[Joint House and Senate Hearing, 114 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
ANTICIPATING AND PREVENTING
DEADLY ATTACKS ON
EUROPEAN JEWISH COMMUNITIES
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
COMMISSION ON SECURITY AND COOPERATION IN EUROPE
ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
APRIL 19, 2016
__________
Printed for the use of the
Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe
[CSCE 114-2-3]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available via http://www.csce.gov
_________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
99-941 PDF WASHINGTON : 2016
_________________________________________________________________________________
For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Publishing Office,
Internet:bookstore.gpo.gov. Phone:toll free (866)512-1800;DC area (202)512-1800
Fax:(202) 512-2104 Mail:Stop IDCC,Washington,DC 20402-001
COMMISSION ON SECURITY AND COOPERATION IN EUROPE
LEGISLATIVE BRANCH COMMISSIONERS
HOUSE
SENATE
CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey, ROGER F. WICKER, Mississippi,
Chairman Co-Chairman
ALCEE L. HASTINGS, Florida BENJAMIN L. CARDIN, Maryland
ROBERT B. ADERHOLT, Alabama JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas
MICHAEL C. BURGESS, Texas RICHARD BURR, North Carolina
STEVE COHEN, Tennessee JEANNE SHAHEEN, New Hampshire
ALAN GRAYSON, Florida TOM UDALL, New Mexico
RANDY HULTGREN, Illinois SHELDON WHITEHOUSE, Rhode Island
JOSEPH R. PITTS, Pennsylvania
LOUISE McINTOSH SLAUGHTER,
New York
EXECUTIVE BRANCH COMMISSIONERS
Vacant, Department of State
Vacant, Department of Commerce
Vacant, Department of Defense
[ii]
ANTICIPATING AND PREVENTING
DEADLY ATTACKS ON
EUROPEAN JEWISH COMMUNITIES
----------
December 16, 2015
COMMISSIONERS
Page
Hon. Christopher H. Smith, Chairman, Commission on Security and
Cooperation in Europe.......................................... 1
Hon. Roger Wicker, Co-Chairman, Commission on Security and
Cooperation in Europe.......................................... 3
Hon. Steve Cohen, Commissioner, Commission on Security and
Cooperation in Europe.......................................... 4
Hon. Alan Grayson, Commissioner, Commission on Security and
Cooperation in Europe.......................................... 11
Hon. Randy Hultgren, Commissioner, Commission on Security and
Cooperation in Europe.......................................... 21
MEMBER
Hon. David Schweikert, Representative from the State of Arizona.. 10
WITNESSES
Rabbi Andrew Baker, Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairman-
in-Office on Combating Anti-Semitism, and Director of
International Jewish Affairs, American Jewish Committee........ 5
Jonathan Biermann, Executive Director, Crisis Cell for the
Belgian Jewish Community (via videoconference from Brussels,
Belgium)....................................................... 8
John J. Farmer, Jr., Director, Faith-Based Communities Security
Program, Rutgers University.................................... 12
Paul Goldenberg, National Director, Secure Community Network..... 17
[iii]
APPENDICES
Prepared statement of Hon. Christopher H. Smith.................. 38
Prepared statement of Hon. Roger Wicker.......................... 40
Prepared statement of Hon. Benjamin L. Cardin.................... 41
Prepared statement of Rabbi Andrew Baker......................... 42
Prepared statement of Jonathan Biermann.......................... 46
Prepared statement of John J. Farmer, Jr......................... 48
Prepared statement of Paul Goldenberg............................ 52
ANTICIPATING AND PREVENTING
DEADLY ATTACKS ON
EUROPEAN JEWISH COMMUNITIES
----------
April 19, 2016
Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe
Washington, DC
The hearing was held at 1 p.m. in room 210, Cannon House
Office Building, Washington, DC, Hon. Christopher H. Smith,
Chairman, Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe,
presiding.
Commissioners present: Hon. Christopher H. Smith, Chairman,
Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe; Hon. Roger
Wicker, Co-Chairman, Commission on Security and Cooperation in
Europe; Hon. Steve Cohen, Commissioner, Commission on Security
and Cooperation in Europe; Hon. Alan Grayson, Commissioner,
Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe; and Hon.
Randy Hultgren, Commissioner, Commission on Security and
Cooperation in Europe.
Member present: Hon. David Schweikert, Representative from
the State of Arizona.
Witnesses present: Rabbi Andrew Baker, Personal
Representative of the OSCE Chairman-in-Office on Combating
Anti-Semitism, and Director of International Jewish Affairs,
American Jewish Committee; Jonathan Biermann, Executive
Director, Crisis Cell for the Belgian Jewish Community (via
videoconference from Brussels, Belgium); John J. Farmer, Jr.,
Director, Faith-Based Communities Security Program, Rutgers
University; and Paul Goldenberg, National Director, Secure
Community Network.
HON. CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, CHAIRMAN, COMMISSION ON SECURITY AND
COOPERATION IN EUROPE
Mr. Smith. The Commission will come to order. And good
afternoon to everyone. Thank you for being here this afternoon.
I'd especially like to thank our witnesses: Rabbi Andy
Baker, Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairman-in-Office
on Combating Anti-Semitism and the director of international
Jewish affairs for the American Jewish Committee; Jonathan
Biermann, who will join us shortly, executive director of the
Crisis Cell for the Belgian Jewish community, who will testify
by way of video link. And then we will also hear from Attorney
General John Farmer, who currently serves as director of the
Faith-Based Communities Security Program at Rutgers, and much
more; and Paul Goldenberg, director of the Secure Community
Network. So four outstanding experts to provide insights and
counsel to the Commission.
Today we will discuss how to anticipate and prevent deadly
attacks on European Jewish communities. The recent terrorist
attacks in Brussels were reminders that Europeans of all
religions and ethnicities are at risk from ISIS. But there can
be no European security without Jewish security. As we have
seen so many times in so many places, violence against Jewish
communities often foreshadows violence against other religious,
ethnic, and national communities.
ISIS especially hates the Jewish people, and has instructed
its followers to prioritize killing Jewish men and women. The
group's cronies targeted the Jewish Museum of Belgium in May of
2014, the Paris kosher supermarket in January of 2015, and the
Great Synagogue in Copenhagen in February of 2015, and murdered
people in all of those vicious attacks. Some thwarted plots
have revealed plans to target even more Jewish community places
and kill even more Jewish people. Other Islamist terrorist
groups share its hatred and its intent.
However, terrorists and terrorism only account for some of
the annual increases in violent anti-Semitic attacks in Europe.
And over the past few years, surveys and crime data show that
anti-
Semitic attitudes and violence in Europe are most rife in
Muslim communities. Anti-Semitic attitudes and non-terroristic
anti-
Semitic violence have also risen across the religious,
political and ideological spectrum.
There are many different aspects of combating anti-Semitic
violence. For example, European Jewish and Muslim civil society
groups are collaborating with each other to counter violent
extremism and hatred that impacts their respective communities.
Today's hearing will zero in on the role of law enforcement
agencies and especially on their relationship with Jewish
community groups. These partnerships are essential, according
to Jewish communities and experts on both sides of the
Atlantic. That is why I authored House Resolution 354 as a
blueprint for action and why the House passed it unanimously
last November.
Our witnesses will testify today about what European law
enforcement agencies, their governments, and Jewish community
groups need to do to ensure these partnerships are formalized
and are effective. They will discuss the ideal roles for the
OSCE, the United States, and other civil society groups in
supporting these initiatives. The witnesses will also share
what can be learned from the experiences of law enforcement
agencies and Jewish communities to counter terrorism and
strengthen public safety more broadly. Their insights will help
guide the efforts of the U.S. Government, the Congress, and my
fellow Helsinki commissioners, especially Commission Co-
Chairman Roger Wicker and Ranking Member Senator Ben Cardin,
who has been the Special Representative on Anti-Semitism,
Racism and Intolerance for the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly
since last March.
I'd like to now yield to our distinguished chairman, Roger
Wicker.
HON. ROGER WICKER, CO-CHAIRMAN, COMMISSION ON SECURITY AND
COOPERATION IN EUROPE
Mr. Wicker. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for calling
this very important and timely hearing.
The Holocaust ended nearly 71 years ago. In his important
book ``1944,'' author Jay Winik once again recently reminded
readers of the horror of the Holocaust, and I think made a
great contribution to the historical perspective on the issue
of anti-Semitism and all of its extremely, extremely horrific
ramifications. It's appalling that today people are still being
attacked and murdered because they're Jewish.
Anti-Semitism is part of the Islamic State's brutal
ideology. It's an official part of their thought. The terrorist
organization's followers have already shown their willingness
and ability to target and kill members of European Jewish
communities. They join other jihadi groups, like al-Qaida, who
kill innocent people because of their religion, ethnicity or
race.
But terrorists are not the only violent threats to European
Jewish communities. Others also contributing to anti-Semitic
violence include neo-Nazis, nationalist political forces that
exploit historical anti-Semitism, ideologues who invoke the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict to justify anti-Semitic action,
and other disaffected individuals.
I must also point out that the Russian Federation continues
to fund extremists and anti-Semitic parties, like the National
Front in France. At the same time, some of my Russian friends
and some of our Russian colleagues in the OSCE Parliamentary
Assembly come to official meetings and time and again falsely
accuse some of their Baltic neighbors and our NATO allies of
being part of fascist or anti-Semite regime. And so I'd only
point out that not every accusation of anti-Semitism and
fascism is well-founded. We must be careful in listening
actually to the facts in regard to these charges.
I've been honored to collaborate on these issues with my
longtime colleague and friend Senator Ben Cardin, ranking
member of this Commission and special representative on anti-
Semitism, racism and intolerance for the OSCE's Parliamentary
Assembly. We led Resolution 290, entitled ``Commemorating the
75th Anniversary of Kristallnacht, or the Night of the Broken
Glass,'' which the Senate passed unanimously. The resolution
reaffirms America's steadfast commitment to remembering the
Holocaust and eliminating the evil of anti-Semitism.
As chairman of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly's Committee
on Political Affairs and Security, I will do my part to help
ensure that combating anti-Semitism is integrated into OSCE
initiatives against terrorism, as well as against violent
extremism. I will also continue to monitor Russia's outrageous
exploitation of the issue of anti-Semitism.
So, Mr. Chairman, thank you very much for convening this
important hearing, and I look forward to hearing from our
witnesses.
Mr. Smith. Chairman Wicker, thank you very much.
Commissioner Cohen.
HON. STEVE COHEN, COMMISSIONER, COMMISSION ON SECURITY AND
COOPERATION IN EUROPE
Mr. Cohen. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just appreciate your
having the hearing. I'm always in favor of the hearings that
the chairman chooses to have testimony on, and this is an
important one. And to serve--to be here with Roger Wicker, one
of the really good guys in the Congress.
But I appreciate--I've read your bios. You all have all
done a great deal in your professional lives. I thank you for
committing your experience and your knowledge to this issue,
and I look forward to hearing your recommendations and some
reportage of things maybe I didn't know that have occurred. I
know that it's--ISIS can target Jewish people, but there's the
neo-Nazis and all that. And Jews have always been a prime
target, maybe for the longest time ever of any group that's
been a target of terrorism and hate and prejudice.
And so I want to lend my voice when I can to this effort.
Thank you.
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much, Commissioner Cohen.
I'd like to introduce to the Commission people who need no
introduction, who have done so much for so long on combating
anti-Semitism, beginning first with Rabbi Baker, Andy Baker,
who has been one of the most important figures in combating
anti-Semitism and addressing Holocaust-era issues over the past
few decades. He was first appointed as Personal Representative
of the OSCE Chairman-in-Office on Combating Anti-Semitism in
2009, and every subsequent chair-in-office has reappointed him.
He has been the director of international Jewish affairs for
the American Jewish Committee since 2001 and with the
organization since 1979. He has served in senior leadership
roles in many initiatives, and has been publicly commended many
times, including by heads of state in countries like Germany,
for his efforts.
I would note parenthetically that when the OSCE put
together the all-important meetings on combating anti-Semitism,
probably one of the most important ones of all was the Berlin
Conference. And one of the co-authors of the Berlin
Declaration, especially when we ran into some snags and some
member states that were recalcitrant about what should be
included, Andy Baker was the wordsmith who found the right
wording that advanced that all-
important declaration. And so all of us deeply appreciate his
leadership there as well.
We also will be hearing from Jonathan Biermann, who is the
executive director of the Crisis Cell of the Belgian Jewish
community and was in charge of the Cell at the time of the
attack on the Jewish Museum in 2014. A lawyer by profession, he
has been a member of the City Council in a municipality in
Brussels since 2012 and is currently an alderman on the
Council. Mr. Biermann is a former political adviser to the
president of the Belgian Senate, the minister of development
cooperation, and the minister of foreign affairs. He brings the
perspective of a Brussels native and resident born into a
family very involved in the Jewish community.
We'll then hear from Attorney General John Farmer, who is
currently the director of the Faith-Based Communities Security
Program, part of the Institute for Emergency Preparedness and
Homeland Security at Rutgers University, our state university.
The program spearheaded a major conference last July on
``Developing Community-Based Strategies to Prevent Targeted
Violence and Mass Casualty Attacks'' in collaboration with the
FBI, Department of Justice and others. He was the attorney
general of New Jersey from 1999 to 2002, and one of the most
effective attorney generals the state has ever had, and senior
counsel to the 9/11 Commission. Attorney General Farmer was
later the dean of the Rutgers Law School. So thank you, Dean,
Attorney General, and all the other very important titles you
have borne and done so with such dignity.
Then we'll hear from Paul Goldenberg, who is the national
director of the Secure Community Network, a national homeland
security initiative of the American Jewish community. And he's
also the CEO of Cardinal Point Strategies. A New Jersey native,
for decades he was part of the law enforcement community,
starting as a cop--including years of undercover work--and
eventually as the first chief of the Office of Bias Crimes and
Community Relations for the State of New Jersey. Paul
Goldenberg has relevant experience with the OSCE as the former
program manager and special advisor for the OSCE/ODIHR Law
Enforcement Officer Training Program for Combating Hate Crimes.
He is currently co-chair of the Department of Homeland
Security's Foreign Fighter Task Force, vice chair of the DHS
Faith Based Advisory Security Council, and special advisor and
member of the Secretary of Homeland Security's Combating
Violent Extremism Working Group.
Finally, I am pleased to recognize the presence here today
of Paul Miller, a member of the Board of Overseers of Rutgers
University. Throughout his law career, he was involved in
public safety and security initiatives, including for the
Jewish community, and continues that important work now through
the Miller Family International Initiative at the Rutgers
School of Law.
So I'd like to now yield the floor to Rabbi Baker for his
opening comments.
RABBI ANDREW BAKER, PERSONAL REPRESENTATIVE OF THE OSCE
CHAIRMAN-IN-OFFICE ON COMBATING ANTI-SEMITISM, AND DIRECTOR OF
INTERNATIONAL JEWISH AFFAIRS, AMERICAN JEWISH COMMITTEE
Rabbi Baker. Congressman Smith, thank you. Senator Wicker,
Congressman Cohen, it's a pleasure to be here, even if the
topic itself hardly brings pleasure.
I have to say at the outset your involvement and your role,
and going back really now years and years, have really been
critical to identifying this issue, and in particular to really
elevating it to the level of concern that it demands on the
part of European political leadership.
In my written testimony, which I am not going to read here,
I've tried to lay out somewhat over the last 15 years sort of
the history of essentially what has been first a problem in
recognizing that anti-Semitism had really returned in different
ways to the European continent--first, the problem being faced
of the return of anti-Semitism to Europe; then, really being
able to acknowledge the seriousness and then the source of this
problem; and ultimately, how to address it--how to deal with
it, it is still very much something with which we must wrestle
and, in dealing with European governments, still to convince
them of the seriousness of this and of the steps that should be
taken to address it.
The fact is that, early on, as we saw a spike--a real surge
in anti-Semitic incidents, there were those who were dismissing
it as not really being anti-Semitic, or being related to the
politics of the Middle East, and therefore somehow explained
away for that. It took a while before people realized this had
become a new normal: physical attacks, verbal harassment. Day-
to-day life of many Jews in Europe had changed. No longer did
they feel the normal comfort and security that had been part of
their life.
Further, we came to see that there were lethal attacks on
Jewish targets and, even here, a reluctance at first to
acknowledge what they were. We can go back to 2006 with the
torture and murder of Ilan Halimi, a Jew in Paris, that
initially even the government refused to consider to be anti-
Semitic. We can jump to 2012, when young students and a father
were murdered at the Jewish school in Toulouse. And the
perpetrator, who turned out to be a radical Islamist extremist,
was at first thought to be a right-wing neo-Nazi figure, which
immediately generated broad popular opprobrium for this. And
yet, when the true source of his character emerged, the
response was more ambivalent--a difficulty in France, but also
in other countries to recognize that this had become now a new
source, a new threat, certainly to the Jews of Europe, but
ultimately, as we came to see, to Europe more generally.
We then had and still have to confront a reality that you
have growing minority populations in Europe, themselves victims
of prejudice and discrimination, but who happen to harbor not
just negative views regarding politics in the Middle East and
Israel, but more negative views when it comes to Jews. It's an
environment that in many cases European governments have not
figured out how to deal with, how to confront. But as I said,
it has eroded the day-to-day sense of comfort and security for
many European Jews.
Now, we have on top of this, as we've come to see, the
lethal threats from radical Islamist terrorists. We saw this in
Paris at the attack on the kosher market year before last, this
one just past. We saw it following that in Copenhagen. We saw
it at the Jewish Museum in Brussels. And again, time after
time, governments have been slow to recognize the special
threat--not sole threat, but the special threat--that Jews face
from this new source of violence and terror.
Only as short as three years ago, when I in my OSCE role
visited various European capitals, there was a certain element
of denial. In The Hague, talking to Dutch officials, asking
about support for protection of Jewish communities, I was told,
well, we can't do this for Jews without doing this for
Christians and doing this for Muslims, and in the end we don't
have the resources.
I know Jonathan will speak more about Brussels, but I met
with Belgian officials also that same year. They said, yes, we
recognize the threat level to Jewish institutions is high; in
fact, it's as high as the threat level to the U.S. embassies in
Brussels or the Israeli embassy. But, they said frankly, they
don't have the resources to give to provide protection.
In Denmark, reflecting a concern that the Jewish community,
when they had asked for police to be positioned in front of the
synagogue and the school when they were in use, and the
government said to them, sorry, but in Denmark--as they then
told to me--we have a relaxed approach to security. We're not
going to position guards in front of these buildings because it
would make our citizens uncomfortable. And so it ultimately
took the tragedy of the death--the murder of Dan Uzan, an
unarmed Jewish volunteer security guard, to finally galvanize
some response.
Governments have responded by stepping up the physical
security. There are police in front of these buildings today.
But each government is doing it differently than another. We
really need to look now and say: What works? What's most
efficient? What could be carried on beyond the immediate crisis
moment? Because clearly the resources that are needed are not
going to be there indefinitely. Mobilizing the military, as has
taken place in France and in Belgium, is not something that can
be sustained indefinitely. So this is something that now must
be addressed.
And we have today a huge influx of refugees and migrants
from the Middle East. Doors have been opened. It is admirable.
And Chancellor Merkel and others who've done this should be
praised for their openness to accepting refugees who have truly
suffered, and suffered grievously.
But we know and they know that many of these people that
are coming in bring with them attitudes--there was an
environment in which they lived where anti-Jewish, anti-
Semitic, anti-Israel sentiments were commonplace. Western
values, for that matter, are often lacking. So there's an
enormous challenge that these governments face if they're going
to absorb these new refugees. And we know there's also a
concern for what this might contribute to the problems we see
of radical terrorists and an inability of European governments
to really get their handle on this and figure out how to
control it.
I met only last week--last Thursday--in Vienna with the
Austrian minister of justice, Wolfgang Brandstetter. He shared
with me the reality that in Austria there are now 38
terrorists--38 returning ISIS fighters who are in Austrian
prisons. Two of those imprisoned came in with refugees that
surged into Austria, and those two have ties, he said, with the
bombers of the recent attacks in Brussels. So this is simply an
anecdotal aside that demonstrates the very real practical
problem European governments face.
Jews are not the only target. Clearly, European leaders
need to figure out how to deal with all of this, how to
mobilize the public to be part of the process. And I know that
my friends John and Paul will speak more to what role the
public can play and what can be learned from the American
experience in this regard.
And finally, Jewish community leaders, which have stepped
forward, which are training their own communities to have
professionals knowledgeable about how to address security, need
to be working cooperatively and on an equal level with law
enforcement and intelligence agencies in their respective
governments so there can be truly two-way communication and
involvement. As has been pointed out, the reality is that the
problem exists, if only in different forms, throughout the
European continent. And an environment with a lot of economic
uncertainty, with problems of refugees and migration--an
environment that has clearly bolstered right-wing nationalist
populist parties--that also adds to the uncertainty that Jews--
although not Jews alone--that Jews in Europe face when they
look and think about their future.
And as we know and as we've heard, today in a way this is
something new from all of the decades since the end of the war.
Today, European Jews themselves truly do wonder about their
future. Therefore, it's all the more incumbent on us and on the
role particularly that the Helsinki Commission has always
played in elevating knowledge and understanding of these
concerns and issues, and pushing for very practical steps such
as physical security, which you've taken up in your resolution,
to push for governments truly to address them.
Thank you for this opportunity to share my thoughts with
you.
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much, Rabbi Baker. I would like
to recognize--and again, thank you for your extraordinary
leadership for decades.
Ira Forman is among us. Thank you for gracing us with your
presence, the special envoy to monitor and combat anti-
Semitism. He's been in that position since 2013. He is a former
political director and legislative liaison for the American
Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC. And thank you,
again, Ira, for being here.
I'd like to now yield to Mr. Biermann, who comes across, or
comes to us, from Brussels.
JONATHAN BIERMANN, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, CRISIS CELL FOR THE
BELGIAN JEWISH COMMUNITY (via videoconference from Brussels,
Belgium)
Mr. Biermann. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for giving
me the opportunity to testify, and thanks to the American
embassy for the logistic support.
Born and raised in a typical Jewish family in Brussels,
I've always been used to security measures. Being a child, I
wasn't surprised to see the police and security at the door of
the Jewish day school, just as my almost two-year-old waves
every day to the soldiers serving at the very same gate. And it
is somehow a relief to the members of my community to know that
the threat targeting Jews is taken seriously.
Since World War II, Belgium has known multiple episodes of
terrorist waves perpetrated in the name of different causes,
like the Communist Combatant Cells in the 1970s. Other acts
have targeted more specifically the Jewish community, like in
the 1980s, when the Great Synagogue of Brussels was attacked by
a man with a machine gun, when a school bus was targeted in
Antwerp with grenades, and when the president of the Jewish
Organizations Coordination Committee, Dr. Wybran, was murdered.
In parallel, anti-Semitism has increased, and it worries
the Brussels Jewish community, counting a little less than
20,000 members. The reports of the Brussels-based NGO
Antisemitisme.be show that the level of hatred has not been so
high since 1945, with a rise of 70 percent in 2014 compared to
2013, and with a new phenomenon against Jews, which is
discrimination. Violence has reached an unprecedented level of
horror, as four people were killed in the terrorist attack of
the Brussels Jewish Museum in May 2014.
Jewish life in Europe is part of its diversity. As we also
know from the Fundamental Rights Agency survey, an increasing
number of Jews feel less and less comfortable attending Jewish
events and institutions. As a result, despite the strong
statements and actions taken by the Belgian Government,
including public funding for the physical protection of Jewish
buildings and institutions, many community members feel
uncertain about their safety and even their future in Belgium.
ISIS strategy and operational processes are unprecedented,
as the broader community is generally targeted and then is the
Jewish community as well. In a way, the Jewish citizens are
confronted to double risk in a time when security agencies and
resources are over-solicited.
Since January 2015, the army has deployed to protect the
public institutions at risk, including Jewish institutions, in
the limits of existing capacities, which will probably not be
permanent. Is it enough, especially from a Jewish community
perspective? I would not be able to answer the question. As you
know, that in a community of two Jews you would find at least
three different opinions. But the worst situation would be if
the government--the law enforcement and security agencies--had
no opinion at all.
And this is why the implementation of House Resolution 354
would make a significant difference. No need to reinvent the
wheel, especially as this is not a time for testing, but for
implementing improved methods. The knowledge and expertise
exists. The Institute for Emergency Preparedness in the
Homeland Security, the Faith-Based Communities Security Program
at Rutgers University, John Farmer, Paul Goldenberg, and their
international partners have built an impressive network with a
unique capacity to share best practices in the implementation
of the ``see something, say something'' strategy.
Such a project would result on reaffirming and redefining
the fundamentals of what we call in Belgium ``le vivre-
ensemble,'' living together. Obviously, this concept was not
ambitious enough and has failed. We should have been able to
create a model in which everyone feels he's part not only of
his faith-based or cultural community, but also of a broader
community, which implies rights, duties and responsibilities.
``See something, say something'' aims to empower community
leadership to take their part in establishing a common project
based on respect and mutual understanding. It is not an
incitement to denounce members of the community, but to go
beyond your own community, building fraternity.
In such a context, relations established with local
authorities and police are based on trust and confidence. On a
practical level, communication channels, types of intelligence
collected by each actor must be clearly defined. The protocols
existing in the U.S., the U.K. and France should be a reference
for local police and national law enforcement agencies,
empowering local communities.
The situation of local communities and their relationship
with the authorities should be regularly assessed. Confidence
and collaboration should guide community leadership, law
enforcement agencies, and political leaders in the
decisionmaking process.
The Belgian government has decided to invest resources into
security policies. It should include developing a new
intelligence strategy in which communities should play a
valuable role with respect for fundamental rights, civil
liberties and privacy.
As a conclusion, I would underline the necessity of
establishing the terms of reference that European governments
should use. International organizations and agencies are a key
player in that matter. I personally believe that the OSCE could
develop a platform to exchange good practices, and confront the
approaches and strategies in fighting an external threat with
domestic impacts and supports.
I would, finally, formulate the following recommendations.
First, implement ``if you see something, say something'' with
Jewish communities as pilots. Second, empower Jewish
communities by establishing a memorandum of understanding
defining the collaboration between law enforcement agencies and
Jewish communities. And third, never banalize anti-Semitism.
Thank you very much.
Mr. Smith. Thank you so very much, Mr. Biermann, for your
testimony, and for your recommendations, for your leadership. I
think the MoU is an outstanding issue, and during questions I
would certainly ask you how well that is proceeding.
We are joined by Mr. Schweikert and Mr. Grayson, and
they're free, if they'd like, to say a word. We do have votes--
four five-minute votes--three five-minute, one 15-minute. We'll
probably take about a 20-minute recess, and I apologize to our
distinguished witnesses for that.
David?
HON. DAVID SCHWEIKERT, REPRESENTATIVE FROM THE STATE OF ARIZONA
Mr. Schweikert. Forgive me, but this is--just because we're
all going to be running out the door on you to go vote--and how
many minutes do we have right now on the votes?
Mr. Smith. Thirteen, plenty of time.
Mr. Schweikert. Thirteen.
If I wanted to grab a publication that did sort of real-
time data collection of saying here's the number of incidents
in Europe over the last year, and so I wanted to actually know
more than discussion or anecdotal, but the curiosity of threats
both to the Jewish community but maybe other minority
communities, and see if it's a common front, it's--because, for
many of us, we're trying to understand is this a cultural
change that--is the mix changing attitudinally or
demographically? Is that overvalued, undervalued? Where do I go
to actually be able to keep track of here's reality? Because
that reality should be building our policy.
Mr. Goldenberg. From the standpoint of the Jewish
communities--that's almost unfortunate, but it's a reality--the
law enforcement communities of Europe are very much like the
law enforcement communities were here in the United States 25
years ago. When we first started to engage in what was called
bias crimes or hate crimes, if a state did not keep good
records and the police did not have good indicators as to what
a hate crime was, or an attack against an institution based on
race, color, et cetera, the records were not going to be well-
kept. So the NGOs stepped in here in the United States and did
a remarkable job, and actually built the criteria or the
framework that's now become almost a part of all 50 states,
including the U.S. Government, on how to identify a hate crime
and how to capture the data as it relates to the hate crime. So
we're in the same place in Europe as we were decades ago.
There are a couple of Jewish organizations, as well as some
international human rights organizations, that keep what I
think are extraordinary records. Because unfortunately, in some
countries, people don't go the police. They'll go to their own
NGOs within their own communities. So those organizations, or
examples thereof, are the CST, which is the Community Security
Trust of the United Kingdom. It's a Jewish security
organization that works hand in hand with the Met Police and
Scotland Yard. You have what's called the SPCJ in France, which
is a similar organization. And you have organizations like
Jonathan's and others. So there is an infrastructure for this.
Mr. Schweikert. But is there a--sort of an abstract where
we could keep in our office and say, look, here's the best data
we have?
Mr. Goldenberg. Andy, do you want----
Rabbi Baker. Yes. Where you can go is--this is really after
that conference in Berlin and the Berlin Declaration tasking
governments within the OSCE to monitor and collect data on hate
crimes. So that is----
Mr. Schweikert. Well, I remember the discussion about it. I
just----
Rabbi Baker. No, but it's now collected by ODIHR.
Mr. Schweikert. OK.
Rabbi Baker. And, of course, it's based on what governments
report, although they supplement it with, as Paul indicated,
where you do have community monitors. And it's--now they even
have a kind of interactive map on their website, so you can
literally click on country by country and you can see what data
they've received. So that--and we're talking about hate crimes
generally.
Mr. Schweikert. All right. I'm going to go now, look for it
on the floor because we'll have wi-fi. Thank you, gentlemen.
Thank you, Chairman.
Mr. Smith. Thank you.
Mr. Grayson, the gentleman from Florida.
HON. ALAN GRAYSON, COMMISSIONER, COMMISSION ON SECURITY AND
COOPERATION IN EUROPE
Mr. Grayson. Briefly, is it better to think of fighting
anti-Semitic attacks as a police function or a military
function? Rabbi?
Rabbi Baker. Well, the military has been brought in only in
these extreme situations where they needed protection and the
police themselves didn't have the resources. That certainly is
not a long-term solution, and it's an imperfect short-term
solution. I would say the issue ultimately is police need to be
engaged, but even there the issue of security goes beyond just
police. It goes to the larger environment and how can you make
for a situation where you're literally not putting up a barrier
to someone about--to a terrorist or other about to storm, but
really to change the atmosphere more generally and to get
people aware--again, as people have said, whether it's modeled
after the ``see something, say something'' program that is
being proposed here or something similar, where people are
engaged so you don't get to that point.
The reality is, most of the synagogues/schools throughout
Europe, Jewish schools, require some protection. It's clearly a
role of police. But a police that needs to be really on the
ground and engaged with the Jewish community, not the idea that
we have to bring in the military to provide that security.
Mr. Grayson. Mr. Farmer?
Mr. Farmer. Yes, I would just echo Rabbi Baker's comments
and point out that the structure in terms of the relationship
between the police and the military differs from country to
country. And so that kind of structure, that kind of approach
simply can't do the job of anticipating and preventing these
attacks. By the time you call the military in, it's too late;
the attacks have already happened. So what our work in Europe
has demonstrated to us--and I think it's applicable across the
ocean, too--is that you have to engage the community at every
level in order to deal with the threat as it's evolved.
Mr. Grayson. Mr. Goldenberg?
Mr. Goldenberg. Yes, I can only echo what my fine gentlemen
have stated here. Exactly as John indicated, once the military
is there, it's too late. It has to be a police function. And
that's really been--the greatest, I think, concern is building
capacity between the European policing agencies and the
Jewish--the Jewish groups and the security apparatus within
those groups that protect them. So that's an issue.
Mr. Smith. And, Paul, I know you can elaborate on it
momentarily, when we're done with the votes, but Paul actually
headed up an effort of training the trainers--of having police
who will listen to other police on best practices. And he did
that throughout Europe for years, and it made a significant
difference.
And I thank you, Mr. Grayson.
Mr. Grayson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, witnesses.
[Whereupon, at 1:39 p.m., the Commission stood in recess
until 2:18 p.m.]
Mr. Smith. [Sounds gavel.] The hearing will resume. And
again, I want to apologize profusely to our distinguished
witnesses for that long delay. We did have four votes, but they
took longer than they should have.
I'd like to now recognize Attorney General Farmer for such
time as he may consume.
JOHN J. FARMER, JR., DIRECTOR, FAITH-BASED COMMUNITIES SECURITY
PROGRAM, RUTGERS UNIVERSITY
Mr. Farmer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for this opportunity
to testify on the subject of ``Anticipating and Preventing
Attacks on the European Jewish Communities in Europe.'' Today's
hearing comes at a critical juncture in the struggle against
transnational terrorism, in the history of the Jewish
communities in Europe, and in the progress of civilization in
securing the safety of vulnerable communities worldwide.
You were kind enough to give a sense of what my background
is, so I won't belabor that. But of most relevance to today's
hearing, I was the chief law enforcement officer in New Jersey
on 9/11, a day when our state, as you know, Mr. Chairman, lost
some 700 of its citizens. I can never forget that day, or the
sense of failure and disbelief I felt that such an attack could
have succeeded. Understanding exactly what went wrong and how
public safety can be protected during a terrorist attack or
other crisis has been a focus of my work in the years since.
As senior counsel to the 9/11 Commission, I had the
opportunity to study the crisis as it was experienced in real
time by everyone from the President to the evacuating civilians
in New York's Twin Towers. I subsequently wrote a book, ``The
Ground Truth,'' that compared the response of the government on
9/11 to the response to Hurricane Katrina, and found disturbing
parallels between the way the government reacted to a complete
surprise attack and the way it reacted to a storm that had been
anticipated for years and for which detailed plans were in
place.
The responses to both events, I found, failed to take
account of the fact that, as stated in The 9/11 Commission
Report, ``the `first' first responders on 9/11, as in most
catastrophes, were private-
sector civilians. . . Private-sector civilians are likely to be
the first responders in any future catastrophes.'' Among
trained emergency personnel like police, fire and EMTs,
moreover, both crises demonstrated that ``critical early
decisions will have to be made by responders who are not the
top officials. . . Planning for a crisis should accept that
reality and empower and train people on the ground to make
critical decisions.''
The truth of those observations has been borne out in
subsequent attacks ranging from the London subway bombing to
the murders at the Jewish Museum in Brussels to the murders at
the kosher grocery store in Paris to the most recent attacks at
the Paris cafes, stadium, and concert hall, and at the Brussels
airport. As the threat has become more diffuse and the attacks
less predictable, I believe the following conclusion has become
inescapable: Anticipating and preventing attacks on European
Jewish communities--or, for that matter, on any vulnerable
communities--will be impossible without a dramatically greater
engagement of law enforcement with the affected communities and
people, and of the affected communities and people with each
other.
For the past nearly two years, I've had the privilege of
leading, along with Rutgers Professor of Criminal Justice John
Cohen, an initiative at Rutgers University designed to identify
the best ways to protect vulnerable communities in light of the
evolving threat. Funded generously by Rutgers alumnus Paul
Miller, former general counsel of Pfizer, and his family,
Rutgers began what we have called the Faith-Based Communities
Security Program two years ago by taking a close look at the
evolving threat, and by taking an equally close look at the
security situations of several European Jewish communities. I'm
going to talk about that work now.
The reasons for our initial focus on the European Jewish
communities are twofold. First, because the European Jewish
communities are the original diaspora communities, and have
survived in parts of Europe despite attempts to eliminate them
for over 2,000 years, we believe that these communities have
much to teach other vulnerable communities about security and
resilience. These lessons are particularly important, in our
view, because the demographics of our world have been
transformed within our lifetimes. According to estimates that
predate the recent Syrian refugee crisis, over 20 percent of
the world's population now live in a nation other than where
they were born. That amounts to well over a billion people
trying to adapt to foreign cultures. The world of the future is
therefore a diaspora world, a world of vulnerable communities.
Second, we thought it would be instructive to look at
European Jewish communities now because, as Jonathan Biermann,
Paul Goldenberg and Rabbi Baker have outlined, they have been
under renewed stress in Europe as a consequence of Islamist
radicalization and, to a lesser but persistent extent, age-old
European anti-Semitism. The occurrence of anti-Semitic
incidents has spiked dramatically, culminating in the murders
at the Jewish Museum in Brussels shortly before we began our
study. The threat evolved and became more deadly even as we
undertook our work. Indeed, the urgency of our work has
escalated with each new attack.
A team from Rutgers was on the ground in Paris during the
Paris attacks in 2015 and in the aftermath of December's
attack, in the aftermath of Copenhagen's attack, in the weeks
preceding the Brussels attacks last month, and also in
sensitive locations such as Malmo, Stockholm, Amsterdam,
London, Prague, Vienna and Budapest. In those locations and
others, we have met and consulted with Jewish community
security leaders and representatives of law enforcement, the
governments, and civil society.
At the same time, we have worked with U.S. communities and
law enforcement partners to develop what FBI officials have
called an off-ramp from radicalization: an adaptable,
multidisciplinary intervention strategy to attempt to identify
precursor conduct and enable communities to protect themselves
and each other. The development of such strategies is
impossible without a high level of public, community and civil
society engagement with law enforcement.
We did a readout of preliminary findings at a conference
last year in Washington co-sponsored by the International
Association of Chiefs of Police, the Bipartisan Policy Center,
and Rutgers, and hosted by the FBI at its headquarters. We also
had the opportunity to describe our work at The Hague to an
audience of European police chiefs last September. As a
consequence of that meeting, we had planned to conduct a
follow-up summit at Europol headquarters this summer.
But, Mr. Chairman, the time for conference-level
discussions, we believe, is over. The recent attacks in Paris
and Brussels have made more urgent the need to take action now
to protect vulnerable communities. The situation on the ground
has become dire. As you have heard, the challenge to the Jewish
communities has become nothing less than existential. Many
stalwart leaders have become ambivalent about remaining in
Europe at all. The communities have become caught in a double-
helix of hate, in which terrorist attacks energize the forces
of xenophobia and nationalism, which have tended historically
to turn eventually on the Jewish communities. The only thing
the Islamist terrorists have in common with such forces is that
both hate the Jews. In short, this is a time of particular
peril for the Jewish future in Europe, and it is incumbent upon
us to do what we can to assure that future.
Why? Well, in addition to the fact that assisting these
communities is simply the right thing to do, in my view the
future of our world of vulnerable communities is at stake. If
the oldest diaspora community in the world cannot survive in a
place where it has lived for longer than 2,000 years, in a
place where it outlasted the Nazis, the future of other
vulnerable communities can only be described as bleak. The
wholesale slaughter of Christians and nonconforming Muslims in
Syria and Iraq and elsewhere begins to look less like isolated
atrocities and more like a harrowing vision of our children's
future.
So, after consulting with our European partners in
Brussels, Copenhagen, London, The Hague and elsewhere, we have
decided to take action now in the following ways that are a
direct outgrowth of our work.
First, with the encouragement of law enforcement and the
affected communities, we will be traveling back to Brussels and
Copenhagen in the coming weeks to explore concrete ways in
which we might assist the Jewish and other vulnerable
communities and law enforcement in working together to enhance
public safety. At a meeting of the OSCE last spring in Vienna,
many joined the representative of France in calling for some
variation of ``if you see something, say something'' training
and public engagement as an essential step in improving public
safety. The need for a similar kind of civil defense approach
has grown with each attack since then. We are working on
refining that approach to meet the needs of individual
communities, but our assistance extends beyond that program.
Second, with a view to their application to all vulnerable
communities, we are writing and plan to publish online this
summer the Rutgers Guide to Protecting Vulnerable Communities.
This work will provide a distillation of best practices that we
have identified in the course of our work. These practices are
adaptable to other vulnerable communities and to various law
enforcement structures around the world. They will represent
our assessment of the most effective ways in which governments
and communities can work together to provide safety for
vulnerable populations. They range from relatively obvious and
easily adaptable ways--the creation of crisis management teams
within communities, as we saw in Copenhagen; regular exercising
in crisis management, as we saw in Great Britain; facilities
audits to ensure that potential soft targets are hardened, as
we saw in Amsterdam--to more challenging but essential steps,
such as regular communication with law enforcement, training of
individuals to identify potential threats, and outreach to
other vulnerable communities and elements of civil society in
order to develop effective approaches to intervention. The
guide will be available to all, and we plan to offer on-the-
ground assistance to those who request it, within our means of
course.
Third, we plan to focus our efforts on filling a need that
has been highlighted in the United States and in every country
we have visited, and echoed by communities, government
officials and members of the private sector alike: improved
information sharing of open-source and social media
information. After having consulted with current and former law
enforcement officials, as well as having heard the concerns of
the faith community, NGOs and private-sector entities, I
believe that a lasting contribution of our project to public
safety may well lie in its facilitating the more efficient
sharing of critical open-source information with faith-based
communities, NGOs, human rights organizations and the private
sector.
This effort would not be meant to replace, but rather to
complement government information-sharing efforts, which, while
admirable, have a necessarily different and primarily law
enforcement focus. Such an effort will be fundamental to
promoting the enhanced level of public engagement that I
believe is required in order to protect public safety.
Mr. Chairman, our work in Europe and the recent attacks in
Paris and Brussels has underscored the ground truth of every
attack and natural catastrophe since 9/11: it is more essential
now than ever that the public be engaged at every level in its
own protection. As FBI Director Comey and other law enforcement
leaders have recognized for over a year now, the threat to
public safety is evolving. Law enforcement can no longer act
alone--if it ever truly could--in combating it. A better-
informed, -trained and -engaged community is a safer community.
I will close with this illustration. Over the past year,
I've taken the Thalys train between Paris and Brussels numerous
times--probably a dozen times. I've been fortunate that no one
on any of my trips emerged from the restroom in my car with an
AK-47 and opened fire. When that did occur on the train last
year, the passengers on board that day were fortunate that two
trained American military personnel happened to be sitting near
the restroom and knew how to subdue the attacker. The people at
the Jewish Museum in Brussels, however, or sitting in the Paris
cafes, or attending the concert or the soccer match, or waiting
at the Brussels airport, weren't so lucky. We can no longer
rely on dumb luck to thwart future attacks. Put simply, we need
to empower vulnerable people and vulnerable communities to
protect themselves and others. The Jewish communities in Europe
are the best place to start.
We are committed to providing the education, information
and training that will enable the Jewish and other vulnerable
communities of other cultures and beliefs, wherever they are
threatened and whenever they ask, not just to survive but to
flourish. The stakes for the Jewish and other vulnerable
communities today cannot be higher. If done right, however, the
rewards from these efforts will be reflected in a safer and
more peaceful future for us all.
Thank you again, Mr. Chairman, for this opportunity.
Mr. Smith. Mr. Attorney General, thank you very much for
your very incisive testimony filled with very important
recommendations. And I do thank you for your leadership.
And now we're joined by Commissioner Hultgren. Randy, thank
you for being here.
And I'd like to now go to Paul Goldenberg.
PAUL GOLDENBERG, NATIONAL DIRECTOR, SECURE COMMUNITY NETWORK
Mr. Goldenberg. Thank you, Chairman Smith.
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Again, my name is
Paul Goldenberg. And although I do currently serve as an
adviser to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security,
particularly with regard to their Foreign Fighter Task Force,
the CVE and other initiatives, it's really been a privilege for
me to participate in the program of which we're going to talk
to you a little bit more about today.
I've been working very closely with the Faith-Based
Communities Security Program at Rutgers University for--it's
nearly two years. And as a part of this new initiative, and
working under the leadership of former New Jersey Attorney
General John Farmer, we have made, as you have heard from John
and Rabbi Baker, countless trips in recent months overseas,
traveling to multiple European cities. And it's through these
trips that we've been able to gain a firsthand understanding of
the current climate, hearing the concerns of communities who
really are under threat, and assessing what can do to best
assist them.
And I think it's really a very unique group of individuals
because we all have a very distinctive set of lens. Coming from
the law enforcement community and not necessarily from the
human rights communities or the faith-based communities
directly, our message is one that I think is quite unique.
What we have seen, heard and learned has confirmed our
initial hypothesis that while the levels of cooperation and
partnerships between the Jewish and other minority religious
communities with their respective policing services--in many
parts of Europe--is as diverse as the communities themselves,
more work needs to be accomplished to move closer to a medium
and a standard of safety and security within these communities.
While this presents distinct challenges, there is,
unequivocally, hope, for much of what we have learned,
innovated, tested and improved upon here in the United States,
as well as other progressive nations, can be imparted to and
replicated by our European partners.
I do want to say and go on record that the United States
Department of Homeland Security has done an exemplary job
working here in this country with the Jewish communities and
other faith-based communities, building resources, building
programs. There are many unsung heroes across the 50 states
that are doing remarkable work, working with these communities
each and every day.
Mr. Chairman, I do want to thank you for the opportunity to
testify today, because it was nearly 10 years ago that I heard
your speech in Berlin, which compelled me to approach you and
ask you how do I become more engaged and involved. And from
that conversation and from the tremendous, thought-provocative
recommendations that you provided, I was able to spend nearly
four years working across Europe with these disparate
communities. And I think some good works came from that, and I
want to thank you personally for allowing me and giving me that
opportunity to do so.
So in Europe now, we have heard many times that there are
alarming levels of anti-Semitism impacting Jewish communities,
but more broadly acts of targeted violence, extremism and
terrorism impacting many vulnerable communities as well as the
broader public. As I stated, I'm both proud to be here with
such a distinguished group of colleagues, and I really do
applaud the entire Commission.
So what I stated before is I speak to you today not as an
academic, but really as a practitioner--as a former law
enforcement executive who has personally seen the impact of
hate crimes, acts of targeted violence, extremism and
terrorism.
Jewish communities in Europe have been long targeted. But
much more than simply the target of hate; they represent now
something else. They have often acted as the proverbial
canaries in a coal mine, forecasting much larger problems and
issues, foreshadowing broader concerns for the other
communities around them. In this, recent events--from the
attacks in Paris against the Jewish targets to the targeting of
Jewish people in Brussels--are not a new phenomenon to the
Jewish communities across Europe. Rather, the most recent
attacks merely represent the continuation of targeted violence
that has changed the way as a community they function, from the
way religious institutions and schools now approach gatherings
to what community members may wear in public--in 2016, which is
unimaginable.
In the span of just two decades, we've moved from swastikas
and vandalism, the desecrations of graveyards and simple
assaults, as well, to longstanding institutionalized anti-
Semitism, which now includes brutal violence, commando-style
shooting attacks, and even suicide bombings on the streets of
Europe by battlefield-trained, -tried, and -tested cells and
organizations.
From the 2006 torture and killing of Ilan Halimi, to the
schoolyard slaughter of Jewish children in Toulouse, France in
2012, to the attack against the Brussels Jewish Museum, largely
viewed as the first ISIS-related attack in Europe, and nearly
two years before many European countries even recognized ISIS-
trained operatives and the fact that they were immersed in the
continent, the list goes on and on and on.
Unfortunately, some communities have imported the Middle
Eastern conflict into their host countries, and in some cases
into their living rooms, with attending acts of violence and
unbridled anti-Semitism toward local Jewish communities which
had otherwise lived peacefully, except during the Holocaust
years. While these events are not without precedent, the pace,
frequency and scale should be setting off alarms not just here
in Europe, but in the United States as well. And even here in
the U.S., according to the FBI's 2014 hate crime report and
statistics, Jewish communities have suffered an extraordinary
amount of hate crimes and incidents against their institutions
and people.
In the past few years, we have watched as a storm has
brewed: growing anti-Semitism, xenophobia, attacks against
religious institutions by those inspired by jihad, and now
ultranationalists. It is growing unlike anything we have seen
since the 1930s.
This vortex has spawned not just a threat to select
vulnerable communities and populations in Europe, but poses an
overreaching threat to the human security and safety, and
security of free and open societies where citizens enjoy the
right to worship and gather freely without intimidation, fear
and harm. When citizens of free countries, including our own,
no longer feel safe in their houses of worship, this is a
direct threat to a nation's democracy and freedom.
But as many have watched the storm brew, unfortunately,
there are still too many doing very little, if anything, to
prepare. For some, it now appears that we have little more at
our disposal than in some cases an umbrella during that next
hurricane.
What is at risk fROM this threat? What is the new reality?
In a sense, it is the very fabric and spirit of these
democratic societies and the collaborative, cooperative and
trusting relationships between authorities and the communities
that are sworn to protect them. That is the core.
The passage, Mr. Chairman, of House Resolution 354,
``Expressing the Sense of the House of Representatives
Regarding the Safety and Security of Jewish Institutions in
Europe,'' is a watershed moment that has reinvigorated and will
provide much-needed support to enable much-needed collaboration
amongst and between European partners. It is the formalization
of this resolution, Mr. Chairman, and years of tireless work
leading up to it, which has provided us with the impetus and
roadmap to truly operationalize these public-private capacity
building and community engagement efforts across the EU, and
transnational for that matter.
As an epidemic that now plagues Europe requires a
transnational approach and commitment to working across borders
and jurisdictions to effectively combat this threat, our effort
intends to develop operational recommendations. And I probably
have said that too many times, but operational
recommendations--for partnership-building, exchanging good
practices, providing critical security awareness training,
based on strategies that have been developed over time in
Europe, in Israel, in the United States and elsewhere, that can
be effective in confronting the identified challenges.
One of the most critical outcomes of the effort would be a
formalized recognition and relationship between those
responsible for communal security and the policing agencies
that vow to protect them.
Despite religious, ethnic and cultural differences, we have
succeeded in rallying around the common shared values of
protecting our houses of worship and safeguarding our most
precious natural resources, our children, both from becoming
victims of violence and being lured, inspired and radicalized
to become perpetrators of that same violence.
While law enforcement and police services taking on the
roles of agents of social change are literally the visible
extension of their governments and do represent the interests
in protecting their people, they are an integral part of this
process and, quite frankly, more a part of the solution.
As we've experienced here at home with our own diffuse and
evolving terrorism threat, law enforcement cannot take the
burden alone. I just do want to mention some tangibles that we
think we should be discussing over the months ahead and
hopefully consider operationalizing.
Educating and empowering communities to become more active
participants and stakeholders in their own safety and security
will pay immeasurable dividends in contributing to the safety
and security of whole neighborhoods. We have seen that work
here in the United States.
Treating the public as a key partner in counterterrorism
will promote greater engagement and reduce public apathy and
believe counterterrorism is a responsibility--where they will
believe that counterterrorism is a holistic responsibility.
You've heard from John and Rabbi Baker--increasing
information-sharing efforts between law enforcement and
community leaders, building communities of trust, and, more
important, engaging citizens and communities through trainings
and exercises which will teach people to know what to look for,
how to behave, and how to respond to emergencies.
In closing, I'd like you to consider the following. In
January 2015, the Grand Synagogue of Paris shuttered for
Shabbat services on a Friday night following the terrorist
attacks against Charlie Hebdo and Hyper Cacher, marking the
first time since World War II that the synagogue was closed on
the Sabbath. Following the attacks, 10,000 police and soldiers
were deployed across France to guard Jewish institutions
against follow-on attacks, an effort that in many places
continues today.
In December 2015, New Year's Eve fireworks and festivities
in Brussels were canceled following a terror-alert warning of
an imminent attack against the city a month after the November
terrorist attacks in Paris which killed over 130 people.
These are not the kinds of firsts we wish to celebrate, nor
should we tolerate. We cannot be plagued and paralyzed by the
violent will of hate and extremism. Time is not on our side.
We're past the time for more summits, conferences and meetings.
The pace and tempo of attacks requires swift yet informed
conviction and actions.
We've experienced hard lessons. We must learn from them.
We've developed excellent best practices collaboratively with
our European partners, and we must share them. Gandhi once said
the true measure of any society can be found in how it treats
its most vulnerable.
I'd like to personally thank you, Mr. Chairman, your staff,
Nathaniel, for your continued leadership with the Commission in
ensuring that the United States of America will forever fight
for the protection and preservation of human rights, safety and
security of all global citizens.
Thank you very much, sir.
Mr. Smith. Mr. Goldenberg, thank you so much for your
testimony, for your very solid recommendations. And past is
prologue. I believe that we need to be doubling down on what
was done in the past and then some with those best practices.
Operationalize surely is the key word. So thank you for that.
I'd like to yield to Commissioner Hultgren.
HON. RANDY HULTGREN, COMMISSIONER, COMMISSION ON SECURITY AND
COOPERATION IN EUROPE
Mr. Hultgren. Thank you, Chairman Smith.
Thank you so much, all of you, for being here; grateful for
your work. And I'm very concerned of what we see happening. And
so I really do feel like this is so important. And it does feel
like history repeats itself if we are not ever vigilant, if we
are not ever aware of the capability of humans to do really
horrible things to each other if we're not looking out and
shining light on what's happening. So I want to thank you all
for being part of this.
I want to address my first question to Rabbi Baker. I
wonder what suggestions you might have of how should the OSCE
and the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly support efforts to
strengthen the formal partnerships and communications between
European law enforcement agencies and Jewish community groups?
Rabbi Baker. Thank you for your support, and thank you for
that question.
First, to take the Parliamentary Assembly--in a way the
OSCE Parliamentary Assembly has been at the vanguard of pushing
that organization, which moves somewhat cumbersomely as a
consensus body, to really take some action, take some steps.
Really the first resolutions dealing with anti-Semitism in the
OSCE came at that Parliamentary Assembly.
So I think it could be a vehicle, whether through
resolution, through discussion with delegations, to push--which
I think now there's a more open door--push governments to
recognize they've had a problem with policing. They've had a
problem with intelligence. The attitude has largely been leave
it to us. And people day to day, there really isn't a role for
them.
I think now we know and we've experienced in the U.S.
that's precisely what can't be the approach. So perhaps it can
be through the drafting of resolution. Perhaps it can be
through discussions within the Parliamentary Assembly. But
hopefully that would be a way at least to alert and raise
awareness.
Now, within the OSCE itself, under the current German
chairmanship, Foreign Minister Steinmeier, who was here in
February, he said they want to make combating anti-Semitism one
of their priorities. They are supporting, with a substantial
financial contribution, efforts within ODIHR to develop a
multiyear plan to combat anti-Semitism in different targeted
ways. But security of the Jewish community is one of them.
So I think what really is important is to push for an
examination of best practices to deal with this. You heard from
Paul and from John, and particularly from Jonathan in Brussels,
the goal of getting governments to work even formally with
Jewish communities. And memoranda of understanding is clearly
one approach.
I think our experience in some of this has come during
visits we've taken, is to see that it's often a one-way street
when it comes to communication. Jewish communities share with
police and authorities what they've seen, what makes them
nervous, but they don't really hear back from governments.
We've seen now more governments stepping up on physical
security, but they're doing it in very different ways. So in
some places, in Belgium and France, the military has rolled
out. In Denmark and Sweden, there are heavily armed police that
are patrolling in front of buildings. In the Netherlands,
they've erected these mobile police trailers in front of every
synagogue and Jewish community building. But I have to say the
police have to stay inside. They can be alert to something and
then they can call for reinforcements, but they're not allowed
to leave.
In every case, the communities, at least today, are saying
they appreciate the attention. But I don't think anyone has
really said what works best, what makes the most sense. And it
seems to me the OSCE is precisely positioned to be able to take
stock of that. Also I think if you push to say this is a
priority issue, so do something this year--we have a
chairmanship that has the resources and I think the ability to
do something.
Mr. Hultgren. Thank you, Rabbi. That's very helpful.
I'm going to address my next question across the ocean over
to Mr. Biermann, if I may. You've testified that strengthening
security for the Belgian Jewish community must include the
Belgian Government formally recognizing and partnering with
Jewish community groups on security and public awareness and
action campaigns.
I wonder if there's examples that you can cite in other
European countries that are especially good models in
considering for these kinds of initiatives, and maybe some that
are struggling a little bit more than others.
Mr. Biermann. Yes, thank you. I believe that in the U.K.,
as mentioned earlier, and in France, governments have
established a memorandum of understanding about exchange of
information. This is probably the first step of building a
relationship of trust and confidence between the authorities,
law enforcement community, and the Jewish community.
And again, Jewish community should be considered as pilots,
because those relationships of trust and confidence established
with the Jewish community should expand and be established with
other vulnerable communities also. And I do believe and I do
hope that by implementing the see-something-say-something
policy with the Muslim community will be also an opportunity to
build a broader community where each faith-based or cultural-
based community would share together the--will establish
together the priority of the defense of common values,
democracy and human rights.
To come back to the question of the memorandum of
understanding and the example of U.K. and France, I do believe
that it is of great importance to establish what kind of
information is relevant to collect, who is the proper body to
collect that information, and what are the efficient channels
to pass this information to make sure that it will be treated
by intelligence and law enforcement agencies and that the
necessary treatment will be provided and information will be
shared later on an operational basis with the communities
themselves.
If communities have to share the responsibility of
protecting themselves with the governments and with the
authorities, then we have to empower them and give them the
means; for instance, by sharing relevant information in the
field with those communities.
Mr. Hultgren. Thank you.
I'm going to ask one last question, and this one we
probably could spend the whole afternoon talking about. So I
don't necessarily expect a complete answer, but maybe if one of
you could speak briefly of what is being done or what can be
done, especially for school-age children, younger children, to
change this, what I see as kind of a--certainly a culture of
hate and a fostering of this, especially in certain
communities.
Is there anything that we can do, again, to push education,
early learning, in some of the communities that we've seen this
grow, to put some pressure there? I just don't know if any of
you have any thoughts or if we could maybe follow up after this
of what we can be doing as members of Congress, especially for
young people at an early age, to not learn to hate or not learn
anti-Semitic views.
Mr. Farmer. If I can jump in on this--of course, we have
come across a couple of what I would consider best practices to
try to address the cultural issue you're talking about. In the
one visit we made, a synagogue in Amsterdam, in particular they
have a day where they invite in to their school other schools,
public schools, and school children of all faiths. And they
basically spend a day learning about the history of Judaism and
learning about, you know, sort of lowering those barriers that
are erected when you live in isolation from one another. And
that seems to have yielded some dividends.
In France they have a similar Holocaust education
initiative, which they believe has yielded some great results.
I think exposing young people to the opposite of hate is really
important, because actually the solution to all these problems
is really--and we hope for it anyway--is with the young people.
And so the better educated they are about each other's
backgrounds, the less mystified they are by people who are
different from them and the less likely they are to become
haters as they get older.
I don't know if anyone else wants to----
Rabbi Baker. I think you've identified what the real
challenge is. And on the one hand, one of the dilemmas is the
Jewish community in Europe is a rather small community. And
France is the largest, half a million. But again, it's maybe 1
percent, less than 1 percent of the population.
I think in America we're so sort of used to the fact that
people interact directly, and the best thing to shatter
stereotypes is to know someone. So on the one hand, you have
that barrier. There simply aren't the opportunities to, on a
day-to-day level, just meet with, come to know people.
But conversely, the fact that today so much can be done
with Internet connections, with social media and so on--and we
know all the problems that come through that of spreading
hate--it's also a vehicle to introduce people. There are some
wonderful programs, educationally focused programs, one based
in Vienna, I think the chairman knows, called Centropa; Ed
Serotta, an American who's lived in Europe for 30 years, is
responsible for it. It's been linking school kids in Europe, in
Israel, in different parts of the United States. And they share
kind of common stories. They do sort of common research
remotely in their own communities, but then they can
interconnect.
I think some of these programs--admittedly there are so few
of them--but they may hold some hope to do exactly what you're
saying. And what obviously we need to do--the solution is not
barbed wire and military deployment in front of schools.
Mr. Hultgren. Well, again, I want to thank you all for
being here. These are really big subjects, very important. For
me the key is let us know suggestions you have, ideas, things
that we can do to help to turn the tide back to, again, a
positive direction. I'm very concerned, but also appreciate the
work you are doing and bringing some hope that we can
definitely make a difference on this very, very important
issue.
So thank you. I'll yield back to the chairman.
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much, Commissioner Hultgren.
Let me just ask a few questions. And again, I thank you for
not only your time, but your expertise, which helps us to do a
better job as the Commission.
Let me ask you, Rabbi Baker, you talked about how--I
believe it was the Dutch who suggested they don't have the
resources. And there are other nations, of course, that act as
if they're cash poor. It is a matter of priorities. We're
talking about mature democracies with very mature economies
that seem to have far in excess what would be needed. But it
all starts with the political will to do so.
And I would ask you to address that. As you pointed out--
and we've been pushing this for years from our side--ODIHR's
director, Michael Link, testified before our Commission in
February. He pointed out, when it comes to providing official
documentation as to what a country is doing, that only 10 of
the 57 participating States have submitted official information
on anti-Semitic hate crimes for the latest reporting period.
And he pointed out that civil-society information covered some
29 countries.
Thankfully, you have been a prod to those 10, I'm sure,
through your visits and your advocacy. And you also provide
information on others that are not part of this systemized
reporting. It was Sharansky who here, right here in this
building, told us--we had him twice, Natan Sharansky, as our
witness--that if you don't chronicle something, you can't fight
it. You have to have the parameters of how many, where, what
and who in order to effectively combat it.
He was also the one--and I would ask you to speak to this
as well, Rabbi--you pointed out that there's a problem with the
definition, obviously with the working definition and its
implementation and the integration of that. And there's a
section that you note describing how anti-Semitism manifests
itself with regards to Israel.
And not to belabor the point, but it was Sharansky who told
two hearings that I chaired, and then he told the entire Berlin
conference that Paul and I, all of us were at back in 2004,
that there is a way of deciphering when it's not just
disagreements with the Knesset and with the Israeli policies.
He called it the three Ds--demonization, delegitimization and
double standard. As soon as one or all three of those manifest,
you can be pretty darn sure you're talking about an underlying
anti-Semitic motive behind the criticism of Israel.
And as you point out, there was a section of that in that
report you referenced. But this idea of chronicling--and maybe
you might want to speak to, again, since Israel is in the news
so often, I've actually chaired hearings about how the Human
Rights Council absolutely disproportionately focuses on Israel
and gives a pass to China, North Korea, Sudan, Iran and many
other countries that have committed heinous human-rights
abuses, and large magnitude of those abuses at that. Israel is
always in the cross-hairs, which suggests to me that the Human
Rights Council itself violates the three Ds as articulated by
Sharansky. But if you could speak to that.
Rabbi Baker. Well, first, to the point you make, absolutely
correct that we used to confront--in some ways we still do--the
reality that incidents aren't recorded, aren't reported, and
therefore it's as though they didn't happen. And I have a very
vivid memory of discussing the problem of anti-Semitism here in
Washington in 2002 with Javier Solana, then the sort of
foreign-policy czar of the EU, who said to me--when I described
the problem, he said, well, I don't see it.
And it was not a criticism of me. It was essentially to
say, OK, help me see it. But at that point nobody was recording
these incidents of hate crimes; in many cases not recording
hate crimes in general, let alone explaining or disaggregating
them so they would describe the anti-Semitic crimes. So in a
way he was correct.
I think we've come a distance, although, as you point out,
there's commitments that are made by governments to the OSCE
and then there are commitments that are fulfilled by
governments. And unfortunately, not many are reporting data on
hate crimes. And those that do, it's only a small number that
really indicate anti-Semitic hate crimes. But it has been
pushed a bit.
And as you pointed out, there are more and more communal
organizations working with professional standards now that are
also collecting data. So we're getting better at it, although I
would reference that EU fundamental rights agency survey that
indicated how so many incidents were unrecorded. And that is
surely the case still.
My reference to meeting with governments and being told
they don't have the resources or the interest to step up with
security, I'm not sure it was really an issue of money; maybe
in some places. In some cases, I think it was probably a mask
for saying we don't see it as serious a problem back then as I
did or Jewish community leaders did. Or they had other issues
in front of them and they wanted to push it off.
The good thing about the terrible things that have happened
is today most governments recognize they have to do something.
So they have stepped forward. What I would say, though, today
is, as I illustrated, they're all doing it in different ways.
And it really is, I think, useful and timely to try and say
what really works. What's going to be helpful and efficient and
cost-efficient going forward? Because this isn't a problem
that's going to end in a matter of months.
And then, finally, to the issue of the working definition,
which, in my testimony, written testimony, I did speak to at
length. Look, we recognize, as Natan Sharansky demonstrated
before you, that we've seen a form of anti-Semitism that
relates to the State of Israel. It was referenced even in that
Berlin declaration, although implicitly, when it spoke of anti-
Semitism taking on new forms and manifestations. When Israel is
demonized, as you said, when it's declared a racist state, when
analogies are drawn to the Nazis, it's not criticism.
And the value of that EUMC working definition, which was
developed in 2004 and distributed by the EUMC in 2005, at a
time when there were 17 members of the EU, and the monitoring
center, which did its own survey the previous year, had to
admit that over half of its national monitors had no definition
of anti-Semitism. And of those that did, no two were the same.
So the working definition really provided a service for
governments, for monitors and for civil societies. And mind
you, it's a comprehensive definition, and it took on and
described aspects of anti-Semitism which maybe today we more
fully recognize. But if you think back 10, 15 years ago, it
wasn't the case. In other words, Holocaust denial is a form of
anti-Semitism. When you spread these conspiracy theories about
Jews, that's a form of anti-
Semitism. In a way, you can have anti-Semitism still without
having Jews.
But the reality is that it has a corrosive effect on day-
to-day Jewish life, and particularly when you look at the issue
with regard to Israel. You think about this. People who have
negative views of Israel take them out on Jewish community
members. Jews and Israel are conflated. It's as though they're
responsible, the Jews of Stockholm or of Paris or of
Copenhagen, for what the Israeli Government is doing. Or you
have attacks that emerge from what are maybe pro-Palestinian,
pro-Arab, anti-Israel demonstrations. But they're not just
against Israel. At some point they turn on Jews. And we saw
that two summers ago during the Gaza conflict in Paris and in
other European cities.
So the working definition describes this, but it's also a
useful tool for law enforcement, for judges and prosecutors
witnessing these events, to say, wait a minute; I need to think
twice. I can't just say, oh, this is Middle East politics. No,
there's something more. And the value of that definition and of
trying to get it more and more in play, in use, goes to
precisely things that also will make a difference in the day-
to-day lives and security of Jewish communities.
Mr. Smith. Thank you.
Let me ask Mr. Biermann, with regards to the MoU, potential
MoU with the Belgian Government, is that coming along? Is it
likely to happen? Are you at liberty to explain what some of
its contents might be? Is the U.S. Government being at all--you
know, our embassy and our ambassador being helpful to that
effort?
Mr. Biermann. I think the coming visit, the planned visit
of John Farmer and Paul Goldenberg will be a great opportunity
to share a good practice. And I think they would be the actors
of introducing the idea to the authorities that an inspiration
of what is working in the U.K. and France could be implemented
here and adapted to the Belgian institutions, which are, as you
know, very complicated.
But I do believe that the House Resolution 354 and the
expertise, the network established by Rutgers University, will
be instrumental in convincing that such an MoU would be an
opportunity to empower the Jewish communities, and maybe later
other communities, to be part of building a new strategy
involving the different communities, in establishing greater
security in Brussels and in Belgium.
I have the feeling that there's a very strong political
will of the Belgian Government to put all the resources needed
to fight terrorism, enhance public security and public safety,
specifically for the Jewish community. But as I mentioned
earlier, we should not reinvent the wheel. Good solutions exist
and are implemented in neighboring countries. And we need to be
inspired and to be able to implement it here as well and to
adapt it to our local reality.
Mr. Smith. Let me just ask, Mr. Farmer--first of all,
Attorney General Farmer, thank you for your work as well--I
should have emphasized it--with the 9/11 Commission. I actually
chaired two of those follow-up hearings; was the Republican co-
sponsor, not the prime sponsor but the co-sponsor, of the
actual commission. And there were concerns that it was going to
be politicized. And certainly Tom Kean did a magnificent job,
in my opinion, along with his counterpart on the Democrat side
of the aisle, to say this is above board; we want this to work
for the betterment of Americans, regardless of political
persuasion. And they did that.
So thank you for your critical role in that report, because
it was the blueprint for everything we have done since. You
know, all the stovepiping is largely gone, although never
completely gone. So thank you for that leadership.
And I'm wondering, with these best practices and your
initiatives, which I think are extraordinary--you know, the
open-sourcing, the guide to best practices--are there next
steps you think we ought to be taking in the U.S. Government?
It seems to me, you know, it is excellent that the OSCE raises
these issues. And the Personal Representative, Rabbi Baker,
does an unbelievably effective job, but he's only one voice;
and it seems to me all of our ambassadors, Homeland Security,
in its daily interface with law enforcement, needs to make this
a priority.
I find that human rights issues in general, including
combating anti-Semitism, all of that often takes a backseat to
the tyranny of the urgent, whatever that might be, economic
issues or whatever it might be. And I believe--and I believe
you do as well--that this hate that is festering and growing
worse by the day not only manifests against Jews but all
other--as you pointed out in your comments--if the oldest
diaspora community in the world cannot survive in the place
where it has lived for longer than 2,000 years, in a place
where it survived the Nazis, the future of other vulnerable
communities can only be described as bleak. And as you point
out, the wholesale slaughter of Christians and non-conforming
Muslims in Syria and Iraq and elsewhere begins to look less
like isolated atrocities and more like a harrowing vision of
our children's future.
I do believe that anti-Semitism, especially with radical
Islam, is at the core of all the other problems. And we've had
hearings here, as Rabbi Baker knows, where we called on all the
other faiths to step up and do more. So maybe if you could, all
of you, make recommendations now or in the future on how we get
a whole-of-
government approach. Right now I do believe, with all due
respect to the administration and the previous administrations
and Congress, we do it in an isolated way. We're in there but
we're not doing enough--never enough money, never enough
commitment, political will.
If we really want to eradicate anti-Semitism to the
greatest extent possible, it will take a Herculean whole-of-
government approach. Homeland Security needs to be--it's part
of their agenda. Every ambassador needs to make it a part of
his or her agenda, especially in countries where it is
festering but elsewhere as well. As Rabbi Baker said, there is
anti-Semitism about Jews, particularly in Holocaust denial.
So you might want to--and when you--for example, your
visits to Brussels and Copenhagen, upcoming, it seems to me
that if the FBI director were at least involved in some way--
the more the better, as well as his top people--that would make
a difference. You know law enforcement like few people--and
Paul as well. How do we get that whole-of-government approach
as well?
Mr. Farmer. Well, I think the--and thank you for the kind
words about the 9/11 Commission, and Governor Kean did a
spectacular job next to Chairman Hamilton in driving us toward
a truly nonpartisan product--but I think the eradication of
hate, and anti-Semitism in particular, is part of a larger
project--the first part of a larger project, which is the
engagement of--and it's transformed the project for law
enforcement and for--frankly, for the citizenry. It's
engagement of the public at the street level, you know, both in
Europe and the United States.
The average citizen has been told: Just live your normal
life. Let us worry about the terrorist threat. Let us take care
of it in law enforcement. And if that was true, if that
approach worked 15 years ago, it certainly doesn't work
anymore. And there's been a recognition by FBI Director Comey
for at least the last year that law enforcement by itself can't
fight this because the threat is so atomized, it's so diffused,
there's no way to predict where the next attack is coming,
absent a level of community engagement that simply hasn't
existed before.
That reality is true on both sides of the ocean. But I
think we have to be careful, though, in terms of dealing with
other countries. You know, they all have unique situations too
and there is no one size fits all. So ``see something, say
something'' might look one way in one community and another way
in a different community depending on demographics and
depending on the structure of their privacy laws and other, you
know, complicating factors.
But what's needed is a commitment to the principle of
community engagement, and a real commitment. MoUs are great,
and we've all worked with some that are terrific and work and
we've all worked with others that are just empty documents.
What's really needed is cultivation of the kind of cooperative
attitude toward community engagement that hasn't existed
before. When you have that, you'll find the resources, because
there are resources that can address these issues.
Mr. Smith. Are there examples of an off-ramp for
radicalization, as you suggested?
Mr. Farmer. Well, we've been in the process of developing
them both here and in Europe, communities like Dearborn,
Michigan. And Paul can speak to this as he's worked with these
folks over the years. In Cook County in Illinois, we've been
part of an ongoing process. And again, these off-ramps involve
the expertise that's on the ground in these vulnerable
communities, which will differ from place to place.
So in one place it might be school officials who are
integrally involved in the identification and diversion of
potential radicalization. In other places it might be faith-
based. In other places it might be--but the principles
underlying them are uniform, and that is the principle that law
enforcement just simply can't do this by itself, that there
are--especially in some communities in the United States and in
Europe, there's a level of distrust among certain vulnerable
communities and law enforcement. So there's a bridge that needs
to be built between them.
And frankly, one of the reasons that I thought Rutgers was
a good idea getting involved in this is we're a secular state
institution. We have no orientation here other than the safety
of our citizens. So I think that we could bring a credibility
to these discussions and lower the levels of mistrust that
might already exist.
Mr. Goldenberg. The off-ramps, I'm very engaged at DHS now
nationally. I spent a lot of time in Dearborn. The chief and
the mayor have both become friends. And Dearborn has done a
tremendous amount of good works in this area. When we refer to
off-ramp, though, the problem is there has to be a
collaborative agreement between the law enforcement community,
mental health community, the educators, et cetera, because the
police community is trained to become engaged and involved when
people are conspiring and/or are involved in criminal activity.
So where's the line?
So right now the off-ramps are a gray area. Law enforcement
is trained to do its job, which is to engage if someone is
planning a terrorist attack. And yet at the same time, if it's
an effort that could be collaborative in nature where you
engage the mental health community, juvenile justice, et
cetera--look, the common denominator between most of these
young people--or people that could be in their 30s--they're
inspired by the Internet now. That's the bottom line. The
parents of a lot of these young people are as concerned as we
are. They just don't have a protocol or a process on when and
how to report. So, well, you heard John say time and time
again, it really does need to be a collaborative effort. So the
off-ramping, as you refer to, is one part of the process.
The concern and the issue is, is what's happening now.
What's happening is that we've got well-trained, well-inspired
people with resources now who are not only attacking
institutions within their countries but they're attacking
Jewish institutions. They're attacking the Jewish people. So
when I say it's a matter of record that that's what we are
dealing with--so it's not just a matter of the off-ramp is one
piece, because maybe we can grab some of them beforehand, but
the real challenge is the exchange of intelligence and the
training of members of the community to be good partners.
And that's what we're hearing from people like Jonathan and
others across eight, nine countries that we visited in the
years--Andy Baker and I have been visiting these countries for
10 years and we hear the same thing: We want to be partners.
There's a quid pro quo that's so simple. A good partner gives
you information that says, I have a suspicious person standing
in front of my institution; therefore, maybe if I engage with
the police early enough they'll respond and save lives. So the
police get the information they need and the community becomes
empowered to be a partner in this process versus living in
total fear.
When I closed before, I'll tell you, it was a stark--when
they cancelled New Year's Eve--and whole school systems are now
shutting down in Los Angeles due to these threats--they've won,
Chairman. Mr. Chairman, they have won. And that's why the
building of capacity with the public is now more important than
ever. Resilience is going to be as important as response,
because if we shut down, we're really in bigger trouble than we
think.
Mr. Smith. Training the trainers, could you just, for the
sake of the Commission, where you think that might go in the
future, a little bit about the past, the importance of----
Mr. Goldenberg. Yes, sir. And the past was very effective.
The reason it was effective was the team that we built had
Kosovoans training next to Serbs, training next to Croats,
training next to the French gendarmerie, training next to
people from MI5--I mean MI6.
And you met them, sir. I mean, you had an opportunity to
meet the team. It was 12 colonels, lieutenant colonels, majors;
male, female. It was an exemplary team of people who all had a
single purpose, to work with police partners to provide best
practices and training on how other countries are effectively
working with their communities, particularly with regard to
keeping the houses of worship open--i.e. synagogues, mosques
and churches. So is this effective? Extremely effective. Police
are part of that change.
So what we're talking about at Rutgers University is we're
talking about building out capacity where--because there's such
a tremendous amount of expertise here, not only nationally but
internationally, that could be brought to the table, we would
need the support for this effort to build a training institute
that could be either on the ground, or we could train here in
the metropolitan area.
Mr. Smith. Let me just ask a final question and then
yield--two questions.
One, is there a need for additional legislation that would,
again, encourage a whole-of-government approach on our part?
Again, when I talk to ambassadors--and I travel frequently--
when I bring up human rights, it's usually not the priority.
When I bring up anti-Semitism, it is definitely not the
priority. And that goes for a lot of places in Europe. You
know, there's a standard, yes, we care about it. And then,
well, what are you doing? And then there's a blank stare.
So is there something we could be doing to motivate? Of
course it starts from the top down. And it seems to me that
personnel is policy. If the right people are--secretary,
undersecretary, right on down--you're more apt to get a more
focused response and not a hermetically sealed response from,
oh, go talk to Human Rights or go talk to the special envoy or
someone.
Secondly, the impact on young people--you know, obviously
war and hatred has a disproportionate impact on the most
vulnerable, and that always includes children. How are the
European Jewish children responding to this onslaught of hate
towards them and to their parents and their faith?
Mr. Goldenberg. I'm going to leave that second part to Andy
because I think he's best suited. He's been working very
closely with the communities. And we have Jonathan here. But
I'd like to respond to the first part, and I'll tell you why.
Look, when we think in terms of institutionalized anti-
Semitism, it's much more complex than this. If people in the
United States of America or Canada or any of the free countries
of the West do not feel safe in their houses of worship,
democracy is in trouble. And it's not only a police problem.
It's a problem for those that are involved in running the
nation, the administration of the nation. If people are not
safe any longer in their houses of worship, it's really a
critical issue.
So if right now it's synagogues or Jewish community centers
that are under attack, tomorrow churches--we're seeing it now--
or mosques or temples, and if people no longer feel safe and
their children don't feel safe, we have a real concern. So what
I'm saying is it's anti-Semitism--and I'm not taking away from
the fact that it's anti-Semitism--but it's also taking away
from the fact that people can no longer worship, who, where and
when. And that is a threat to all members of a society or any
Westernized free democratic country.
Mr. Farmer. If I can just jump in on that, a good example
of what Paul just was referring to--the church shooting last
year in South Carolina is a classic case of an incident that
might have been preventable had best practices been widely
disseminated in terms of securing houses of worship across
denominations.
So in terms of your question about a change in the law, I'm
not sure a change in the law necessarily but encouraging a
reallocation of resources so that rather than buying--you know,
instead of buying homeland security equipment and quasi-
military equipment at great expense, some of those funds be
redirected to efforts to engage the communities at that level
that we've been talking about. That's the kind of prodding that
I think Congress is expert at doing and could really yield
results in terms of reallocating resources toward community
engagement.
Rabbi Baker. I was struck in one of the gatherings that
Rutgers has organized, a hearing from one of the New York City
police officials talking about their goal in dealing with hate
crimes in New York City, is that the people should feel safe in
their identity on the streets of New York. It's not just to
feel safe but to be able to be openly expressive of who you are
and feel safe.
That's what we've lost in so many European capitals
already. I mean, if you go out in the street and you don't have
anything that identifies you as being Jewish, or perhaps--I
don't want to limit it to Jews--you don't look openly strange,
a Muslim or another sort of immigrant, you're probably fine.
But if something marks you as different, I think people have
come to recognize you're in danger--maybe not physical danger
of being murdered, but certainly in danger of being verbally
harassed and maybe something more. And we've almost conceded
that. So somehow we have to get past that. We have to say, no,
no, that isn't acceptable.
I think one of the real values that I've observed over the
years, certainly with Paul and with John, is the way in which
people--practitioners here, people who come from a law
enforcement background, are able to have a direct conversation
with the European counterparts in the way that the human rights
organizations maybe simply cannot connect. So even if the human
rights organizations themselves are committed to and have as
their priority getting these issues addressed, getting people
who have kind of gone through the experience from the law
enforcement, justice side of things here to share their
experiences over there can be valuable and helpful.
I'm not sure that the issue in Congress is more
legislation, at least legislation that's going to change things
on the ground in Europe, but as you said, there are so many
CODELs that travel, foreign delegations with whom you meet. The
degree to which they hear from American leaders, from American
members of Congress that this matters, we know it elevates the
attention over there. And we've seen it going back 15 years, I
think, at every important juncture in a way you have made the
difference. So I would urge that to really continue and to be
kept up.
I have to say I wrestle with the very same question,
Congressman Smith, you raised when it comes to children, when
it comes to kids. On the one hand, we can say kids are
resilient. Yes, they're going to school, they're going past
military barriers. Jonathan will tell you there's so many
anecdotes of the kids waving to soldiers, little accounts of
how well the soldiers in Paris have never had so many cookies
and everything else that the kids' families are bringing, but
we know that even getting used to it is hardly the solution. It
can only be temporary. And we really do need to figure out how
the environment can change.
Yes, there's a larger picture. The threat of terrorism is
with us. The inability of European governments to really get a
handle on it and deal with it is evident. How do you combat
this radicalization? There's the added dilemma of a kind of
political correctness that plays out in Europe where we want to
do something but we can't sort of single out communities, and
yet we know that the sources of the problems are not spread
equally--yet one more barrier to cross. But hopefully the more
that there is a back and forth and the more that there can be
work on a practical, pragmatic level, that can maybe take
what's gone on here, admittedly translated in ways that make
sense in Europe that's mindful of the different laws and
traditions, hopefully that will achieve something in the long
term too.
Mr. Smith. Just thinking out loud--maybe we need to also
engage the NATO Parliamentary Assembly and NATO itself to be
integrating this concern more in their agenda, even though
they're a security--this is a security issue.
I do have one final question, and that would be about
monitoring or at least analyzing the news media. You know, I
remember when Mubarak would come here--all the time, I and
others would always raise the issue of the Coptic Christians,
which weren't doing all that well under his regime, although
better than Morsi by a long shot before he was deposed--and
secondly, anti-Semitism state-run media, which would be filled
with Nazi pictures and the like, Ariel Sharon and--it's just
not good.
My question is, our own media and the media in Europe has
an ability by how they shade things, the readers who write in,
particularly online, that can really--we have some of that
going on in own district right now vis-a-vis a community known
as Lakewood. And I read some of these readers' responses and I
shudder. I mean, there ought to be an ability to not allow that
kind of expression. And I am a free speech man, believe me, to
my core, but not anti-Semitism hate speech, or hate speech of
any kind.
So monitoring the newspapers, is that being done
adequately? Is that a best practice we need to be promoting? I
mean, again, not taking away from press freedom, but there are
lines that can be crossed.
Mr. Farmer. Yes, there is work being done, and in fact some
interesting--I can get it to you--showing a correlation between
the use of certain words in the media and certain types of
coverage, and the spike in anti-Semitism incidents, I believe
both in the U.S. and in Europe. So that kind of monitoring is
taking place.
Rabbi Baker. You know, I just want to point out first, very
anecdotally, I have four adult children. None of them read
newspapers. I get two newspapers delivered to me every day. I'm
such a fossil when it comes to this. I think we know people get
their news, their information from social media, or maybe they
read newspapers online. But I think it's the social media that
is really the vehicle.
In one survey that was done in France that did try and
gauge, with some depth, attitudes in the Muslim community,
those that harbored the most extreme views correlated--they
didn't correlate with education. It didn't correlate with
economic situation. It correlated with who was getting their
information from social media, because it was a kind of
reinforcing of all the hate and all the negative stereotypes
that came through there.
How we monitor it and how we can deal with it, let alone
how we control it--and of course the Europeans would like to
come here to you and tell you what you should do to control it,
which is change that little problem called the First Amendment.
I mean, obviously this is an enormous challenge and this is a
divide in some ways between Europe and here. But we do need to,
I think, recognize this is a new source--this is the new source
today of where the anti-Semitism and other forms of hatred are
being spread, and it's almost impossible to keep up with the
monitoring that's necessary and to ask these social media
companies, who have the ability voluntarily to police and to
remove things, to really step up to that.
Mr. Goldenberg. You know, I want to go back----
Mr. Biermann. Mr. Chairman, if I may----
Mr. Goldenberg. Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead, Jonathan.
Mr. Biermann. Thank you.
Just to answer the previous and the current question maybe
together, in Belgium for the last two or three years, young
Jews leave public schools. Those schools become Jews-free. How
can we hope that there will be mutual understanding, cultural
exchanges among Belgian younger generation without an
opportunity for them to even meet and sit together in the same
class? I believe that the Jewish day schools cannot become a
refuge for young Jews because that would be rebuilding the
walls of the ghetto. I believe that dedication is key to
establish a melting pot society in which everyone feels safe
and secure with its own culture, faith and roots.
And I also do believe that the media have a huge
responsibility in the last decade in not being able to build a
positive environment to mutual understanding, and also because
the media have used a terminology which has banalized anti-
Semitism, mixed concepts on the Middle Eastern conflict. And
also the media have probably not reacted strongly enough to
anti-Semitism in the newspapers or in the comments of the
readers on the social media.
In that respect, I do believe that the media should better
take a bigger responsibility in the way they are contributing
to educate the population, and specifically the younger
generation. I do believe also that less and less of the younger
generation read the newspaper, but they are commentating on the
articles on the Web, and I believe that the atmosphere and the
banalization of anti-Semitism led us to the situation we know
today, to the fact that young Jews escape from public schools
and join Jewish day schools, probably not for positive reasons.
Thank you.
Mr. Smith. Thank you.
Yes?
Mr. Goldenberg. Yes, I do want to make one comment and just
go back to one thing that you said.
One of the things that someone said was they talked about
the economics of anti-Semitism and the fact that many are not
even considering the economics of anti-Semitism. Well, the food
for thought for many in Europe and here even in the United
States is, right now, on any given day, probably tens of
millions of euros are being spent to have troops and police
standing in front of what technically should be the most
precious institutions in any country, and that's a synagogue, a
mosque or a school even.
So the economics of anti-Semitism are going to have a toll
and I don't think anyone has taken a close look at that, not
only what it takes to protect a vulnerable community because
they're under attack, unfortunately, but it's the economics of
people who have lived for hundreds of years and now are
determining whether to leave or not, and leave behind
professions and resources. So there is definitely economics
that will come to play here, and that's something to be
considered for any free country, the cost if we let this go to
where it's become today.
Mr. Smith. Thank you.
Just to conclude--and then if there's anything you'd like
to add that we have not touched, the floor would be yours. But,
you know, to Rabbi Baker's thought and comments regarding
social media, I was in Bethlehem a number of years ago and I
spoke at a Catholic university that has three-fourths of its
students are Muslim--and very disciplined, good conversation.
So we had a forum, and they asked me questions and I asked them
questions. And when we got to 9/11, Mr. Attorney General, they
claimed, to a person--and these were some of the best and the
brightest students at that university--that it was all the
Jews' fault, obviously, and that no Jewish person died.
Now, I had some 58 people in my district die in the Twin
Towers. I know many of the widows. I hired one of the widows on
my staff. Several of those widows who lived in Middletown and
elsewhere, New Jersey, were Jewish. And I said, I know these
people personally. They are Jewish. Where did you get this big
lie that the Jews caused it and no Jews died in the Twin
Towers? I said, you're looking at someone who will bear witness
to the fact that many Jews died in the Twin Towers as well as
in the Pentagon. And they said, the Internet, and social media
to a lesser extent but it was the Internet that was the source
of virtually all of their--and it was to a person. So a
radicalized youth who are very sympathetic to the arguments of
Hamas are made even more so by those big lies.
You know, I walked away so troubled. And I said to the
headmaster, I said, you know, you've just got to tell the
truth. And he said, it was good that you did. But it shouldn't
take a congressman from New Jersey in a forum to be doing that.
It is amazing how the disinformation campaign has worked, and
so effectively.
Mr. Farmer. Those reports were circulating the day of 9/11
itself, along with, by the way, the reports of thousands of
Muslims dancing on the rooftops in Jersey City, which were
about as true. [Chuckles.]
Mr. Smith. Well put.
Thank you, Rabbi Baker.
Rabbi Baker. Thank you.
Mr. Smith. Thank you for your testimony. Thank you, Mr.
Biermann, for your contribution and for--it must be a little
later there than it is here. Thank you.
We will forward any thoughts you have. This Commission
stands ready, in a bipartisan way, to do everything humanly
possible to promote this extremely important human rights
cause. And I thank you so much. The meeting is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 3:38 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I C E S
=======================================================================
Prepared Statements
----------
Prepared Statement of Hon. Christopher H. Smith, Chairman, Commission
on Security and Cooperation in Europe
Good afternoon to everyone joining us today and especially to our
witnesses, Rabbi Andy Baker, Personal Representative of the OSCE
Chairman-in-Office on Combating Anti-Semitism, and Director of
International Jewish Affairs for the American Jewish Committee;
Jonathan Biermann, Executive Director of the crisis cell for the
Belgian Jewish community, who will testify by video link from Brussels;
John Farmer, Director of the Faith-Based Communities Security Program
at Rutgers University; and Paul Goldenberg, Director of the Secure
Community Network.
Today we will discuss how to anticipate and prevent deadly attacks
on European Jewish communities. The recent terrorist attacks in
Brussels were reminders that Europeans of all religions and ethnicities
are at risk from ISIS. But there can be no European security without
Jewish security. As we have seen so many times in so many places,
violence against Jewish communities often foreshadows violence against
other religious, ethnic, and national communities.
ISIS especially hates the Jewish people and has instructed its
followers to prioritize killing them. The group's cronies targeted the
Jewish Museum of Belgium in May 2014, the Paris kosher supermarket in
January 2015, and the Great Synagogue in Copenhagen in February 2015,
and murdered people in all of them. Some thwarted plots have revealed
plans to target even more Jewish community places and kill even more
Jewish people. Other Islamist terrorist groups share its hatred and
intent.
However, terrorist and terrorism only account for some of the
annual increases in violent anti-Semitic attacks in Europe over the
past few years. Survey and crime data show that anti-Semitic attitudes
and violence in Europe are most rife in Muslim communities. Anti-
Semitic attitudes, and non-terroristic anti-Semitic violence, have also
risen across the religious, political, and ideological spectrum.
There are many different aspects of combating anti-Semitic
violence. For example, European Jewish and Muslim civil society groups
are collaborating with each other to counter violent extremism and
hatred that impacts their respective communities. Today's hearing
though will zero in on the role of law enforcement agencies and
especially on their relationships with Jewish community groups. These
partnerships are essential, according to Jewish communities and experts
on both sides of the Atlantic. That is why I authored House Resolution
354 as a blueprint for action and why the House passed it unanimously
last November.
Our witnesses will testify about what European law enforcement
agencies, their governments, and Jewish community groups need to do to
ensure these partnerships are formalized and effective. They will
discuss the ideal roles for the OSCE, the United States, and other
civil society groups, in supporting these initiatives. The witnesses
will also share what can be learned from the experiences of law
enforcement agencies and Jewish communities to counter terrorism, and
strengthen public safety more broadly. Their insights will help guide
the efforts of the U.S. Government, the Congress, and my fellow
Helsinki Commissioners, especially Commission Co-Chairman Senator Roger
Wicker, and Ranking Member Senator Ben Cardin, who has been the Special
Representative on Anti-Semitism, Racism and Intolerance for the OSCE
Parliamentary Assembly since last March.
Today's witnesses are world-class experts and practitioners on the
subject.
Rabbi Baker has been one of the most important figures in combating
anti-
Semitism and addressing Holocaust-era issues over the past few decades.
He was first appointed as Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairman-
in-Office on Combating Anti-Semitism in 2009 and every subsequent
Chairman-in-Office has reappointed him. He has been the Director of
International Jewish Affairs for the American Jewish Committee since
2001 and with the organization since 1979. He has served in senior
leadership roles in many initiatives and been publicly commended many
times over, including by heads of state in countries like Germany, for
his efforts. Rabbi Baker and I have worked together closely to combat
anti-
Semitism for many years.
I am pleased that we are able to hear a voice from Brussels, where
ISIS followers murdered 32 people and injured more than 300 others only
a month ago. Jonathan Biermann is Executive Director of the crisis cell
of the Belgian Jewish community and was in charge of the cell at the
time of the attack on the Jewish Museum in 2014. A lawyer by
profession, he has been a member of the City Council of Uccle, a
municipality in Brussels, since 2012 and is currently an Alderman on
the Council. Mr. Biermann is a former Political Adviser to the
President of the Belgian Senate, the Minister of Development
Cooperation, and the Minister of Foreign Affairs. He brings the
perspective of a Brussels native and resident born into a family very
involved in the Jewish community.
John Farmer is the Director of the Faith-Based Communities Security
Program, part of the Institute for Emergency Preparedness and Homeland
Security, at Rutgers University, the State University of my home State
of New Jersey. The Program spearheaded a major conference last July on
``Developing Community-Based Strategies to Prevent Targeted Violence
and Mass Casualty Attacks'' in collaboration with the FBI, Department
of Justice, and others. He was the Attorney General of New Jersey from
1999 to 2002 and Senior Counsel to the 9/11 Commission. Attorney
General Farmer was later the Dean of the Rutgers Law School.
Paul Goldenberg is the National Director of the Secure Community
Network, a national homeland security initiative of the American Jewish
community, and is also the CEO of Cardinal Point Strategies. A New
Jersey native, for decades he was part of the law enforcement
community, starting as a cop--including years of undercover work--and
eventually as the first Chief of the Office of Bias Crimes and
Community Relations for the State of New Jersey. Goldenberg has
relevant experience with the OSCE, as the former Program Manager and
Special Advisor for the OSCE/ODIHR Law Enforcement Officer Training
Program for Combating Hate Crimes. He is currently Co-Chair of the
Department of Homeland Security's Fighter Task Force, Vice Chair of the
DHS Faith-Based Advisory Council, and a Special Advisor and Member of
the Secretary of Homeland Security's Combating Violent Extremism
Working Group.
Finally, I am pleased to recognize the presence here today of Paul
Miller, a Member of the Board of Overseers of Rutgers University.
Throughout his law career, he was involved in public safety and
security initiatives--including for the Jewish community--and continues
that important work now through the Miller Family International
Initiative at the Rutgers School of Law.
To you, and to our witnesses, a warm welcome. I will now turn to my
fellow Commissioners and other Members for any remarks they wish to
make. We will then shift to opening statements from witnesses, starting
with Rabbi Baker, and then moving to questions from Commissioners and
other Members.
Prepared Statement of Hon. Roger Wicker, Co-Chairman, Commission on
Security and Cooperation in Europe
I would like to thank Chairman Smith for holding this timely
hearing and for his leadership in combating anti-Semitism.
Nearly 71 years after the end of the Holocaust, it is appalling
that people are still being attacked and murdered because they are
Jewish. Anti-Semitism is part of the Islamic State's brutal ideology.
The terrorist organization's followers have already shown their
willingness and ability to target and kill members of European Jewish
communities. They join other jihadi groups like al Qaeda, who kill
innocent people because of their religion, ethnicity, or race.
Terrorists are not the only violent threats to European Jewish
communities. Others also contributing to anti-Semitic violence include
individuals in disaffected and marginalized communities, Neo-Nazis,
nationalist political forces that exploit historical anti-Semitism, and
ideologues who invoke the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to justify anti-
Semitic actions.
Mr. Chairman, I would like to use this opportunity to mention
another serious problem: Russia's manipulation and misrepresentation of
issues related to anti-Semitism. Time and again, representatives of the
Russian Federation have attended the OSCE Permanent Council in Vienna
or the annual OSCE human dimension meeting in Warsaw. These individuals
have portrayed those who oppose Moscow as fascists.
Russia may make a great deal of noise about fascism and anti-
Semitism, but it continues to fund extremist, anti-Semitic parties like
the National Front in France. It is therefore all the more important,
Mr. Chairman, that hearings such as this are held.
I have collaborated on these issues with my long-time friend
Senator Ben Cardin, Ranking Member on this Commission, and the Special
Representative on Anti-Semitism, Racism, and Intolerance for the OSCE's
Parliamentary Assembly. We led Resolution 290, ``Commemorating the 75th
anniversary of Kristallnacht, or the Night of the Broken Glass,'' which
the Senate passed unanimously. The resolution reaffirms America's
steadfast commitment to remembering the Holocaust and eliminating the
evil of anti-Semitism.
As Chairman of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly's Committee on
Political Affairs and Security, I will do my part to help ensure that
combating anti-Semitism is integrated into OSCE initiatives against
terrorism and violent extremism. I will also continue to monitor
Russia's outrageous exploitation of the scourge of anti-Semitism.
Mr. Chairman, thank you again for convening this hearing. I look
forward to hearing from our witnesses.
Prepared Statement of Hon. Benjamin L. Cardin, Ranking Member,
Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe
Recent events indicate the clear need for strategies to ensure the
global security of Jewish communities.
Last year, after being appointed the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly's
Special Representative on Anti-Semitism, Racism, and Intolerance, I
visited with members of Jewish communities and others in Paris and
Copenhagen, to hear directly from those most egregiously affected by
the 2015 attacks. They not only expressed continuing security concerns,
but a certainty that more attacks would occur. Despite government
efforts to secure Jewish sites in the wake of the attacks, they
questioned how long such security could realistically remain in place
given the need to also secure larger society. Moreover, they questioned
their future in a country where Jews and others could not live together
without fear of violence.
For some time, I have advocated for efforts that would address the
root causes of anti-Semitism and stem the tide of violence. More
resources have now been marshaled in this fight, from increased State
Department funds to new initiatives at the OSCE spearheaded by the
German Chairmanship. Human rights leaders from across Europe and the
United States are now working together to address hate. I recently
hosted young Muslim and Jewish leaders who were encouraging their
communities to join forces. The OSCE has trained law enforcement
officials across the region to recognize and prosecute anti-Semitic and
other hate crimes across the region so that perpetrators know they will
be punished.
In addition to my position within the OSCE PA, the OSCE, EU, and
many governments including our own have appointed officials to address
anti-Semitism in our societies. I have long worked with the Department
of State's Special Envoy on Combatting Anti-Semitism, Ira Forman, who
unfortunately could not be here today. I am pleased that we are joined
by the OSCE Chair-in-Office Personal Representative Rabbi Baker.
Despite these best efforts, more must be done.
We are currently witnessing a growth in extremist political
rhetoric across the OSCE region, fueling an environment where
expressions of hate are becoming increasingly more acceptable, and
violence more frequent. For this reason I have advocated closer
cooperation between the United States' government and European counter-
parts ?to combat anti-Semitism and other biases. Our countries have had
a long history of cooperation in the military and economic spheres.
It's now time to apply our common efforts to strengthen our societies.
Our repeated failures to protect the most vulnerable are increasingly
challenging the very tenets of our democracies, and leading to their
erosion.
Alongside hard power, governments must equally provide long-term
investments in soft power, such that we no longer need to fear our
neighbors--and there's something worth saving behind the walls we
erect.
Finally, efforts to promote the security of Jewish communities, or
to combat anti-Semitism more broadly, depend on robust protections for
democracy, the rule of law, and human rights: democracy and minority
rights will stand or fall together.
In this regard, I am troubled by reports that Princeton-based
Holocaust historian Jan Gross was recently summoned and interrogated by
Polish prosecutors. Apparently Polish law enforcement is concerned that
Gross's remarks on war-time events in Poland may have ``insulted the
Polish nation.'' If we are to combat anti-Semitism, we must be able to
discuss it without fear of prosecution.
I look forward to hearing the recommendations from our witnesses
today on strategies to address the immediate safety concerns of Jewish
communities. I also await your thoughts on what more we can be doing to
shift societal attitudes so that there is no longer a need for enhanced
security measures, and Jews can live as all others in our societies.
Prepared Statement of Rabbi Andrew Baker, AJC Director of International
Jewish Affairs, Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairperson
At the outset, let me express my appreciation to this Helsinki
Commission and to its Chairman, Representative Chris Smith, for the
pioneering work you have done in identifying and addressing the problem
of antiSemitism in Europe. You have taken the lead in pressing the
United States Government and European States and in mobilizing the OSCE
to confront this ageold scourge which has now presented itself in this
century in yet new forms and manifestations.
Sadly, one of the problems we have faced and we continue to face is
that governments are slow to recognize the very problem itself, let
alone to marshal the necessary resolve and expertise to confront it.
Fifteen years ago at a meeting with American Jewish representatives
in New York the French Foreign Minister argued strenuously that the
vandalism and violent attacks on Jewish targets that were just then
beginning to occur in France could not be considered antiSemitic. They
were, he said, merely the random misdeeds of unemployed and disaffected
youth from the suburbs that paid no special attention to their frequent
neighborhood targets. He then allowed that, perhaps they could be
understood as reflecting the anger of the youthful perpetrators who
were witnesses to the daily suffering of the Palestinians by their
Israeli occupiers, as broadcast on French television. But in this case,
he said, they should be considered political actions rather than
antiSemitic incidents.
But it eventually became clear that Jews were singled out for
attack. And this antiSemitism plain and simple could not be excused as
some justifiable expression of antiIsrael views. Today no less a
personage than the current Prime Minister of France says clearly and
repeatedly that antiZionism and hatred of Israel are synonymous with
antiSemitism.
The comments of that French Foreign Minister were not an isolated
example. Governments and even Jewish communities themselves in France
and elsewhere were slow to recognize that early increase in antiSemitic
incidents. Most governments lacked the mechanisms to identify and
record hate crimes, and fewer still to label those that were
antiSemitic in nature. Jewish organizations were only just beginning to
develop their own tools to record incidents. And as we have come to
learn, many of those incidents then and still now go unrecorded. So
when the European foreign policy chief Javier Solana said to me in
2002, when we discussed the problem of antiSemitism, ``I don't see
it,'' he was correct. Most incidents were unreported, and most recorded
incidents were not even identified as being antiSemitic.
Although the problem of identifying the perpetrators of these
antiSemitic attacks may be less ignorance than political correctness,
at the time it was often asserted that many of them had particularly
strong feelings about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict precisely
because they or their families came from the region. In doing so, they
were not trying to identify and address the problem, but instead to
explain and excuse it. After the breakdown of an active peace process
and with the Second Intifada there was increasing animosity toward the
State of Israel shared by a growing number of political leaders and the
general public, and fueled by what many considered a distorted and
biased media. Perhaps the targets such as synagogues and Jewish schools
were not appropriate, but the anger toward Israel that drove these
youthful attackers was somehow considered understandable. For some,
merely identifying a political motivation somehow separated it from the
``genuine'' antiSemitism that would be used to define attacks on the
very same victims carried out by rightwing extremists.
Eventually, some balance was restored to this discussion. The very
act of throwing a Molotov cocktail at a Jewish school bus defines it as
antiSemitism, regardless of the particular motives of the bomb thrower.
These early struggles on recognition and identification were
reflected in the debates and deliberations of international
organizations. The OSCE Parliamentary Assembly took the lead, and it
was followed by the OSCE itself and the European Monitoring Centre on
Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC).
In 2004, the EUMC conducted its own survey on antiSemitism in the
European Union. In interviews with Jewish leaders and representatives
it found a high degree of anxiety and uncertainty. It also acknowledged
the limited monitoring of antiSemitic incidents and hate crimes more
generally, and it revealed that most of the EUMC's own country-by-
country monitors lacked even a working definition of antiSemitism.
The Berlin Declaration adopted by the OSCE in April 2004 declared,
`` . . .unambiguously that international developments or political
issues, including those in Israel or elsewhere in the Middle East,
never justify antiSemitism.'' It also expressed the commitment of all
the participating States to collect and maintain data on antiSemitic
hate crimes.
While many speakers in Berlin did not mince words, the official
declaration could only hint at the problem, noting that antiSemitism
had, ``assumed new forms and manifestations.'' Everyone was aware that
the ``new antiSemitism'' was a term used to describe the special animus
being directed at Israel, whereby the Jewish State was demonized and
its very legitimacy called into question.
Scholars and practitioners increasingly focused on this, arguing
that any understanding of present-day antiSemitism must take it into
account. Only some months later, this was reflected in the Working
Definition of antiSemitism adopted by the EUMC and intended to fill the
need made evident from its own first survey. The Working Definition was
comprehensive, and it was especially notable for including a section
describing how antiSemitism manifests itself with regard to the State
of Israel. This included calling Israel a racist endeavor, applying
double standards, using classic antiSemitic images to describe it, and
equating its actions to those of the Nazis. It also cited an
increasingly common phenomenon where Jewish communities themselves were
held responsible for the actions of the Israeli State.
Since it was first issued in 2005, a growing number of governments,
international organizations, and civil society groups have employed the
Working Definition in their monitoring and education work, and others
such as the InterParliamentary Coalition to Combat AntiSemitism have
called for its adoption. Unfortunately, these efforts were stalled a
few years ago when the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA), the
successor to the EUMC, removed the definition from its website.
At the same time, we can now cite the words of international
leaders including Prime Minister Valls, President Obama, Prime Minister
Cameron and Pope Francis that describe antiZionism as a form of
antiSemitism. The Swiss Foreign Minister, Didier Burkhalter, during his
OSCE Chairmanship in 2014 called the Working Definition a useful
document for governments and civil society in understanding this
phenomenon, and the current German Chairmanship has voiced a commitment
to press for the greater use of it.
Some people while acknowledging this new form of antiSemitism might
still question its impact, dismissing it as just a matter of words. But
that would be a mistake. We have seen how those words have
consequences, where antiIsrael demonstrations have turned antiSemitic
and then violent. They have had a corrosive effect on Jewish community
security and have certainly caused many Jews to refrain from any public
display of support for Israel or even their own Jewish identity.
Of course it is second nature for Jews to worry. But there has been
a change, and more and more European Jews themselves wonder about their
future in Europe. We know this not just anecdotally but empirically, as
a result of FRA's comprehensive survey of Jewish experiences and
perceptions in eight EU States carried out in 2012. Nearly half of
those surveyed worry about being a victim of an antiSemitic attack.
Four in ten frequently or always avoid wearing anything in public that
would identify them as being Jewish. And thirty percent have considered
emigration because of the problem. We also learn from this survey that
upwards of three quarters of antiSemitic incidents goes unreported.
Even as more governments undertake to record antiSemitic hate crimes,
very few of them seek to identify the perpetrators. Of those that do,
they are usually defined in political terms--namely, those ascribed to
rightwing populists or leftwing extremists. But in the FRA survey those
who witnessed or experienced antiSemitism were offered a greater number
of choices to identify the sources, and over fifty percent said they
were people who hold, ``Muslim extremist views.''
This reality--that many of the antiSemitic incidents that Jews are
experiencing today especially in Western and Northern Europe are coming
from parts of the Arab and Muslim communities--still remains a very
difficult thing for some governments to acknowledge. Some may fear that
by doing so one is labeling an entire religious or ethnic group,
although that must not be the case. There may be a concern that this
will add to the prejudice and discrimination that many Muslims in
Europe already experience and provide further ammunition to rightwing
extremist parties. And in the case of France, home to the largest
Jewish community in Europe, there are legal restrictions on even
identifying people by religion or ethnicity.
But all of this leads to the same result. How can Jewish
communities have faith that their governments will address a problem
that cannot even be named?
And some attempts to speak about this while maintaining political
correctness actually exacerbate the situation. It may be described as
an issue for and between Jews and Muslims--``intercommunal tension'' as
one French Interior Ministry official termed it--as though this is
somehow a problem for two minorities who bear equal blame. Some
political leaders move immediately to the assumed prescriptions. We
need to foster Jewish-Muslim dialogue, they say. There is no question
that dialogue between Jews and Muslims (and between other religious and
ethnic groups) is enormously valuable. But we should be clear. It was
not the lack of dialogue that created the problem, and dialogue alone
will certainly not solve it.
Although survey data is limited, we can see from what is available
in some countries that European Muslims often have a higher level of
anti-Jewish prejudice than the majority of the society. This should not
come as a surprise. As German Chancellor Merkel pointed out earlier
this year, they or their families come from countries where attitudes
toward Jews are quite negative.
Acknowledging this is not to ascribe blame. It is the necessary
first step to develop effective educational and public awareness
programs to address the problem.
That FRA survey of 2012 already reflected a high degree of anxiety
and uncertainty about day to day comfort and security, but government
authorities were slow in recognizing it or responding to it. Meeting
with Dutch officials in The Hague, I was told that increasing security
in front of synagogues could not be done unless similar steps were
taken for churches and mosques. In Brussels, Belgian officials conceded
that the threat levels to Jewish communal buildings were quite high,
but said they did not have the money to protect them. When the subject
came up in Copenhagen, I was told by Danish officials that they
rejected a request by the Jewish community to position police in front
of the synagogue and school because they had, as they put it, ``a
relaxed approach to security.'' They were more concerned that the
general public would feel uncomfortable if they saw armed guards in
front of buildings.
Tragically, it took the terrorist attacks in Paris and Copenhagen
in early 2015 to awaken authorities to the fact that Jews and Jewish
institutions were among the first targets of radical Islamist
extremists. Fortunately, most governments have stepped up their defense
of Jewish institutions. Heavily armed police now patrol in front of
synagogues and schools in Sweden and Denmark. In France and Belgium the
military has been mobilized to guard these same buildings. In the
Netherlands mobile police trailers have been erected in front of each
synagogue and communal building, although (inexplicably) the police are
only there to monitor and cannot leave the trailers. Jewish communities
are grateful for these measures, which were long overdue. But now it is
time to evaluate and compare them, to determine which are most
effective and efficient. And what are the long term implications? Can
this level of security be sustained indefinitely? What is the impact on
Jewish children and their parents when the daily trip to school is a
walk through military barricades?
The fear of radical Islamist extremists in Europe--and in America--
has become palpable after the November attacks in Paris and last
month's bombings in Brussels. The task of identifying returning foreign
fighters and those who are self radicalized or inspired by ISIS has
been an enormous challenge to intelligence and law enforcement agencies
throughout the West. It is further complicated with the realization
that among the hundreds of thousands of genuine refugees fleeing
wartorn Iraq and Syria, there are likely additional terrorists and ISIS
propagandists. And even for the vast majority who harbor no terrorist
inclinations, there are obvious questions about how to address the
deficit in values such as secularity, pluralism and gender equality
that are an essential part of our Western societies. Surely then, it
should be no surprise that the steady diet of anti-Israel and
antiSemitic propaganda which marked those Middle Eastern societies will
not be easily corrected. Overwhelmed as many countries are with the
physical tasks of providing for them, will they have the necessary
resources and skills to genuinely absorb and assimilate these
immigrants as well? Previous experience with smaller numbers over many
more years makes it hard to be optimistic, but what then is the
alternative?
In the meantime, rightwing, populist movements are emboldened by
the crisis. Longstanding parties such as the National Front in France
and the Freedom Party in Austria see their numbers growing. New parties
such as Alternative for Germany are filling the vacuum. Some of these
extremist parties--notably Jobbik in Hungary and Golden Dawn in
Greece--have made antiSemitism a main feature of their ideology. But
even those which primarily feed on anti-migrant and anti-Muslim
prejudices are cause for alarm. Bigotry cannot be compartmentalized,
and the supporters of these parties are rather generous with their
hatreds.
That 2004 OSCE Berlin Declaration stated that antiSemitism poses a
threat to democracy, to the values of civilization and to security in
the OSCE region and beyond. That was both a warning and a more
expansive reason (if one was necessary) that Jew hatred is wrong and
must be confronted. Today there is ample evidence that this is true and
that all are linked together. Yes, the struggle to combat antiSemitism
is about ensuring that we have an environment that is safe and secure
and nurturing of Jewish communal life and the lives of individual Jews.
But it cannot be separated from--and in fact it is really the measure
of--how successful we will be in preserving the democratic and
pluralist values which all of us holds dear.
Rabbi Andrew Baker is Director of International Jewish Affairs for
the American Jewish Committee. In this position he is responsible for
maintaining and developing AJC's network of relationships with Jewish
communities throughout the Diaspora and addressing the accompanying
international issues and concerns. He has been a prominent figure in
addressing Holocaust-era issues in Europe and in international efforts
to combat anti-Semitism.
In January 2009 he was appointed the Personal Representative of the
OSCE Chairperson-in-Office on Combating Anti-Semitism and has been
reappointed in each successive year. The Organization for Security and
Cooperation in Europe, an intergovernmental body of 57 nations
headquartered in Vienna, has become a central arena for addressing the
problems of a resurgent anti-Semitism.
He has played an active role in confronting the legacy of the
Holocaust. He is a Vice President of the Conference on Jewish Material
Claims against Germany, the Jewish umbrella organization that has
worked on restitution issues for over half a century. In 2003 he was
awarded the Officer's Cross of the Order of Merit (First Class) by the
President of Germany for his work in German-Jewish relations. He was a
member of Government Commissions in both the Czech Republic and
Slovakia that were established to address the claims of Holocaust
Victims.
He was a founding member of the National Historical Commission of
Lithuania and involved in restitution negotiations there. He currently
serves as co-chairman of the Lithuanian Good Will Foundation,
established in 2012 to administer communal compensation payments. In
2006 the President of Lithuania presented him with the Officer's Cross
of Merit for his work, and in 2012 he was awarded the Lithuanian
Diplomacy Star. For similar work he was awarded the Order of the Three
Stars by the President of Latvia in 2007. He helped the Romanian
Government establish a national commission to examine its Holocaust
history and served as one of its founding members. For this work he was
awarded the National Order of Merit (Commander) by the President of
Romania in 2009.
Rabbi Baker directed AJC efforts in the development and
construction of the Belzec Memorial and Museum, a joint project of AJC
and the Polish Government on the site of the former Nazi death camp in
Southeastern Poland. In May 2006 he was appointed by the Prime Minister
of Poland to a six-year term on the International Auschwitz Council,
the official governmental body that oversees the work of the Auschwitz
State Museum.
A long-time resident of Washington, DC, Rabbi Baker has served as
President of the Washington Board of Rabbis, President of the
Interfaith Conference of Washington and Commissioner on the District of
Columbia Human Rights Commission. He has also served as a
congregational rabbi in Chicago and a chaplain at San Quentin Prison in
California.
A native of Worcester, Massachusetts, Rabbi Baker received a B.A.
from Wesleyan University and a Masters' Degree and Rabbinic Ordination
from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York
City. He is the father of four children.
Prepared Statement of Jonathan Biermann, Executive Director, Crisis
Cell for the Belgian Jewish Community
The presence of Jews in Belgium can be traced from the 1st century
A.C. and is confirmed during the 13th century. The religious
institutions were organized under French authority and Napoleon created
the Consistory organizing the cult before the establishment of the
Kingdom of Belgium.
With two main locations, the Antwerp community is for its majority
composed by orthodox movements (comparable to the communities
established in New York or in Israel) while Brussels is more secular
with vivid institutions and approximately 20,000 individuals in a city
of 1.1 million.
Allow me to describe the current atmosphere among Belgian Jews:
Community members are nowadays used to seeing police, guards, military
in front of Jewish buildings and schools. It has been so for decades
and I would say that although it is not a normal situation for a well
integrated community, it is a relief to know that the risks on the
Jewish community are assessed and taken seriously, in the limits of the
governments capacities.
Yet the situation is worrying as the statistics compiled by the NGO
Antisemitisme.be (data are also used by Study centers and universities,
International institutions (OSCE), Daily contacts with the Interfederal
Center for Equal Opportunities) show the following:
The level of hatred has not been so high since 1945 (raise of 70%
in 2014 compared to 2016:
Anti-Semitic discourse spreads in an unprecedented
extent, especially in internet.
A new phenomenon of discrimination is targeting the
Jewish individuals
and violence has reached an unprecedented level of horror
as were killed in the terrorist attack of the Brussels Jewish Museum
(May 24 2014)
A major survey among Flemish teenagers has indicated that
anti-Semitism is seven times more prevalent among Muslim youths than in
non-Muslim teenagers (Mark Elchardus and Johan Put, Jong in Brussel.
Bevindingen uit de JOP-monitor, Acco, Leuven, 2011).
In the last two years, the press denounced anti-semitic
incidents in public schools, including with teachers making anti-
semitics problems. As a consequence, for several years, jews are
leaving public schools for Jewish schools which increases the distance
between jews and non-jews in what should remain a community where
diversity in promoted.
Jewish life in Europe is part of its diversity. As we
also know from the Fundamental Rights Agency Survey, an increasing
number of Jews feel less and less comfortable attending Jewish events
and institutions.
In such a situation, and I will express a personal opinion on this
matter, the propagation of radical Islam is the symptom of the failure
in education specifically within the younger generation of the Muslim
community.
Many causes and effects can be described. But to stay focused on
our purpose, it also results in mistrust and suspicion in the
relationship existing between the community and the police,
intelligence and law enforcement agencies.
Having the opportunity to observe the work and expertise of John
Farmer and Paul Goldenberg, the Institute for Emergency Preparedness
and Homeland Security, the Faith- Based Communities Security Program at
Rutgers University and their international partners, I am convinced
that sharing best practices in the implementation of the ``See
something Say something strategy'' is of crucial importance.
Such a strategy should be implemented at the level of each
community as at the level of the broader community.
The communication channels established between communities and the
authorities, government and law enforcement agencies would participate
in the establishment of a more balanced society based on respect and
mutual understanding.
Sharing concern about what is happening in the various communities
is a fundamental step which has to be followed by action. Creating the
tools to communicate amongst communities with the government will be
considerably facilitated by the ``See something Say something
strategy.''
The collaboration with law enforcement agencies has to be based on
trust and confidence, in respect of international laws and rules
protecting individual freedom, civil liberties and privacy.
Communication channels, types of intelligence collected by each
actor must be clearly defined. The protocols existing in the US, the UK
and France should be a reference for local police and national law
enforcement agencies empowering local communities.
The situation of local communities and the relationship with the
authorities should be regularly assessed.
Taking the example of Brussels after the attack on the Jewish
Museum, emergency planning and communication with local police have
worked properly. Lessons have now to be taken in order to structure the
coordination.
Establishing a Memorandum of Understanding would now be an
important step and should be based on what is already implemented in
neighboring countries like France.
At this stage, communal leadership is crucial as operational and
symbolic choices have to be made.
Considering the risks assessing the threats and knowing that public
resources are limited (especially in the days following the terrorist
attacks that occurred in Brussels on March 22), what decisions should
be taken about the activities planned?
In this case, security challenges the constitutional principle of
freedom of religion.
Who should take responsibility?
Confidence and collaboration should guide community leadership, law
enforcement agencies and political leaders in the decisionmaking
process.
Fortunately enough, political statements have also been of great
determination in condemning Antisemitism and violence. The Belgian
Government has provided public funding to improve the physical
protection of buildings used by the Jewish community.
As a conclusion, I would underline the necessity of establishing
the terms of reference that European governments should use.
International organizations and agencies are a key player in that
matter.
I personally believe that the OSCE could develop a platform to
exchange good practices and confront the approaches and strategies in
fighting an external threat with domestic impact and support.
I would finally formulate the following recommendations:
Implement ``If you see something, Say Something'' with
Jewish Communities as pilots
Empower Jewish Communities by establishing a MoU defining
the collaboration between law enforcement agencies and Jewish
communities
Never banalize Antisemitism
Annex: List of Antisemitic terrorist attacks in Belgium:
In 1980, grenades were launched in Antwerp on a group of
Jewish children, one is killed.
On 20 October 1981 a car bomb outside a synagogue in
Antwerp killing three and sixty wounded.
In 1982, a gunman opened fire at the entrance to the
Great Synagogue of Brussels and injured four people.
In 1989, Dr. Joseph Wybran, chairman of the Jewish
Organizations Coordinating Committee of Belgium is assassinated.
Several places of worship in Brussels, Antwerp and
Charleroi are attacked in 2002.
In June 2003, a person tries to blow up the synagogue in
Charleroi.
May 24, 2014, individual broke into the Jewish Museum of
Belgium in Brussels and killed two tourists, volunteer and an employee.
All Antisemitic incident is officially recorded by
www.Antisemitisme.be
Jonathan Biermann is a lawyer admitted to the Bar of Brussels. He
has been a Member of the City Council of the Municipality of Uccle in
Brussels since 2006 and an Alderman in the same municipality since
2012.
He was the Political Adviser to the President of the Belgian
Senate, the Development Minister, and the Minister of Foreign Affairs.
As Political Adviser, Biermann was responsible for politicomilitary
issues, combating Anti-Semitism, and the broader fight against
intolerance.
While obtaining his law degree at the Free University of Brussels,
Biermann was Chairman of a students' association ``Circle of Free
Inquiry'' and then Adviser to the Rector for cultural affairs. Since
July 2015, Jonathan has been the President of the Alumni of the
University.
Biermann comes from a family that is very involved in the Jewish
community and was born and raised in Brussels. After being involved in
various cultural organizations, he was appointed to establish the
crisis plan of the Jewish community. He is the executive director of
the crisis cell of the Jewish community and was in charge of the cell
at the time of the attack on the Jewish Museum on May 24th 2014.
Prepared Statement of John J. Farmer, Jr., Rutgers University Professor
of Law
Mr. Chairman and distinguished Helsinki Commission Members: Thank
you for this opportunity to testify today on the subject of
``Anticipating and Preventing Attacks on the European Jewish
Communities in Europe.'' Today's hearing comes at a critical juncture
in the struggle against transnational terrorism, in the history of the
Jewish communities in Europe, and in the progress of civilization in
securing the safety of vulnerable communities worldwide.
My name is John Farmer. I am currently a University Professor of
Law at Rutgers University. Prior to my current position, I served as
Rutgers University Counsel, as Dean of Rutgers School of Law-Newark, as
a partner in two law firms, as Senior Counsel to the 9/11 Commission,
as New Jersey's Attorney General, as Chief Counsel to Governor Whitman,
and as a federal prosecutor.
Of most relevance to today's hearing, I was the chief law
enforcement officer in New Jersey on 9/11, a day when our state lost
some 700 of its citizens. I can never forget that day, or the sense of
failure and disbelief I felt that such an attack could have succeeded.
Understanding exactly what went wrong and how public safety can be
protected during a terrorist attack or other crisis has been a focus of
my work in the years since.
As Senior Counsel for the 9/11 Commission, I had the opportunity to
study the crisis as it was experienced in real time by everyone from
the President to the evacuating civilians in New York's Twin Towers. I
wrote a book, ``The Ground Truth,'' comparing the response on 9/11 to
the response to Hurricane Katrina, and found disturbing parallels
between the way the government reacted to a complete surprise attack
and the way it reacted to a storm that had been anticipated for years
and for which detailed plans were in place.
The responses to both events, I found, failed to take account of
the fact that, as stated in The 9/11 Commission Report, ``[t]he `first'
first responders on 9/11, as in most catastrophes, were private-sector
civilians. . . [P]rivate-sector civilians are likely to be the first
responders in any future catastrophes.'' (The 9/11 Commission Report,
at 317.) Among trained emergency personnel like police, fire, and EMTs,
moreover, both crises demonstrated that ``critical early decisions will
have to be made by responders who are not the top officials. . .
Planning for a crisis should accept that reality and empower and train
people `on the ground' to make critical decisions.'' (John Farmer, The
Ground Truth, at 324.)
The truth of that observation has been borne out in subsequent
attacks ranging from the London subway bombing to the murders at the
Jewish museum in Brussels to the murders at the kosher grocery store in
Paris to the most recent attacks at the Paris cafes, stadium, and
concert hall and at the Brussels airport. As the threat has become more
diffuse, and the attacks less predictable, I believe the following
conclusion has become inescapable: Anticipating and preventing attacks
on European Jewish communities--or, for that matter, on any vulnerable
communities--will be impossible without a dramatically greater
engagement of law enforcement with the affected communities and people,
and of the affected communities and people with each other.
For the past nearly two years, I have had the privilege of leading,
along with Rutgers Professor of Criminal Justice John Cohen, formerly
Counterterrorism Coordinator for the Department of Homeland Security,
an initiative at Rutgers University designed to identify the best ways
to protect vulnerable communities in light of the evolving threat.
Funded generously by Rutgers alumnus Paul Miller, former general
counsel of Pfizer, and his family, Rutgers began what we have called
the Faith-Based Communities Security Program two years ago by taking a
close look at the evolving threat, and by taking an equally close look
at the security situations of several European Jewish communities. To
assist us, we have had the privilege of working with subject matter
experts like Paul Goldenberg, Rabbi Baker, Sean Griffin, recently
retired as Counterterrorism Coordinator for Europol, and Richard
Benson, who helped establish the Community Security Trust in Great
Britain.
The reasons for our initial focus on the European Jewish
communities are two-fold. First, because the European Jewish
communities are the original diaspora communities, and have survived in
parts of Europe despite attempts to eliminate them for over two
thousand years, we believe that these communities have much to teach
other vulnerable communities about security and resilience.
These lessons are particularly important, in our view, because the
demographics of our world have been transformed within our lifetimes;
according to estimates that predate the recent Syrian refugee crisis,
over 20 percent of the world's people now live in a nation other than
where they were born. That amounts to well over a billion people trying
to adapt to foreign cultures. The world of the future is therefore a
diaspora world, a world of vulnerable communities.
Second, we thought it would be instructive to look at European
Jewish communities now because, as Jonathan Biermann, Paul Goldenberg
and Rabbi Baker will describe in greater detail, they have been under
renewed stress in Europe as a consequence of Islamist radicalization
and, to a lesser but persistent extent, age-old European anti-Semitism.
The occurrence of anti-Semitic incidents had spiked dramatically,
culminating in the murders at the Jewish Museum in Brussels shortly
before we began our study.
The threat evolved and became more deadly even as we undertook our
work. Indeed, the urgency of our work has escalated with each new
attack. A team from Rutgers was on the ground in Paris during the Paris
attacks of 2015 and in the aftermath of December's attack, in the
aftermath of Copenhagen's attack, in the weeks preceding the Brussels
attacks last month, and also in sensitive locations such as Malmo,
Stockholm, Amsterdam, London, Prague, Vienna, and Budapest. In those
locations and others we have met and consulted with Jewish community
security leaders and representatives of law enforcement, the
governments, and civil society.
At the same time, we have worked with U.S. communities and law
enforcement partners to develop what FBI officials have called an
``off-ramp'' from radicalization: an adaptable, multi-disciplinary
intervention strategy to attempt to identify precursor conduct and
enable communities to protect themselves and each other. The
development of such strategies is impossible without a high level of
public, community, and civil society engagement with law enforcement.
We did a read-out of preliminary findings at a conference last year
in Washington, co-sponsored by the International Association of Chiefs
of Police, the Bipartisan Policy Center, and Rutgers, and hosted by the
FBI at its headquarters. We also had the opportunity to describe our
work at the Hague to an audience of European police chiefs. As a
consequence of that meeting, we had planned to conduct a follow-up
summit at Europol headquarters this summer.
But the time for conference-level discussion is over. The recent
attacks in Paris and Brussels have made more urgent the need to take
action now to protect vulnerable communities. The situation on the
ground has become dire; the challenge to the Jewish communities has
become nothing less than existential. Many stalwart leaders have become
ambivalent about remaining in Europe at all.
The communities have become caught in a double-helix of hate, in
which terrorist attacks energize the forces of xenophobia and
nationalism, which have tended historically to turn eventually on the
Jewish communities. The only thing the Islamist terrorists have in
common with such forces is that both hate the Jews. In short, this is a
time of particular peril for the Jewish future in Europe, and it is
incumbent upon us to do what we can to assure that future.
Why?
In addition to the fact that assisting these communities is simply
the right thing to do, in my view the future of our world of vulnerable
communities is at stake. If the oldest diaspora community in the world
cannot survive in a place where it has lived for longer than two
thousand years, in a place where it survived the Nazis, the future of
other vulnerable communities can only be described as bleak. The
wholesale slaughter of Christians and nonconforming Muslims in Syria
and Iraq and elsewhere begins to look less like isolated atrocities and
more like a harrowing vision of our children's future.
After consulting with our European partners in Brussels,
Copenhagen, London, the Hague, and elsewhere, we have decided to take
action now in the following ways that are a direct outgrowth of our
work.
FIRST, with the encouragement of law enforcement and the affected
communities, we will be traveling back to Brussels and Copenhagen in
the coming weeks to explore concrete ways in which we might assist the
Jewish and other vulnerable communities and law enforcement in working
together to enhance public safety. At a meeting of the OSCE last spring
in Vienna, many joined the representative of France in calling for some
variation of ``if you see something, say something'' training and
public engagement as an essential step in improving public safety. The
need for a similar kind of civil defense approach has grown with each
attack since then. We are working on refining that approach to meet the
needs of individual communities. But our assistance extends beyond that
program.
SECOND, with a view to their application to all vulnerable
communities, we are writing and plan to publish online this summer the
Rutgers Guide to Protecting Vulnerable Communities. This work will
provide a distillation of best practices that we have identified in the
course of our work. These practices are adaptable to other vulnerable
communities and to various law enforcement structures around the world.
They will represent our assessment of the most effective ways in which
governments and communities can work together to provide safety for
vulnerable populations. They range from relatively obvious and easily
adaptable steps--the creation of crisis management teams within
communities; regular exercising in crisis management; facilities audits
to ensure that potential soft targets are hardened--to more challenging
but essential steps, such as regular communication with law
enforcement, training of individuals to identify potential threats, and
outreach to other vulnerable communities and elements of civil society
in order to develop effective approaches to intervention. The guide
will be available to all, and we plan to offer on the ground assistance
to those who request it, within our means.
THIRD, we plan to focus our efforts on filling a need that has been
highlighted in the United States and in every country we have visited,
and echoed by communities, government officials and members of the
private sector alike: improved information sharing of open source and
social media information. After having consulted with current and
former law enforcement officials as well as having heard the concerns
of the faith community, NGOs, and private sector entities, I believe
that a lasting contribution of our project to public safety may well
lie in facilitating the more efficient sharing of critical open source
information with faith-based communities, NGOs, human rights
organizations, and the private sector.
This effort would not be meant to replace, but rather to
complement, governmental information-sharing efforts which, while
admirable, have a necessarily different and primarily law enforcement
focus. Such an effort will be fundamental to promoting the enhanced
level of public engagement that I believe is required in order to
protect public safety.
Mr. Chairman, our work in Europe, and the recent attacks in Paris
and Brussels, has underscored the ground truth of every attack and
natural catastrophe since
9/11: it is more essential now than ever that the public be engaged at
every level in its own protection. As FBI Director Comey and other law
enforcement leaders have recognized for over a year now, the threat to
public safety is evolving; law enforcement can no longer act alone--if
it ever truly could--in combating it. A better informed, trained, and
engaged community is a safer community.
We are committed to providing the education, information, and
training that will enable the Jewish and the vulnerable communities of
other cultures and beliefs, wherever they are threatened and whenever
they ask, not just to survive but to flourish. The stakes for the
Jewish and other vulnerable communities today cannot be higher; if done
right, however, the rewards from these efforts will be reflected in a
safer and more peaceful future for all.
Thank you again, Mr. Chairman, for this opportunity.
John Farmer became dean of Rutgers School of Law-Newark in July
2009. From April 2013 until June 30, 2014 he was on a leave of absence
to serve as Senior Vice President and University Counsel. He returned
to the faculty as University Professor, effective July 1, 2014.
Professor Farmer continues to hold an administrative post as Special
Counsel to the President.
Professor Farmer received his J.D. from Georgetown University Law
Center, where he was a member of The Tax Lawyer and received first
prize in the 1984 Lincoln and the Law Essay Contest. He received his
B.A. from Georgetown University, with a major in English. He began his
career as a law clerk to Associate Justice Alan B. Handler of the New
Jersey Supreme Court. He then worked for two years as a litigation
associate at Riker, Danzig, Scherer, Hyland & Perretti LLP before
joining the Office of the U.S. Attorney in Newark, where he prosecuted
crimes ranging from kidnapping and arms dealing to bank fraud. In 1993
he received the U.S. Attorney General's Special Achievement Award for
Sustained Performance.
Professor Farmer joined the administration of New Jersey Governor
Christine Todd Whitman in 1994, serving as assistant counsel, deputy
chief counsel, and then chief counsel. From 1999-2002 he was New Jersey
attorney general. Among his noteworthy accomplishments, he argued
school funding and criminal justice matters before the New Jersey
Supreme Court and the Third Circuit Court of Appeals; moved forward
with reform of the New Jersey State Police, from eliminating racial
profiling to increasing diversity in recruitment and promotion; created
the Office of Inspector General to investigate allegations of official
impropriety and/or corruption; and served as the first chairman of the
New Jersey Domestic Preparedness Task Force, leading the coordination
of the state's law enforcement and victim/witness response to the
terror attacks of September 11, 2001.
From 2003-2004 Professor Farmer served as senior counsel and team
leader for the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United
States (commonly known as the 9/11 Commission). In that position he led
the investigation of the country's preparedness for and response to the
terrorist attacks and was a principal author of the Commission's final
report. His book, ``The Ground Truth: The Untold Story of America Under
Attack on 9/11,'' a reconsideration of the government's
9/11 response in light of its response to Hurricane Katrina, was
published by Riverhead/Penguin Press.
Professor Farmer has received the highest peer-reviewed rating from
Martindale-Hubbell, and has been named a New Jersey Super Lawyer, one
of New York Magazine's Best Lawyers in the New York area, and one of
the Best Lawyers in America. He was a partner in the white collar crime
and internal investigations group at K&L Gates and in 2007 became a
founding partner of the law firm Arseneault, Whipple, Farmer, Fassett
and Azzarello, LLP. In addition to his law practice, in 2008 he served
as senior advisor to General James Jones, Special Envoy for Middle East
Regional Security, on development of the rule of law in the Palestinian
Authority territory, and was invited by the U.S. Embassy in Armenia to
assist that nation's legislative commission in investigating widespread
violence and unrest following its elections.
Professor Farmer has been a frequent contributor to the Star-Ledger
and the New York Times, with essays and opinion columns on legal and
political issues, and has had articles published in the Rutgers Law
Review, Seton Hall Law Review, and other journals. His article on the
Patriot Act, ``At Freedom's Edge,'' was part of a Star-Ledger series
that was awarded the American Bar Association's Silver Gavel Award for
outstanding legal reporting in 2006. Dean Farmer has also lectured
extensively on post 9/11 safety and security issues, and spoken on
panels at Harvard Law School, the University of Southern California,
Willamette Law School, and Johns Hopkins University's Paul Nitze School
of Advanced International Studies.
Professor Farmer is president of the board of trustees of the New
Jersey Institute for Social Justice and a former member of the New
Jersey Governor's Ethics Advisory Board.
Prepared Statement of Paul Goldenberg, National Director, Secure
Community Network
Good Afternoon, Ladies and Gentlemen. My name is Paul Goldenberg. I
currently serve as a senior advisor to the United States Department of
Homeland Security as a member of the Secretary's Homeland Security
Advisory Council (HSAC). In that capacity, I serve on the Countering
Violent Extremism Sub-Committee, Co-Chair the Foreign Fighter Task
Force and am Vice-Chair of the Faith-Based Advisory & Communications
Sub-Committee. In addition, for the past decade, I've served as the
National Director of the Secure Community Network (SCN), the official
national homeland security initiative of the American Jewish community.
Working under the auspices of The Jewish Federations of North America
and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish
Organizations, we serve to connect the 151 Federations, 300 network
communities and over fifty organizations that make up these entities
with vital information, intelligence and resources to best ensure the
safety and security of the Jewish community, here in the United States.
In addition to these efforts, I have had the recent privilege of
working closely with the Faith-Based Communities Security Program at
Rutgers University. As a part of this new initiative, and working under
the leadership of former New Jersey Attorney General John Farmer, I
have made countless trips in recent months overseas, traveling to
multiple European cities. Through these trips, I have been able to gain
a first-hand understanding of the current climate, hearing the concerns
of communities who are under threat, and assessing what can do to best
assist them. What we have seen, heard and learned has confirmed our
initial hypothesis: while the levels of cooperation and partnerships
between Jewish and other minority religious communities with their
respective policing services--in many parts of Europe--is as diverse as
the communities themselves, more work needs to be accomplished to move
closer to a medium and standard of safety and security. While this
presents distinct challenges, there is also hope. For much of what we
have learned, innovated, tested and improved upon here in the United
States, as well as in other progressive nations, can be imparted to,
and replicated by, many of our partners.
Mr. Chairman: thank you for the opportunity to testify today about
the current state of affairs in Europe, specifically the alarming
levels of anti-Semitism impacting Jewish communities but, more broadly,
acts of targeted violence, extremism and terrorism impacting both
vulnerable communities as well as the broader public. I am both proud
and honored to be here with such a distinguished group of colleagues,
today. I applaud you and the Commission for its steadfast commitment
and unwavering support towards ensuring that human security dimension
remains an enduring right of all people, particularly during such
challenging times.
I speak to you today not as an academic, but as a practitioner--as
a former law enforcement executive who has personally seen the impact
of hate crimes, acts of targeted violence, extremism and terrorism. I
began my career over thirty-five years ago walking the beat, a rare
American Jewish cop on the streets of Irvington, New Jersey. I retired
as Chief of the New Jersey Attorney General's Office of Bias Crimes and
Community Affairs, the first-of-its-kind office in the nation.
In 2004, I was appointed by the Chairman as a senior law
enforcement advisor to the Organization for Security Cooperation in
Europe (OSCE). In that capacity, I had the honor of working with law
enforcement officials and community leaders in nearly 10 European
countries, working hand in hand to combat anti-Semitism, xenophobia,
extremism and domestic terrorism. As a law enforcement professional who
spent over twenty years working on the issues we are discussing today,
what I can tell you is that, over seventy years after the fires of
National Socialism in Europe were extinguished, sadly, disturbingly and
dangerously, the embers of that hatred still glow. In some places, they
burn. Fires can move quickly. Engulfing things rapidly. Unless we act,
we risk allowing the fires of hate to kindle further. To move faster.
To reach farther.
Jewish communities in Europe have long been targeted. But much more
than simply the target of hate, they represent something else. They
have often acted as the proverbial canaries in a coal mine, forecasting
larger problems and issues. . . foreshadowing broader concerns for
other communities. In this, recent events--from the attacks in Paris
against Jewish targets to the potential targeting of Jewish people in
Brussels--are not a new phenomenon for Jewish communities, across
Europe. Rather, the most recent attacks merely represent the
continuation of targeted violence that has changed the way in which--as
a community--they function, from the way religious institutions and
schools approach gatherings to what community members wear in public.
Highlighting these issues, the Anti-Semitism Report for 2014 saw a
significant increase in anti-Semitic incidents worldwide and found that
local governments are often not doing enough to eradicate the incidents
and violence. The report also notes that 2014 showed a marked increase
in terrorism as well as unprecedented violent attacks against Jewish
targets:
Some 55% of respondents do not feel safe in their own
country and are afraid to walk around with Jewish symbols in the
street.
In the United Kingdom, 45% of respondents reported that
they do not feel safe in their own country and about 37% of respondents
are afraid to walk around with Jewish symbols.
In the span of two decades, we've moved from swastikas on
buildings, the desecration of graveyards and simple assaults, as well
as long-standing institutionalized anti-Semitism, to brutal violence,
commando-style shooting attacks and even suicide bombings on the
streets of Europe by battlefield-trained terrorist cells and
organizations.
From the 2006 torture and killing of Ilan Halimi, to the schoolyard
slaughter of Jewish children in Toulouse, France in 2012 to the attack
against the Brussels Jewish Museum, largely viewed as the first ISIS-
related attack in Europe, and nearly two years before many European
countries recognized ISIS-trained operatives were immersed across the
continent. The list goes on. The escalation of these attacks, from
seemingly isolated incidents against Jewish communities and military
targets, has materialized into a recurring phenomenon where no soft
targets, including children, are safe. ``Soft targets''--once thought
of as safe havens and sanctuaries--have become the chosen targets of
hatred and violent extremism. and Jewish affiliated locations,
organizations and people, the preferred victims.
Unfortunately, some communities have imported the Middle Eastern
conflict into their host countries, with attending acts of violence and
unbridled anti-Semitism toward local Jewish communities which had
otherwise lived peacefully except during the Holocaust interregnum.
While these events are not without precedent, the pace, frequency, and
scale should be setting off alarms not just in Europe, but here in the
U.S.
According to the annual Terrorism and Political Violence Map
released by Aon Risk Solutions just last week, ``2015 was the most
lethal year for terrorist violence in Europe in nearly a decade.'' Over
the past year, France in particular has been on the frontlines of this
battle, experiencing multiple mass casualty attacks within the span of
eight months including one of the worst terrorist attacks in French
history.
In the past few years, we have watched as a storm has been brewed.
Growing anti-Semitism, xenophobia, attacks against religious
institutions by those inspired by Jihad, and now ultra-nationalism, is
growing unlike anything we have seen since the 1930s.
This vortex has spawned not just a threat to select vulnerable
communities and populations in Europe, but poses an overarching threat
to human security and the safety and security of free and open
societies where citizens enjoy the right to worship and gather freely
without intimidation, fear and harm. When citizens of free countries,
including our own, no longer feel safe in their houses of worship.this
is a direct threat to a nation's democracy and freedom.
But, as so many have watched the storm brew. . . few did little, if
anything, to prepare. For some, it now appears that we have little more
at our disposal than an umbrella. . . for a hurricane.
What is at risk from this threat? This new reality?
In a sense, it is the very fabric and spirit of these democratic
societies and the collaborative, cooperative and trusting relationships
between authorities and the communities they're sworn to protect.
The passage of House Resolution 354, ``Expressing the Sense of the
House of Representatives Regarding the Safety and Security of Jewish
Communities in Europe'' is a watershed moment that has reinvigorated
and will provide much needed support to enable much needed
collaboration with our European partners. It is the formalization of
this resolution, Mr. Chairman, and years of tireless work leading up to
it, which has provided us with the impetus and roadmap to truly
operationalize these public-private capacity building and community
engagement efforts across the EU.
An epidemic that plagues Europe requires a transnational approach
and commitment to working across borders and jurisdictions to
effectively combat the threat. Our effort proposes a comprehensive
approach that would connect the Jewish and other communities, law
enforcement and other mechanisms of civil society in identifying the
specific challenges facing the communities of Europe from the
perspective of organizational structure, training, awareness efforts,
standardized technologies, and coalition building.
The effort will then develop operational recommendations for
partnership building, exchanging good practices, providing critical
security awareness training, based on strategies that have been
developed over time in Europe, Israel, the United States and elsewhere,
and that can be effective in confronting the identified challenges. One
of the most critical outcomes of the effort would be a formalized
recognition and relationship between those responsible for Jewish
communal security and the policing agencies that vow to protect them.
Inherent in this effort will be the sensitization of law
enforcement to the issues, engaging the men and women of those agencies
to work to build trust between the police and the communities of
Europe. . . their communities. Committing themselves to undertake a
partnership to address the threats on an ongoing--as opposed to an ad-
hoc--basis; as attacks on Europe's diverse, distinct and various
religious communities continue, the police will be increasingly called
upon to respond to these attacks in more resolute ways. This effort
will require the engagement and coalition support of regional governing
bodies, policing consortiums and non-governmental organizations with
deep experience in combatting anti-Semitism, xenophobia, violent
extremism and terrorism; it will include leadership and security heads
of European Jewish communities, along with the OSCE, European Union,
Europol and Interpol. Developing an organic strategy is paramount to
the success of this initiative. This is particularly critical as those
targeting Jewish institutions and other communities have often, and
seemingly successfully, influenced some within the public and private
sector with the belief that Jewish institutions are not part of the
fabric of European society; that they are nothing more than an
extension of some foreign government whom are represented by its
security, intelligence and military activities.
Nothing could be farther from the truth; these Jewish communities
are a part of Europe. and they have been for hundreds of years and
despite a history replete with efforts to expel, exterminate or simply
excoriate them.
Focusing on collaborative partnerships and the protection and
preservation of shared, common values can--and will--trump suspicions
and differences. We will work collectively to promote community
cohesion. Despite religious, ethnic and cultural differences, we've
achieved success in rallying around the common shared values of
protecting our houses of worship and safeguarding our children; both
from becoming victims of violence and being lured, inspired and
radicalized to become perpetrators of that same violence. While law
enforcement and policing services, taking on roles as agents of social
change and a visible extension of their governments' interests in
protecting its people, are integral to this process and solution,
community participation, engagement and responsibility are paramount to
achieve success. As we've experienced here at home with our own diffuse
and evolving terrorism threat, law enforcement cannot tackle this
burden alone.
As such, educating and empowering communities to become
active participants and stakeholders in their own safety and security
pays measurable dividends in contributing to the safety and security of
the neighborhoods in which they live, work and play. Here in the U.S.,
the expansion of the ``If you See Something, Say Something'' campaign
has harnessed millions of eyes and ears as force-multipliers to detect
and report suspicious activities.
Treating the public as a key partner in counter-terrorism
promotes greater engagement and reduced public apathy and believe
counter-terrorism is primarily a responsibility of government.
Increasing information sharing efforts between law
enforcement and community leaders and organizations builds
``communities of trust'' and facilitates greater cooperation and
collaboration.
Engaging citizens and communities through trainings and
exercises teaches people to know what to look for and know how to
respond in an emergency.
In closing, I'd ask you to consider this:
In January 2015, The Grand Synagogue of Paris shuttered for Shabbat
services on Friday night following the terrorist attacks against
Charlie Hebdo and Hyper Cacher, marking the first time since World War
II that the synagogue was closed on the Sabbath. Following the attacks,
10,000 police and soldiers were deployed across France to guard Jewish
institutions against follow on attacks, an effort that, in many places,
continues today.
In December 2015, New Year's Eve fireworks and festivities in
Brussels were canceled following a terror alert warning of an imminent
attack against the city, a month after the November terrorist attacks
in Paris killed over 130 people.
These are NOT the ``kind of firsts'' we wish to celebrate. . . nor
will we tolerate; we cannot be plagued and paralyzed by the violent
will of hate and extremism. Through programs and initiatives of trust
and collaboration, we'll continue to pursue these efforts to ensure
vigilance is eternal and communities and neighborhoods remain safe and
secure; we'll continue building a culture of awareness, not a community
of fear.
Our strength lies in our diversity, acceptance and common
collective goal to assemble freely in our respective houses of worship,
without fear, intimidation or threat of violence. We've long recognized
that an attack on one of us, is an attack on all of us. While the
threat of terrorism remains our resolve has grown. However, our
response will be measured, devoid of the fear and uncertainty that
terrorism and violent extremist ideologies seek to instill.
Time is not on our side. We're past the time for more summits,
conferences and meetings. The pace and tempo of attacks requires swift,
yet informed conviction and actions. We've experienced hard lessons, we
must LEARN from them; we've developed best practices; we must SHARE
them.
Mahatma Gandhi once said, ``The true measure of any society can be
found in how it treats its most vulnerable.'' I'd like to personally
thank the Chairman and his staff for their continued leadership with
the Commission in ensuring that the United States of America will
forever fight for the protection and preservation of the human rights,
safety and security of all global citizens.
Mr. Goldenberg is Chairman and President of Cardinal Point
Strategies and a member of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security
Advisory Council (HSAC).
In December 2014, DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson appointed Mr.
Goldenberg as co-chair of the National DHS Foreign Fighter Task Force.
He currently serves as Vice Chair of the US Department of Homeland
Security's Faith-Based Council and as senior advisor to the
Department's newly established Countering Violent Extremism (CVE)
initiative.
Before founding CPS, he played a key role in setting domestic and
international policy for the legislation and investigation of hate
crimes and countering violent extremism and has been an international
thought leader in information sharing, conflict resolution, public
safety and counter terrorism policy. He established community policing,
hate crimes, and CVE-related programs for transnational agencies, many
of which were adopted by governments in North America and Europe. His
public career includes more than two decades as a former senior
official of the New Jersey State Attorney General's Office, Director of
the nation's 6th largest county social service and juvenile justice
system, and as a law enforcement official who headed investigation
efforts for significant cases of domestic terrorism, political
corruption, and organized crime.
Following a series of highly publicized incidents of domestic
terrorism and hate crimes, the NJ State Attorney General appointed Mr.
Goldenberg as the first state Chief of the Office of Bias Crimes and
Community Relations. During his tenure, he wrote many of the model
procedures for domestic terrorism investigations and policy framework
for building police and community partnerships, many of which became
models for national and international policy and legislation.
In 2004, he spearheaded an international law enforcement mission
for the Organization for Security Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), during
which he worked in over 10 European nations including Ukraine, Hungary,
Kosovo and Croatia where he assisted government agencies with
addressing conflict and growing transnational extremism. He continues
to remain active in the non-profit and think tank communities.
His current and former leadership positions include: Special
Adviser to the Chairman of Crime Stoppers, USA, the County Executives
of America, representing 700 of the nation's largest county
governments; Senior CT Advisor to the American Hotel and Lodging
Association, representing over 50,000 hoteliers here and abroad; Vice
Chair of the US Department of Homeland Security's Faith Based Advisory
Security Council; as well as National Director of the Secure Community
Network, the nation's first full time faith based threat and
information sharing center. He also sits on the Board of Directors for
several publicly traded and privately held companies. Mr. Goldenberg
has received numerous awards including South Florida's most
distinguished citation for valor, Officer of the Year. Goldenberg spent
4 years long term undercover as an agent assigned to the South Florida
Special Investigations Strike Force. His experiences have been featured
in numerous articles and publications.Mr. Goldenberg is Chairman and
President of Cardinal Point Strategies and a member of the U.S.
Department of Homeland Security Advisory Council (HSAC).
In December 2014, DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson appointed Mr.
Goldenberg as co-chair of the National DHS Foreign Fighter Task Force.
He currently serves as Vice Chair of the US Department of Homeland
Security's Faith-Based Council and as senior advisor to the
Department's newly established CVE initiative.
Before founding CPS, he played a key role in setting domestic and
international policy for the legislation and investigation of hate
crimes and countering violent extremism and has been an international
thought leader in information sharing, conflict resolution, public
safety and counter terrorism policy. He established community policing,
hate crimes, and CVE-related programs for transnational agencies, many
of which were adopted by governments in North America and Europe. His
public career includes more than two decades as a former senior
official of the New Jersey State Attorney General's Office, Director of
the nation's 6th largest county social service and juvenile justice
system, and as a law enforcement official who headed investigation
efforts for significant cases of domestic terrorism, political
corruption, and organized crime.
Following a series of highly publicized incidents of domestic
terrorism and hate crimes, the NJ State Attorney General appointed Mr.
Goldenberg as the first state Chief of the Office of Bias Crimes and
Community Relations. During his tenure, he wrote many of the model
procedures for domestic terrorism investigations and policy framework
for building police and community partnerships, many of which became
models for national and international policy and legislation.
In 2004, he spearheaded an international law enforcement mission
for the Organization for Security Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), during
which he worked in over 10 European nations including Ukraine, Hungary,
Kosovo and Croatia where he assisted government agencies with
addressing conflict and growing transnational extremism. He continues
to remain active in the non-profit and think tank communities.
His current and former leadership positions include: Special
Adviser to the Chairman of Crime Stoppers, USA, the County Executives
of America, representing 700 of the nation's largest county
governments; Senior CT Advisor to the American Hotel and Lodging
Association, representing over 50,000 hoteliers here and abroad; Vice
Chair of the US Department of Homeland Security's Faith Based Advisory
Security Council; as well as National Director of the Secure Community
Network, the nation's first full time faith based threat and
information sharing center. He also sits on the Board of Directors for
several publicly traded and privately held companies. Mr. Goldenberg
has received numerous awards including South Florida's most
distinguished citation for valor, Officer of the Year. Goldenberg spent
4 years long term undercover as an agent assigned to the South Florida
Special Investigations Strike Force. His experiences have been featured
in numerous articles and publications.
This is an official publication of the
Commission on Security and
Cooperation in Europe.
< < <
This publication is intended to document
developments and trends in participating
States of the Organization for Security
and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
< < <
All Commission publications may be freely
reproduced, in any form, with appropriate
credit. The Commission encourages
the widest possible dissemination
of its publications.
< < <
http://www.csce.gov @HelsinkiComm
The Commission's Web site provides
access to the latest press releases
and reports, as well as hearings and
briefings. Using the Commission's electronic
subscription service, readers are able
to receive press releases, articles,
and other materials by topic or countries
of particular interest.
Please subscribe today.