American Jews, witnessing the rise of anti-Semitism across the country, are taking self-defense precautions as the start of the school year and the holiday season approaches.
Richard Priem, CEO of Community Security Service (CSS), told Fox News Digital that his organization has worked with about 500 synagogues and trained an additional 15,000 community members across the country on how to keep their places of worship secure in a heightened threat environment.
In the 11 months since the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attacks, combined with rising levels of anti-Semitism in the country, Priem said CSS has seen a “massive increase in demand” for its services as the organization provides a sense of “empowerment” to Jewish Americans seeking the tools to “take charge” of their own security.
“When we talk about self-defense, it’s not just about whether I can physically defend myself. It’s also about the Jewish community taking responsibility for its own security, not to replace law enforcement, not to replace paid security guards, but to add an additional layer of community security that is ours,” Priem told Fox News Digital. “Our mission is to protect Jewish life and the Jewish way of life. On the one hand, we want to increase security around Jewish institutions and events so that we can protect the people who are there. But we also want to maintain the Jewish way of life, which is to be able to continue to live as American Jews who participate in all aspects of American life, but also Jewish life, without fear.”
Priem said his organization provides “professional-level security training” to members of the Jewish community and receives requests every day from “dozens of new volunteers stepping up.”
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Luam Pham holds a Byrna launcher during a demonstration at Fox News Digital. (Fox News Digital)
American Jews across the country, particularly in jurisdictions with stricter gun control laws, are also seeking to equip themselves with a non-lethal weapon called a Byrna launcher.
Luan Pham, chief revenue and marketing officer at Byrna Technologies, told Fox News Digital that the Byrna launcher expels a kinetic bullet, made from a high-end polymer, capable of shattering a car’s side windows from 30 feet away. The non-lethal weapon, Pham said, delivers a painful, blunt impact that can thwart an attack or defuse an assailant “without taking a life.” Upon impact, a Byrna bullet creates a six-foot cloud of chemical irritants that attacks the assailant’s central nervous system, making their skin feel like it’s on fire for about 30 to 40 minutes without killing them.
“It allows you to focus on the victim and get back to the attacker. And our product is unique because it’s very accessible,” Pham said. “The Byrna launcher doesn’t require a background check. You don’t need a license to own it. We can ship it directly to our customers. It’s very easy to use the zero recoil, unlike a firearm where you have this very violent recoil. The Byrna doesn’t shake in your hand when you shoot it. And there’s no need for air shields because the recording blast is tolerable, you know, in the open.”
Over the past five years, Pham said, the company has sold more than 500,000 units. After the Oct. 7 attack, he described a massive influx of purchases from Jewish community members across the country. He said that at an event in Las Vegas after the Black Saturday massacre, he met a Jewish leader who had driven from Los Angeles to buy several Byrna launchers as soon as possible. The man recounted, Pham said, that a rabbi, otherwise untrained in firearms, had come to the temple with a bulletproof vest and a .45, and so he wanted a way to defend his place of worship without being reckless.
“What makes this product unique is that you can train untrained people in the sanctity of your own property,” Pham said, adding that people can train “on church grounds, on temple grounds or indoors.”
“Over the years, we’ve trained dozens and dozens of churches on how to protect themselves and their people,” he added. “And what’s interesting is that after that first call on October 7th from one temple, word got out, and they all came together as a community and placed a huge six-figure order so they could defend themselves the right way…while mitigating the risk.”
“We believe in the Second Amendment, but we’re common-sense gun owners,” Pham said. “Our mission is to reduce gun deaths. And we believe that if we can get 100 million gun owners to be the first to step up when they’re faced with a dangerous situation, imagine how many lives could be saved.”
A small group of pro-Israel protesters and counter-protesters gather outside Columbia University on August 27, 2024, to stage an “Exposing Hate on Campus” protest at the start of the academic year in New York City. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
According to the New York City Police Department’s hate crime dashboard, 200 of the 329 confirmed hate crimes recorded year-to-date through June 25 targeted Jewish victims.
Between 2018 and 2023, hate crimes against Jewish New Yorkers increased by 89% statewide, according to a report released last week by New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli.
“I’m not surprised by these numbers,” Priem told Fox News Digital in response to the report. “They’re consistent with what we’re seeing on the ground every week.”
In 2023, a total of 1,089 hate crimes were reported in the Empire State, a 69% increase since 2019, DiNapoli wrote.
According to the Anti-Defamation League, anti-Semitic incidents in the United States increased by approximately 400 percent in the weeks following the October 7 terrorist attacks in southern Israel.
The CSS, which has been around for more than 50 years, has seen a 25 percent increase in the past 11 months in terms of institutions covered and the number of volunteers trained, Priem said.
In 2020, the organization had to manage an average of between 100 and 200 incidents per year. This figure is now close to 400, the majority of which occurred after October 7.
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Priem cited examples of anti-Israel agitators coming to a synagogue in Teaneck, New Jersey, earlier this year and assaulting worshipers, as well as other instances of anti-Israel car convoys honking horns in Jewish neighborhoods and insulting or harassing passersby “simply because they were wearing a kippah,” identifying themselves as Jewish.
He distinguished between anti-Israel agitators who target an Israeli embassy and protesters who target a Jewish institution or synagogue. He said the latter, while anti-Semitic, are not always illegal, urging law enforcement to enforce existing laws prohibiting the wearing of masks in public or loud noises in residential areas in order to maintain a “more proactive and zero-tolerance approach” to harassment targeting Jews.
Anti-Israel agitators gather at a synagogue in Teaneck, New Jersey, on April 1, 2024, to protest a meeting organized by ZAKA, a volunteer community emergency response team in Israel, prompting a police response. (Fatih Aktas/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“They’re blaming Jews for something that a foreign country is doing,” Priem told Fox News Digital of the anti-Israel agitators. “And unfortunately, we now have to prepare our teams to deal with protesters, both peaceful protesters — and how to de-escalate the situation to make sure that none of the worshipers or any of the Jewish participants in an event are drawn into any sort of confrontation — but also protests that directly harass and intimidate Jews and even protests that result in assaults and violent attacks against members of the Jewish community.”
Before October 7, some of the security best practices that the CSS passed on to teams preparing for protests were therefore not as relevant as they are today, Priem argued.
His organization also deploys additional volunteers to synagogues or other sites if it receives advance notice of planned anti-Israel protests.
“In response to this rise in anti-Semitism following the events of October 7, we’re seeing more and more Jews standing up for themselves, standing up for their institutions and saying, ‘I want to volunteer so that my kids can continue to go to Jewish summer camp or so that our kids can continue to attend our services without being afraid, without having to keep them in our homes because we’re worried about their safety,’” he said. “And fortunately, whenever it’s been necessary, we’ve also had a very constructive response from local law enforcement.”
Over the past semester, anti-Israel protests and encampments, some carrying Hamas flags and others carrying terrorist propaganda, have sparked clashes on many American campuses between students, administrators and police.
As school resumes and the holidays approach, Priem said CSS has launched a program for the first time to train Jewish students in situational awareness, self-defense and de-escalation “with the goal of giving them the confidence and resilience to be able to defend and protect themselves in this campus environment.”
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“Before school breaks, every year we take extra precautions, extra guidance, extra training. And this year, it’s even more true given the context that we’re in,” Priem said. “It’s not about creating some kind of response posture. That’s not what we want to achieve. But we want to give these students some confidence, some resilience, so that they feel more confident and have more skills to manage this hostile environment that, unfortunately, has been tolerated on our campuses for far too long.”
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