happening, bravely call it out, and put an end to it — on both sides. As Jews who have lived through tyranny in one form or another, we have a moral obligation to stop this level of political, social, and cultural conformity before it’s too late.
Mass worship of the golden calf — whether in the form of Instaporn or Trump — will always lead to a type of evil that is far from banal.
Karen Lehrman Bloch is editor in chief of White Rose Magazine.
The Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA) held a security briefing over Zoom on May 22 addressing the shooting that occurred in Washington, D.C. the previous night where two staff members of the Israeli embassy were killed.
The two victims have been identified as Yaron Lischinsky, 30, and Sarah Milgrim, 26. Lischinsky had been planning to propose to Milgrim in the near future. The suspected shooter has been identified as Elias Rodriguez, 30; he allegedly shouted “I did it for Gaza” and “Free Palestine” and pulled a keffiyeh out of his backpack.
Julie Platt, the chair of JFNA’s Board of Trustees, began the briefing by telling viewers that “we are doing everything we can think” to support the Israeli embassy as well as Milgrim’s community in Kansas City. “We as a national Jewish community will be working and supporting and organizing for as long as we are needed,” said Platt.
Eric Fingerhut, the CEO and president of JFNA, said that he had spoken with the Israeli embassy and “they’re in shock and they’re in no position to participate themselves.” Fingerhut then gave the floor to his colleague, JFNA State Director Eli Berne, to talk about Lischinsky. Berne said he had worked at the embassy and overlapped with Lischinsky, who was born in Germany and moved to Israel, becoming a proud Zionist who served in the Israel Defense Force (IDF). His expertise was in the Abraham Accords and was particularly proud of the embassy’s work in expanding the accords and attempts to bring peace to the region. Berne described Lischinsky as being “incredibly bright” and always wearing a smile on his face.
Milgrim, Berne recalled, did “outreach on progressive issues” and worked to build bridges. “It’s not always easy working at the embassy as an American,” said Berne, adding that Milgrim did a great job and “always put a smile on the face on whoever she was interacting and working with.”
Two weeks earlier, Berne saw both of them at an event celebrating Yom HaAtzmut and that they were heading to Jerusalem to meeting Lischinsky’s parents, as he had just met Milgrim’s in Kansas City. Berne didn’t learn until last night that Lischinsky was planning to propose to Milgrim.
Jay Lewis, the president and CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater Kansas City, said in the briefing that May 22 “has been a devastating day for the Kansas City Jewish community” and that the day has made “antisemitism incredibly real” for the community. Lewis said that the Milgrims “are very involved” in the community. He knew Milgrim when he was the Hillel director at the University of Kansas and that she had worked as an intern at the local Federation; she was committed to “making the world a better place.”
Earlier that morning, Lewis visited the Milgrim family’s house, and said that the family is “devastated” and felt “like their world has ended.”
Lewis explained that in the evening, the community had planned a screening of the documentary “October 8” and, at the Milgrim’s family urging, they were still going to show it, as they felt that the “context of the movie” explains what happened. The community will be holding a vigil for “people to come together and mourn.”
“We’re in mourning right now,” Lewis said, adding that resilience and healing will come later.
Gil Preuss, the CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington, said that Lischinsky and Milgrim were “very integrated into the D.C. community” and that the Jewish community in the District is in “incredible shock” over what happened. “We need to make sure that there is enhanced security and safety so the Jewish community doesn’t have to worry about this when going to the next event,” he said.
Michael Masters, national director and CEO of the Secure Community Network (SCN), called the shooting “an escalation in threats against the Jewish community” and that his group is “assessing potential reactions from violent extremists and groups … including the risk of copycat attacks.” He added that foreign terror organizations have been calling for attacks against the Jewish community in the United States.
Among the recommendations that Masters suggests the Jewish community take in response to the shooting is to communicate with law enforcement and Jewish organizations when events and issues are happening. He also urged Jewish community members to, when holding events, ensure that proper security is in place and to verify all registrants in advance where possible, don’t allow drop-ins, and only share event details with known attendees.
Fingerhut said that the amount of money put into nonprofit security grants has grown more than 10 times over the past five years, but said that ultimately the responsibility is on the government to protect its citizens. Since the Oct. 7, 2023 massacre, there has been “a significant escalation in the risks to our community” and that there has been “incitement” on the campuses, with similar rhetoric being deployed in school board meetings, city council meetings and public squares. Such “dangerous rhetoric” has only gotten worse and “inevitably leads to violence and incidents” like what occurred in D.C., said Fingerhut.
He called for the nonprofit security grant program to be “fully funded” and that “it does not begin to come close to the major cost of security.” Fingerhut urged the government to “assist us” and that it’s not right that the community “has to bear the full cost.” The JFNA CEO also acknowledged that the “strain on local law enforcement is extreme” and that there needs to be more police cars “circling around our institutions”; to that end, Fingerhut called for more funding on these “local issues.”
“We must enforce our laws and prosecute people who are in violation of laws regarding harassment and threatening violence.” – Eric Fingerhut
Fingerhut warned that “this incitement is a critical issue” and “is prevalent on social media … we must enforce our laws and prosecute people who are in violation of laws regarding harassment and threatening violence.”
Platt concluded the briefing by assuring viewers that “we are doing everything in our power to keep you safe” and urged viewers to stay close to their respective Federations and to “stay strong” and “be proudly Jewish.”
