U.S. security officials warned of unprecedented threats to Jewish communities following a series of recent attacks on shuls in the US and Europe, JTA reported.
“We are in the midst of the most elevated and complex threat environment the Jewish community and this country has seen in modern history,” said Kerry Sleeper, chief of threat management and information sharing for the Secure Community Network, a Jewish security organization.
Sleeper, a former FBI assistant director, added that the “various motivations of the attackers appear to be affiliated with the war between the US, Israel and Iran.”
Mitchell Silber, executive director of the Community Security Initiative, said in an interview that Jewish institutions may now need additional layers of protection.
“This might be a bit of a tipping point where we’ve gone to a new level, where really what’s required to secure a Jewish institution in the US starts to look like almost a Europeanization of security,” Silber said, adding that that would include posting multiple armed guards outside entrances of Jewish institutions.
“Unfortunately that seems to be where we are right now—the Jewish community has to up its game in terms of the external security of its locations,” he said.
Mike Jacobson, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy who served in the State Department’s Counterterrorism Bureau, said, “It’s not entirely shocking to those of us who’ve watched this space for a long time. I would think things would continue to ratchet up again, at least in the short term.”
“There’s also this mix that makes it really hard to sort out in the initial stages, where you’ve got people, not only who may be directly tied to Iran, but people who are so-called ‘inspired’ by this,” Jacobson said. “Those are often really hard for law enforcement to get advance notice on.”
Not always does the threat come from direct orders from Iran, he said. “It’s often difficult to tell: Is this something that is directly tied to the organization, or is this something that is more by someone inspired [by the IRGC]?”
He added, “They are trying to inflict pain in as many directions as they can.”
(YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)
