An American Jewish umbrella organization is actively lobbying Congress for more security funding as antisemitic and Islamic attacks rise in the United States amid the intensifying conflict in Iran.
The request comes in the wake of a car-ramming attack in Michigan, where the suspect specifically targeted a Detroit-area synagogue. The building contained an early childhood education center with more than 100 children inside. Fortunately, no preschoolers or teachers were killed or injured.
Armed security guards at Temple Israel quickly responded after the suspect’s vehicle breached the building. The attacker died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, and one guard was wounded.
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The recent incident demonstrates the urgent necessity for the allocation of more security funding through federal and state grants, the Jewish Federations of North America says.
JFNA believes the right level of funding for security personnel, including those stationed at synagogues, should be $1 billion. The current amount, as determined by congressional appropriators, is $300 million.
For context, the Jewish community spends over $765 million a year on security to protect itself.
“There’s no ethnic or religious group that comes close to having to secure their institutions this way, to cover every event with security,” JFNA President and CEO Eric Fingerhut told the Washington Examiner. “We’re having to basically arm ourselves and secure every single event. That’s not America. That’s not the way it should be.”
Fingerhut says the FBI has told him that its agents investigated over 2,300 hate crimes against the Jewish community last year — 10 times more than the next largest religious or ethnic group. Jews account for only 2% of the U.S. population, yet they are the target of nearly 70% of all religion-based hate crimes.
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While more funding is needed for all types of security measures in the Jewish community, JFNA specifies that the money should not be limited to cameras, bollards, and reinforced doors.
Fingerhut noted that bollards, which are vertical posts to protect pedestrians from vehicle impacts near certain infrastructure, failed to stop the Michigan synagogue attacker. The synagogue’s armed guards had to shoot the attacker and kill him. Incidentally, the FBI trained Temple Israel security and staff for an active shooter situation a few weeks before the attack.
JFNA is also pushing for federal legislation preventing states from capping funds for security personnel compared to other physical security measures, like bollards. By contrast, FEMA does not limit funding for security personnel. Fingerhut says personnel are needed more than any other measure.
FEMA primarily allocates the current $300 million in annual funding through the Nonprofit Security Grant Program, which helps secure Jewish and other faith-based institutions across the nation. The money is then doled out to individual states and their FEMA-affiliated emergency offices.
The slow process by which nonprofits make grant applications through the state agencies is also a major concern for JFNA.
“It just takes too long for these grants to get made and get out,” Fingerhut said, “and so we’re advocating for a fixed deadline by which funds appropriated by Congress have to be allocated.”
The grant process has been affected, in part, by the ongoing partial government shutdown that directly impacts the budget for the Department of Homeland Security. However, Fingerhut argues the slow pace has been a problem for years.
“You can’t blame this shutdown for all the delays in the grant program,” he said.
Other Jewish groups, such as the Orthodox Union Advocacy Center, are urging Congress to end the “political stalemate” that is holding up the DHS appropriations bill so that NSGP funding can be delivered to the communities that need it most.
The shutdown entered its fourth week on Saturday. Democrats are adamant about placing restrictions on federal immigration enforcement operations, but Republicans and the White House aren’t budging on their opposition to such oversight.
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The funding lapse is set against the backdrop of “Operation Epic Fury,” which President Donald Trump launched late last month to target Iran in coordination with Israel. Now entering its third week, the overseas conflict is inspiring violent attacks in the U.S.
The Michigan car-ramming suspect was identified as Ayman Mohamad Ghazali, a 41-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen born in Lebanon. His motivation for the synagogue attack was likely related to the deaths of four family members, who were killed in an Israeli airstrike back in his native country.
Other recent attacks have been more directly related to Islamic terrorism.
In Virginia, the now-deceased perpetrator who fatally shot one person and wounded two others at Old Dominion University was a former National Guard member convicted in 2017 for trying to support ISIS. And in New York City, two men who threw improvised explosive devices at right-wing demonstrators allegedly support the foreign terrorist organization.
National security experts are worried that more attacks will be carried out in the homeland by lone wolf actors and embedded Iranian sleeper cells.
“This is the highest threat level we’ve had in any of our memories, and we are on full high alert in every case,” Fingerhut said of his organization’s efforts amid the rising “domestic terror crisis.”
JFNA co-hosted a national threat briefing with Jewish and law enforcement groups on Friday following the Michigan attack. JFNA recommended that Jewish communities across North America “add armed on-duty or off-duty law enforcement, private security, and/or volunteer teams as additional layers of protection wherever possible.”
The synagogue incident “shows both the strength of our security efforts, but it also shows that the determination of a terrorist to kill a lot of Jews is very hard to stop,” the JFNA leader added. “They will go to extreme lengths, so we have to be prepared.”
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He recounted how the Temple Israel security guards responded to the emergency situation, just as they were trained to do.
“They put the safety of the people first. They didn’t put their safety first. They rushed in, and they got everybody to safety,” Fingerhut said. “It’s that kind of training that is critical at a moment like that.”
