(JNS) Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean and director of global social action at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, met this month with top FBI officials from the counterterrorism and criminal divisions at FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C.
“If we’re going to better understand the nature and scope of the threats, we need the FBI to lead, taking everyone out of their silo, getting all the information that they’re uniquely positioned to get, and then having a desk that’s going to review things and have access to other agencies—domestic and otherwise—in order for us to quantify and qualify what’s going on,” Cooper told JNS.
He went to the capital with two asks. Firstly, to urge the immediate creation of a special FBI Taskforce Against Antisemitism, which would make it easier for local law enforcement and other agencies to be able to have a single address in dealing with antisemitism and to allow for the FBI to utilize its immense resources to begin piecing together the broader picture of Jew-hatred in America. The Simon Wiesenthal Center made a similar request to former President Donald Trump following an escalating series of antisemitic violence in 2019.
“Maybe it’s just social media that has that immediate punch to the gut for every Jew who sees [increasing antisemitism]. But there are a lot of different things that are roiling, and we need to know if the individuals perpetrating this are working in concert or are they just inspired because of the 24/7 hate on social media.”
He continued, saying that “when you have these kinds of violent attacks, the issue of the possibility of coordination, and to what extent and whether there are overseas players or not needs to be looked at. Thankfully, Congress and many state local governments have and are enabling synagogues and community centers to harden the target, get more cameras, etc. All of that is good. But we don’t want to live in an armed camp. We want to understand the nature of the threat.”
Cooper lamented the current law-enforcement trend of going from antisemitic incident to incident without an ability to collect data in a coherent fashion, analyze it and help the broader law-enforcement and Jewish communities to better understand the nature of the threats.
Cooper’s second request is the adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism by federal law-enforcement agencies.
“We can’t expect the agencies that we’re dealing with to understand every aspect of antisemitism or to see it from the perspective of the world Jewish community. So, having that working definition means we’re all on the same page. I think it would be extremely useful to create some training for the FBI and for Homeland Security as to the nature of antisemitism, how it’s unique, and how and where it interconnects with other extremists and other hate groups,” said Cooper.
