Leaders must step up to confront antisemitism

During my 27 years as a law enforcement officer, nothing was more important to me than stopping violent crimes. While I was Orlando’s chief of police, we successfully reduced violent crime by over 40%. That’s why I have been extremely concerned to see rising antisemitic threats here in Florida. After yet another recent terrorist attack on a Jewish community in Texas, it is critical for federal leaders to step up and defend the safety of our fellow Americans.

On Jan. 15, four Americans were held at gunpoint by a terrorist at their synagogue in Colleyville, Texas. Eventually, Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker “grabbed a chair and heaved it at the gunman.” The rabbi said that “it was years of security training, prompted by threats to synagogues, that allowed them to escape.”

These trainings, which are critical to the safety and security of Americans across the country, are funded in part by a federal program that I have championed throughout my time in Congress.

As a member of the House Homeland Security Committee, my No. 1 priority in Congress has been to strengthen federal security programs that have kept Floridians safe. In 2018, we secured Orlando’s restoration to the Urban Area Security Initiative, a critical anti-terrorism program that I used as police chief. Four years later, we have successfully won annual increases to Florida’s share.

This work has also made Florida’s nonprofits, faith-based organizations, and houses of worship eligible for a separate set of critical security grants. Last year we doubled this funding and provided $6.5 million for organizations in South Florida and millions more across the state.

As the Jewish Federations of North America wrote, “communities can only flourish when their security needs are met.” The increased funding, they said, “will save lives, help keep Jewish and other communities safe, and allow them to flourish.”

These grants are critically important. In 2019, for example, a 68-year-old man named Yosef Lifshutz was shot six times in the leg outside of Young Israel of Greater Miami. His attacker was thankfully caught and charged with a hate crime.

Jewish Federation of Greater Orlando Executive Director Keith Dvorchik recently told reporters that “it continues to get worse year after year after year.” Just this week, antisemitic flyers were left outside of hundreds of homes in Miami Beach.

Antisemitism is a threat to every American and we must confront it as one nation, indivisible. In 2017, extremists marched in Charlottesville, Virginia, and chanted “Jews will not replace us.” One of them killed a young woman named Heather Heyer. In 1995, 168 Americans were killed in the Oklahoma City bombing after the bomber was radicalized by antisemitic conspiracies. The same antisemitic conspiracies helped to radicalize the murderers of nine churchgoers at bible study in Charleston in 2015, 11 Americans at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue in 2018, and 23 Americans in El Paso, Texas in 2019 — the deadliest attack on Latinos in modern American history.

In the wake of the terrorist hostagetaking in Texas earlier this month, it is critical that we fully support federal programs that provide security training and services to Jewish institutions across Florida.

I know that America can do better because I have seen America do better.

In 1964, 16 rabbis were jailed in St. Augustine, Florida, after their participation in a civil rights protest. It was the largest mass arrest of rabbis in American history. From their prison cell in

St. Augustine, the rabbis wrote, “we came because we realized that injustice in St. Augustine, as anywhere else, diminishes the humanity of each of us … we came because we know that, second only to silence, the greatest danger to man is loss of faith in man’s capacity to act.”

Today let us not forget our capacity to act. We can reject antisemitism and hate. We can give Jewish organizations, and all Americans, the security and safety that they need to be free from fear and from violence. And we can continue to build America into a land of justice for all, where life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are never harmed by who you are, where you come from or how you worship.