The Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA) has put out a new statement from police and sheriffs across the country, both those who are currently serving and those who are retired.
“Vicious antisemitism has re-emerged, both around the world and here at home, following Hamas’s barbaric attack against Israel on Oct. 7,” JINSA’s assembled group writes. “American Jews deserve to feel safe in their homes, schools, university campuses and places of worship. Local, county, state and federal law-enforcement officers can and should make sure that they are.”
The letter notes FBI director Christopher Wray’s Oct. 31 testimony before Congress with the statistic that Jews represent 2.4% of the American public but 60% of all religious-based hate crimes.
The law-enforcement leaders further point out that antisemitic incidents “increased fivefold in the two weeks immediately after Hamas’s attack, compared to the same period last year” and that a recent poll reveals that “10 million adults in the United States—more than the total number of Jews in America—have ‘both high levels of antisemitism and express support for political violence.’”
The sheriffs and police officers call on their peers to “acknowledge the distinct threat growing antisemitism poses to Jews in America, and, if allowed to fester, to all Americans. … As the oldest ideology of hatred in the world, antisemitism is a threat not only to the Jewish people, but to all Americans—their safety, their values, and their way of life. It is critical that we take the threat of antisemitism seriously and stand united in confronting it.”
