SWAT team members deploy near the Congregation Beth Israel Synagogue in Colleyville, Texas, on January 15, 2022.

Jeffrey Cohen, one of four hostages held at gunpoint for 11 hours at Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas, over the weekend, told Jewish Insider’sMatthew Kassel on Tuesday that Americans need to challenge instances of antisemitic rhetoric wherever they occur as part of an effort to forestall attacks against Jews that have occurred with increasing regularity in recent years.

Conspiracy theories: Cohen, 57, said the gunman, identified as Malik Faisal Akram, a 44-year-old British national, spouted a litany of antisemitic conspiracy theories as he demanded the release of Afia Siddiqui, a Pakistani woman who is currently serving an 86-year sentence at a federal prison in Fort Worth for the attempted murder of U.S. officers in Afghanistan. “These antisemitic tropes of ‘Jews control the world,’ ‘Jews control the media,’ ‘Jews control the banks,’ ‘Jews control the government’ — he had bought into those,” Cohen told JI. “He was firmly convinced that he could come in here, hold a bunch of Jews hostage, and we — the greater we, the U.S. — would trade we Jews for this one prisoner, this one woman, because we have that much power and influence.”

Challenging stereotypes: At the interpersonal level, Cohen argued that “people need to start thinking about” the antisemitic stereotypes that may once have seemed acceptable but now must be actively countered. “These little throwaway lines, you know, ‘Ach, damn Jew bankers,’” he told JI. “Those lines, which people just put off as being, alright, that’s my crazy neighbor or whatever, they’re not acceptable. They’re not acceptable not just because it’s not… things people say in polite company — they’re not acceptable because these words have consequences, and the consequences that they have is they allow people to dehumanize other people and to buy into a stereotype that is not just ‘this person hurt me’ — it is, ‘his whole community hurt me.’”

Security training: From a more practical standpoint, Cohen said that “every Jewish organization that has a building in the country needs to do active-shooter courses and needs to do it regularly.” Cohen credited such training with helping him — along with a fellow congregant, who hasn’t publicly identified himself, and Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker — escape on Saturday evening. A fourth hostage had been released earlier on Saturday. “This is not hyperbole,” he said. “I mean, I knew where the exits were. But until somebody says, ‘Hey, in a situation like this, your number one priorities are run, hide, fight, in that order.’ Well, you know, it’s not like we could hide. We were all exposed.”

Negotiating with terrorists: Cohen recalled that at one point during the standoff, as hunger kicked in, Akram had mentioned that he would let the hostages go one at a time as long as they promised to come back after 30 minutes. “He said, ‘Jeff, does that sound like a good deal to you? Would you come back?’ I said, ‘Honestly, no, it doesn’t. Because it takes me 15 minutes to get home. It takes me 15 minutes to get back. That’s 30 minutes right there. If I’m going to eat anything, I need another 20 minutes to prepare it and then to eat it. And then, I honestly don’t know, would I be able to come back? Would the police stop me?’ “He kind of laughed at that, and I laughed a little bit too, because I had turned it into a little bit of a joke because it was silly,” Cohen said.

Read the full story here.

Elsewhere: The Washington Post talked to experts who have long said the pervasiveness of such antisemitic beliefs in society can fuel violence against Jewish people. “It’s a variation on a classic antisemitic theme,” said David Feldman, director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Study of Antisemitism, a research institution based in London. “Whereas these ideas about Jewish conspiracy often take shape as an idea of Jews exerting power … [to] advance their own interests, this is a sort of variation on the theme — that if you can only get the Jews to work for you, then you’ll get your way.”

Reps. Sean Casten (D-IL) and Marie Newman (D-IL)

How much weight does one congressional vote carry with constituents — especially when that vote marks a thick line in the sand between opposing factions within the Democratic Party? That is a question Chicago-area Jewish activists are considering as the newly drawn 6th Congressional District pits two incumbents — Reps. Marie Newman, a leader in the Congressional Progressive Caucus, and Sean Casten, a member of the more moderate New Democrats — against one another in the Democratic primary, Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch reports.

Iron Dome decider: Those activists, who are gearing up to play a large role in the race as fundraisers and potential influencers, despite the district’s small Jewish population, are centering their efforts on the September 2021 vote to authorize $1 billion in supplemental funding for Israel’s Iron Dome missile-defense system. Casten voted for the additional funding; Newman was one of only eight House Democrats to vote against it.

Fresh factors: “In [her] last race, I thought Marie was an excellent candidate,” said Howard Suskin, a Jewish Democrat who practices law in Chicago and donated to Newman’s campaign in 2020, referring to her defeat of eight-term pro-life Rep. Dan Lipinski (D-IL). “But to me, the decisive factor and why I’m supporting Sean Casten is Congresswoman Newman’s vote on the Iron Dome, which to me was inexplicable.”

New territory: In November, Illinois Gov. J. B. Pritzker signed off on the new congressional map that would ultimately see Casten and Newman run in the same district. The new 6th District leans Democratic, but it is not a guaranteed victory for Democrats. A handful of Republican contenders have entered the race, though they have raised very little money and earned few significant endorsements.

PAC positions: The political action committee affiliated with J Street, the liberal pro-Israel organization, has endorsed both Casten and Newman in the past. But sources close to the organization believe J Street PAC will sit out the primary, waiting until Democratic voters choose their nominee. A J Street spokesperson did not respond to multiple requests for comment from JI. The advocacy group Democratic Majority for Israel sat out the heated race between Newman and Lipinski in 2020 and has not made an endorsement in the Casten-Newman contest.

Grain of salt: Some of the pro-Israel activists who backed Lipinski in 2020 are skeptical of Casten’s positions on Israel, but view him as a better option than Newman. “Sean Casten has always been willing and eager to meet to discuss issues relating to the U.S.-Israel relationship,” said David Rosenberg, president of CityPAC, a pro-Israel bipartisan political action committee. “Even if we do not see eye-to-eye on every issue, he has been pragmatic in his approach and has taken a much more favorable stance than Marie Newman on many critical issues and votes.”

Read the full story here.

Congregation Beth Israel synagogue is shown on January 17, 2022, in Colleyville, Texas.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Attorney General Merrick Garland, FBI Director Christopher Wray and several other administration officials joined a briefing on Tuesday afternoon with representatives from more than 1,500 synagogues and Jewish organizations to discuss the weekend attack on the Beth Israel synagogue in Colleyville, Texas, and discuss how communities can better protect themselves, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports. The Zoom call was organized by the Orthodox Union and Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.

Line in the sand: Orthodox Union Advocacy Center Executive Director Nathan Diament told JI the senior national security officials all made “very clear, strong statements identifying this as an antisemitic event that targeted the Jewish community” — something that some federal officials appeared hesitant to do in public statements over the weekend.

Making it personal: Garland, who is Jewish, noted the regular presence of police cars at his own synagogue. “It was very powerful, for example, to hear the attorney general of the United States say, ‘When I go to my synagogue, there’s a police car outside,’” Diament said. “And not just because he’s the attorney general who is attending that synagogue but the police car is there because of the Jewish community’s situation. And also to hear the Homeland Security secretary personally identify with the community, it’s a very strong message, very reassuring.”

Funding fight: The officials also discussed the Nonprofit Security Grant Program, which provides nonprofits, including religious groups, with funding for security improvements. Beth Israel was a past NSGP recipient, but the grant fund fulfilled less than half of all applications for 2021 funding. The administration did not submit a specific NSGP budget request to Capitol Hill for 2022, and Congress is currently poised to hold funding at its current level in its 2022 spending bill. Conference of Presidents CEO William Daroff said that both Garland and Mayorkas expressed their support for “fully funding” the NSGP on the call.

High praise: Daroff said that the presence of so many top officials on the call speaks to “the intense level of engagement by the federal government in the issues related to the hostage-taking in Colleyville.” He continued, “the engagement by the administration, by the Justice Department, Homeland Security and the White House has been remarkably helpful and remarkably cooperative.”

Read more here.

Bonus: Rep. Kathy Manning (D-NC), a former president of the precursor to The Jewish Federations of North America who pushed for the NSGP’s creation in the early 2000s, reflected on that experience to JI on Tuesday. “I will never forget sitting in that room explaining to the vice president [Dick Cheney] why we felt so vulnerable and why we American Jews now felt that we were potential targets for terrorism,” she said. “We have an even greater need for those security grants [now] than we did when we first lobbied for that money all those years ago.”

Loay Alshareef

At the age of 28, when Loay Alshareef, then a French-language student from Saudi Arabia, stumbled into his homestay in Paris to discover he was surrounded by Stars of David — his instinct was to turn on his heels and find another family to stay with. “I didn’t feel comfortable at the beginning,” Alshareef told The Circuit’s Tamara Zieve. Putting it mildly, Alshareef said he “didn’t have positive views about Israel or about the Jewish people,” at that time, in 2010. “I called the school and they said ‘take your time’” — and with the gentle guidance of his “wise” host mother, he did.

Turning point: That accidental and intimate almost yearlong encounter with a Jewish family proved to be a turning point for Alshareef, an observant Muslim, whose father is originally from Egypt and who also has family from Bahrain, which he described as “a very nice mix.” Today, he is a prominent face among movers and shakers in the region who have embraced the Abraham Accords, normalization deals signed in September 2020 between Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, and are working to strengthen people-to-people ties between those countries and beyond. He’s caught the attention of Israeli, U.S. and Gulf leaders, and frequently meets with prominent figures visiting the UAE, where he has lived since 2020. Alshareef owns a PR company in Abu Dhabi and works with both governmental and nongovernmental entities, and also teaches English and Arabic.

Multilingual: He has also learned Hebrew, largely from watching TV and listening to songs and podcasts, which he readily explained to The Circuit in the language. Prior to moving to the UAE, Alshareef lived in Bahrain, and spent a couple of years in the U.S., where he earned a master’s degree in software engineering from Penn State University. He hasn’t yet visited Israel, but hopes to do so when the COVID-19 situation isn’t so rife — he’s waiting to visit his mother back in Jeddah for the same reason. Ultimately, he strives to get an academic degree in Israel and study the history of the Dead Sea Scrolls, further embracing his love of Biblical Hebrew, which he describes as “very authentic and very deep.” He said that while he appreciates the focus on Israel as a startup nation, “the history of Israel itself is also a beacon in our world and deserves to have more attention to it.”

Bible buff: Rabbi Yehuda Sarna, chief rabbi of the Jewish Community of the Emirates, described Alshareef as the “consummate cultural translator.” He first met Alshareef in 2018 when he joined the Jewish community for a service in Dubai — “One of the few non-Jews who attended in those years,” Sarna told The Circuit. “We opened up the Torah to show him our scroll and he started reading. It happened to be [Torah portion] Yitro — as he read aloud he exclaimed, ‘The Ten Commandments!'” Sarna recalled. He added that this past November, at the Abu Dhabi Forum for Peace gathering, Alshareef was quoting freely from Jewish prophets “and applied them seamlessly to contemporary situations.”

Interfaith outreach: Alshareef also meets with Jewish organizations working in or visiting the country. Last week, together with fellow regional peace activists Saoud bin Hamoodah and Majed Alseyabi, Alshareef joined a roundtable hosted by the American Jewish Committee for an interfaith group of undergraduate students visiting from the U.S.Reva Gorelick, program director for AJC in Abu Dhabi, said Alshareef’s contributions to the discussion, during which he spoke about the importance of personal identity, “underscore his genuine and passionate support of Israel and Muslim-Jewish relationships, and his demonstrated commitment to the ongoing dialogue about, and in the aftermath of, the Abraham Accords.”

Read the full interview here.

Bonus: The Economist looks at the ways in which the Middle East is opening up to Jewish residents following 2020’s Abraham Accords.