Local, National Pols Press Security Funding

The New York City Council is calling for the inclusion of a $50 million security grant for community centers and cultural institutions at risk of being targeted for hate crimes.

Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. has announced a new “Too New York to Hate” campaign.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo had promised before this week’s budget impasse to increase to $25 million the money targeted to help non-public schools’ security costs.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) has vowed to fight proposed administration cuts to the federal government’s $20 million security grant program for nonprofits — more than $5 million of which went to 66 local Jewish groups last year.

Locally, there has been an unprecedented 183 percent spike in hate crimes in the city between Jan. 1 and March 12.

On Monday, Reps. Dan Donovan (R-Staten Island) and Bill Pascrell Jr. (D-N.J.) wrote a bipartisan letter signed by 110 colleagues calling for the security grant program for nonprofits to be increased to $50 million.

The letter noted that since Jan. 1, “at least 116 Jewish communal institutions, including community centers, schools, places of worship, and others have received more than 160 bomb threats in 39 states. These incidents illustrate the many credible threats against nonprofit institutions across the country and must be taken seriously.”

Locally, there has been an unprecedented 183 percent spike in hate crimes in the city between Jan. 1 and March 12, according to City Councilman Mark Levine, who chairs the City Council’s Jewish Caucus.

“Though there are state and federal programs to enhance security in at-risk schools and daycare centers, our city’s community centers and cultural institutions, which have been repeatedly targeted in recent months, are left with nowhere to turn for help in meeting their security needs,” he said in a statement.

Levine noted that the $50 million the City Council is calling for is double what he had proposed. Mayor Bill de Blasio, who has proposed an $84.7 billion budget, has not commented on the City Council’s proposed security grant.

To discuss the federal government’s response to the spike in hate crimes, 10 Jewish leaders met in Washington last Thursday with Attorney General Jeff Sessions and FBI Director James Comey. Among the participants were representatives of the ADL, the Jewish Federations of North America and the JCC of North America. Doron Krakow, the latter group’s president and CEO, said they were gratified to hear from Sessions that he considers every incident “significant” and “won’t be tolerated.”

Following the off-the-record meeting, the Department of Justice issued a statement calling the meeting “positive and productive.”

Two weeks ago, a 19-year-old Israeli Jew who also holds American citizenship has not been publicly identified was and charged in connection with the making of more than 100 phone calls and e-mail threats to JCCs and other Jewish institutions throughout the U.S.

“We are very sorry from the bottom of our hearts,” he said. “We are good Jews, we do not hate you. There was no hatred here. His motive is solely the disease.”

The boy’s father, who was also arrested on suspicion he was aware of his son’s actions, told the Israeli media this week that he wanted to apologize to all the Jews in the United States for what his son did.

“We are very sorry from the bottom of our hearts,” he said. “We are good Jews, we do not hate you. There was no hatred here. His motive is solely the disease.”

The teen’s parents told Israeli media that their son has undergone three surgeries to remove tumors after being exposed to harmful chemicals at his job and that he has a benign brain tumor and autism. They said he was born in the United States and moved to Israel at the age of 6. He was homeschooled from the first grade, has no friends and rarely leaves his house, they said.

Nationally, AMCHA Initiatives announced this week that its annual study of anti-Semitism on more than 100 public and private colleges and universities with the largest Jewish undergraduate populations documented a 40 percent increase in anti-Semitic incidents. It said that among the schools experiencing the surge were Columbia and New York University.

There have also been class assignments in the state’s public schools that have trivialized the “horrific experiences” of victims of the Holocaust, according to Evan Bernstein, New York regional director of the Anti-Defamation League.

The latest example was at a CiTi BOCES program in upstate Oswego County in which students were asked to write an essay arguing for or against the Nazi perspective on the “Final Solution,” the plan calling for the extermination of Jews during the Holocaust.

“There is no assignment that could ever be given to students that even hints at a balanced perspective to the horrors of Nazi actions during the Holocaust, and we are pleased that the school district, as well as New York State Education Department Commissioner MaryEllen Elia, ultimately deemed this offensive assignment inappropriate for a classroom setting,” Bernstein said in a statement.

Paul Goldenberg, national director of the Secure Community Network, testified that a rise in anti-Semitism abroad has prompted members of the Jewish community to not only rethink their approach to security but to change “their daily routines, adopting new ways of doing things, and deciding when and where to go – from synagogue to the grocery store — based not on their desires, but on their fears and insecurities.”

Some of the most egregious examples of anti-Semitism were reported overseas this week.

In Berlin, a 14-year-old British Jewish boy was forced to leave his school after being subjected to four months of verbal and physical anti-Semitic violence by Muslim students.

“I’ve never experienced such direct anti-Semitism before in all the years I’ve lived in Germany.”

The boy was reportedly beaten, kicked and threatened with a replica of a gun after he disclosed to fellow students that he is Jewish. That prompted Muslim classmates to tell him, “Muslims hate Jews. All Jews are murderers.”

“I’ve never experienced such direct anti-Semitism before in all the years I’ve lived in Germany,” the child’s mother told The Daily Telegraph.

The Central Council of Jews in Germany termed the attacks on the boy “anti-Semitism of the ugliest form.”

There have also been several recent incidents in which Jews wearing skullcaps or displaying other outward signs of Jewishness have been beaten on the streets of Berlin. The number of reported attacks against Jews in 2015 reportedly increased 201 percent over the previous year.

In Sweden, officials of the Jewish cultural center in Umea decided last Sunday to close indefinitely and to stop all activities after the building received numerous threatening e-mails and was repeatedly defaced by swastikas and other anti-Semitic graffiti, including the words: “We know where you live.”

A spokesperson for the center told Swedish television that because of recent events “Jewish parents don’t feel safe having their kids at the schools. Our children shouldn’t need to live in a world where they have to be ashamed for what they are, but it’s not possible to operate if people are scared.”

There are an estimated 20,000 Jews in Sweden and only 4 percent of the country’s adult population is said to hold anti-Semitic views — one of the lowest in the world, according to the ADL’s 2014 Global 100 Poll.

During a congressional hearing last month by the House panel on global human rights, its chairman, Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), said the “levels of anti-Semitic hate have reached crisis levels in the U.S. and around the globe and perpetrators are increasingly connected to each other across borders.”