When Jewish groups advertise upcoming events, they often say on listings that they will provide the location to registered attendees for security reasons. This has become increasingly common since Oct. 7, as anti-Israel activists have often disrupted Jewish and Zionist gatherings, and some of their protests have escalated to violence.
When two members of Turtle Island Liberation Front LA registered for a public safety event at Wilshire Boulevard Temple in Los Angeles in December, they allegedly left their surnames off of their registration. The synagogue is suing the group after one of the two who had registered was accused of breaking a glass vase and charging at the Israeli consul general before a security guard intervened.
Andrew McKellips, founder of Adaptive Threat Solutions, which contracts with multiple Jewish institutions for security, told JNS his company uses ID scanners to ensure attendees present valid identification.
“They’re not perfect,” he told JNS.
The best tool is “only about 70% accurate,” he said. “There are costs with all those—a device and a subscription.”
Mobile ID scanning applications can cost more than $150 a month.
“It’s been a growing task,” McKellips told JNS. His company also brings portable metal detectors for larger events to check for weapons. “It’s $5,000 for just one,” he said.
After online registration is finalized, if McKellips sees a name that is “not somebody that’s part of the community or recognized, then I run them through different systems,” he said. But many people who aim to disrupt an event don’t have traceable histories of activism, even if they use their real names.
“There are so many bad actors trying to sneak in,” he told JNS.
McKellips noted two incidents at synagogues in the same northeast neighborhood in Seattle last weekend, one on Friday night and the other on Sunday night.
In the first, at least one person broke into Congregation Shaarei Tefillah Lubavitch and stole money from donation boxes and the rabbi’s car keys and cell phone. On Sunday, two men, whom witnesses described as “Arab,” broke into and vandalized University District Minyan. In the latter incident, the two ran away after the building’s caretaker interrupted them and tried to detain them.
McKellips told JNS that before Oct. 7, his security company’s role was largely “presence and response” but now is “a lot more proactive.”
In May, the British Museum postponed a lecture on ancient Israel citing “security concerns” after learning that a “significant proportion of registered attendees were individuals intending to deliberately disrupt the event.”
At an event about campus Jew-hatred with the University of Washington president at a Seattle synagogue in March, a repeat protester who was known to security guards registered for the event with his real name. He was promptly removed from the list and told he would not be allowed to attend.
At another Seattle event in July, StandWithUs booked an Israeli soldier to speak but was forced to relocate three times after radical activists with a history of violence outside of Jewish events found the address by registering to attend.
In New York, anti-Israel group Pal-Awda staged protests in 2025 and 2026 outside of Park East Synagogue in Manhattan and Yeshiva of Central Queens in Kew Gardens Hills during Israeli real estate events. Those events did not include the locations on their promotional materials.
The protests led to arrests and prompted “buffer zone” bills around houses of worship in the New York City Council and from the governor.
‘Knowing who is in the room’
Michael Masters is national director and CEO of Secure Community Network, the nonprofit that serves as the North American Jewish community’s official safety organization.
“The Jewish community has decades of experience hosting large, public, high-profile events safely, and the practices that make that possible are well established,” he told JNS. “Knowing who is in the room is one of them.”
“A pre-registered or confirmed attendee list, appropriately vetted by organizers, gives security personnel a clear picture of who is expected and puts organizers in control of their event rather than reacting to it,” Masters said.
The level of screening “should also match the event,” he told JNS.
“Programs that are publicly promoted, open to the general public, feature high-profile guests or address contested issues may call for additional measures,” he said. “Identity verification is a reasonable and increasingly routine one. This is not a sign of alarm. It is the same standard applied at courthouses, airports and many public venues every day.”
Masters said that “no single measure can be effective on its own” and that “effective security is layered.”
“Last year’s attacks outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington and at a peaceful gathering in Boulder reinforced that security cannot stop at the front door, and sometimes there is no front door,” he said.
There must be trained people, a perimeter extending beyond entrances and a “clear, rehearsed plan for responding to an incident,” according to Masters.
He advised Jewish institutions to adopt “a professional approach that ensures those layers are effectively in place.”
“Our guidance is simple. Bring your local Jewish security professional in early, plan deliberately and host with confidence,” Masters said.
Like many police departments in the country, the Seattle Police Department increased patrols around synagogues during the High Holidays and worked with Jewish community partners.
Capt. Heidi Tuttle of the department told JNS that she directed officers to increase patrols based on holiday and event schedules that she received from the Secure Community Network.
“Our increased patrols are call-load dependent, which can be frustrating,” she said.
‘Ensure security at all events’
Nathan Diament, executive director of the Orthodox Union Advocacy Center, told JNS that with growing threats and activists finding new ways to disrupt and infiltrate Jewish spaces, he advises synagogues to “develop deep and ongoing working relationships with their local police and also Secure Community Network and Community Security Service.”
A nonprofit, CSS says that it has tens of thousands of trained community members and volunteers who defend hundreds of Jewish sites weekly.
Diament also recommends that synagogues “follow the guidance of these experts on how to ensure security at all events, whether they are prayer services or other gatherings.”
“The OU has worked closely with law enforcement authorities and other partners to increase security,” he told JNS.
He noted that “antisemitism was rising” in the years prior to Oct. 7, but it has “surged even more” in the past three years.
“That is why a top priority for OU Advocacy was the creation of, and then growing the funding for, the Nonprofit Security Grant Program,” he said. “Under the NSGP, billions of dollars in federal grants have been disbursed to synagogues, day schools and other Jewish institutions.”
Diament said the Senate Judiciary Committee will consider a bill this week that OU Advocacy is “helping to spearhead” which would create a 10-foot “buffer zone” around houses of worship.
Morton Klein, national director of the Zionist Organization of America, told JNS that Jewish institutions should heed the warning of the Consulate General of Israel Los Angeles that “Iran, Qatar and other foreign actors are financing and supporting U.S. groups to carry out these increasingly dangerous, aggressive, violent and disruptive actions against Jewish events.”
“This calls for stepped-up law enforcement, surveillance of anti-Israel groups, shutting down financing streams, enhanced visible and not-visible security and increased self-defense training in the Jewish community,” Klein told JNS.
