JCRC leader reacts to attacks in Boulder, uptick in antisemitism
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Jewish communities across the country and here in Minnesota are heartbroken and outraged after another targeted act of violence.
There is a vigil planned for Wednesday night for the 12 victims of a fiery attack in Boulder, Colo. An Egyptian national has been charged with a federal hate crime after allegedly yelling “Free Palestine” as he unleashed what was called a makeshift flame thrower into a crowd of people protesting the Israeli hostages still trapped in Gaza. This comes on the heels of a shooting that killed two outside of the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C., last month.
In response, synagogues and Jewish schools nationwide are upping their security. Steve Hunegs, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas, or JCRC, joined MPR News host Cathy Wurzer on Tuesday to talk about the uptick in antisemitism and its implications.
The following has been lightly edited for length and clarity. Listen to the full conversation by clicking the player button.
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What are you hearing from Jewish community members right now?
Let’s go nationally first, and I’ll start with this headline, which captures the situation perfectly, if awfully. The headline in the Times of Israel [Tuesday] is “with attacks in Washington and Colorado, the global Intifada lands in America.” And we can all pause for a moment to think about the awfulness of that comment, but we have to even take a step back from there and look at 2018 in the attack on the Tree of Life Synagogue which murdered 11 people and the 2019 shooting at a synagogue in Poway, Calif. Those were terrorist attacks from the right.
What have we seen in the last few months — the attack on Pennsylvania Gov. Shapiro, at his home, the Washington, D.C., murders of Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky and then, of course, the Boulder firebombing on Sunday — all from the left by people purportedly mobilized by the Gaza war. What does that tell you about the American Jewish community, that we’re sort of caught in a pincer between the violence and terror of the left and the violence and terror of the right?
Giving us consolation is the resolve of our own community. We urge calm, implement security protocols, carry on with our lives. What improves the situation is coordination with all levels of law enforcement. We synchronize with our national Jewish organizations and then we hear supportive words from Gov. Walz, from Sen. Klobuchar, from Reps. Emmer, Fischbach, Stauber, McCollum, Morrison, across the political spectrum. So we have to take this into account, too, when looking at the situation. But nevertheless, all that said, there’s a serious undercurrent of unease within our community.
At the core of this violence is hate against Jews. Why are we seeing such a rise in antisemitism in the U.S.?
Social media driving through the algorithms, and the ubiquity of social media is sending hateful messages to more and more people, more rapidly, all the time, and just creating this undercurrent. It’s like dry tinder for a fire, and that’s what’s happening right now.
On top of that, you have people deeply and emotionally engaged by what’s happening in the Middle East, which only adds to the problems. Probably the foundation, though, is millennia-long antisemitic tropes about Jews, conspiracy theories and the like. All that combines for sort of an evil brew of what we’re seeing now.
What steps do you wish the government or others would take to combat antisemitism?
First, we start at home. Our community takes pride in the fact that we will protect ourselves. We have security patrols at the JCRC; those have been increased. We communicate with our own institutions. Beyond synagogues, keep in mind that schools, other Jewish agencies, Jewish-owned businesses and the like are also places that we need to protect.
Nationally, take the nonprofit Security Act Program, which benefits all nonprofits, including Christian, Muslim, Buddhist and other institutions. We need to increase support for it in this round of congressional funding. But we need continued engagement. We need our government to be teachers, to say that this is completely unacceptable at all levels.
