The Wall Street Journal: An ‘Iron Dome’ Against U.S. Antisemitism

By William McGurn

Passover marks the deliverance of the Jewish people from slavery. On Monday, American Jews began holiday celebrations in arguably the freest and most welcoming society for Jews ever. Yet few Americans have any idea of the effort it takes to ensure Jews can practice their faith even in a place where it is their constitutional right.

That’s where Michael Masters comes in. A Harvard Law School graduate who has served in the U.S. Marines and as a Chicago police official, Mr. Masters is national director and chief executive of the nonprofit Secure Community Network. SCN is the official homeland security and safety initiative of the organized Jewish community in North America. Its mandate is simple: keep Jews safe whether at a synagogue, a Jewish community center or any other Jewish institution.

“Just as Israel has the Iron Dome,” Mr. Masters says, “we want to build a proactive protective security shield over the entirety of the Jewish community in North America.”

The SCN website sums up the challenge this way: “Just 2% of the U.S. population, Jews are the targets of more than 60% of religiously motivated hate crimes according to FBI data. That’s why we are here.”

Though other faith groups have suffered attacks, the aggression against Jews stands out. On April 16, the Anti-Defamation League released its report on antisemitic incidents in the U.S. for 2023. The ADL puts the total at 8,873, more than double the previous year’s number and the highest number on record since the group began keeping track in 1979.

Worse, the majority of these incidents—5,204—were reported in the three months following the Hamas savageries of Oct. 7. In fact, there were more incidents from Oct. 7 through the end of 2023 than for any full calendar year before. These occur as the internet and social media have created more opportunities for young people to be radicalized. This Passover, Americans are watching the ugliness at Columbia on their smartphones, with Jewish students and faculty begging the university to protect them.

What all this means, says Mr. Masters, is that security today has to be much more than posting a guard. SCN’s 100-plus employees cover all 50 states and are deployed to 33 communities. Most are ex-FBI agents or policemen.

The beating heart of SCN is a state-of-the-art 24/7 situation room. The Jewish Security Operations Command Center in Chicago features what is effectively a digital map outlining every Jewish facility in America. When something happens nearby SCN gets the intelligence out and coordinates with local law enforcement as needed. The name of the game is prevention, because it’s often too late when you call the cops.

“The lesson is that you build the ark before it rains,” Mr. Masters says. It pays off. Before an armed intruder took a rabbi and three men hostage at the Congregation Beth Israel synagogue in Texas in 2022, SCN had held a training session there. At the session, someone asked how to defend yourself if you have nothing but a chair. “Throw the chair,” the SCN trainer said.

That’s exactly what Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker did, distracting the gunman so the hostages could all run to safety outside. As one congregant said when it was all over (and the gunman had been killed by the FBI), he and his fellow hostages weren’t rescued. They escaped—thanks in part to SCN training.

“You can’t imagine the impact—to be able to sit across the table from someone who says, ‘I am alive today because of your work,’” Mr. Masters says.

There are similar stories elsewhere. Amid the horror of the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, where a shooter took 11 innocent lives in 2018, all but one of those at the service who’d attended security training (by another organization) were able to escape. The exception was Jerry Rabinowitz, a doctor who made it out but went back in to help the wounded, then was himself gunned down.

Mr. Masters says SCN has always monitored Islamist groups for threats, and after Tehran’s missile and drone strike on Israel this month, Iran and its proxies are a heightened concern. In 1994 Iran and Hezbollah, its proxy in Lebanon, killed 85 people when they bombed a Buenos Aires Jewish center. That was in retaliation for Argentina’s backtracking on a nuclear cooperation deal with Tehran.

Not every college campus is Columbia, and not every synagogue in America is feeling vulnerable. But once upon a time, American synagogues hired cops to direct traffic. Now they need a whole security and intelligence apparatus to live freely as Jews.

“Passover is the story of exodus, and that’s our story whether it’s from ancient Egypt or medieval Spain or the Russian empire,” Mr. Masters says.

“But there will be no exodus from the American experiment. We will make it safe to live proud and public Jewish lives.”

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