(Washington) It was not by instinct that a Texas rabbi threw a chair on Saturday at the armed man who was holding him hostage in his synagogue, only to then flee with two faithful: it was the setting in training application to protect Jewish institutions in the United States.
Posted yesterday at 6:39 p.m.
The rabbi, Charlie Cytron-Walker, has also praised the organization Secure Communities Network (SCN) for having trained him to react to a dangerous situation such as the hostage taking which lasted more than 10 hours in the Synagogue of Congregation Beth Israel, Colleyville.
Her captor, a British national named Malik Faisal Akram, notably demanded the release of a Pakistani scientist who is serving an 86-year prison sentence in the United States for acts of terrorism.
If a first hostage had been released after several hours of negotiations, it was thanks to the intervention of the rabbi that he and the two others escaped in the evening, all safe and sound.
The hostage taker, armed, died during the intervention of the police.
“When I saw an opportunity, at a time when he was not in good shape, I made sure that the two men who were still with me were ready to leave. The exit was not too far. I told them to go,” the rabbi told CBS, his voice marked by emotion.
“I threw a chair at the gunman and headed for the door, and the three of us were able to get out without a single shot being fired,” he explained. .
For Eric Fingerhut, president of the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA), Mr. Cytron-Walker’s gesture is the “direct result” of a campaign to train local communities to react in the event of an attack.
And the need to train against trespassing by gunmen is even more glaring since a gunman killed 11 worshipers at a synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on October 27, 2018, the worst anti-Semitic shooting in history. American, he recalls.
“The past three years have been the most violent, probably in the country’s history, in terms of attacks on Jewish institutions,” he said.
“Getting Safe”
“The threat is at its highest and we are responding with force,” he said.
His organization thus finances training in danger perception and reaction gestures, as during the course organized in August 2021 by the SCN at the Colleyville synagogue.
“They teach you that when your life is in danger, you have to do everything to get to safety,” said Charlie Cytron-Walker.
On CNN, the congregation’s president, Michael Finfer, explained that the courses focused on “how to react to a shooter, how to stop a bleeding, on the strategy ‘run, hide, fight'” in the event of an attack. .
The number of these formations, supported by the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and local law enforcement, has increased in the face of the emergence of a more assertive far right, including neo-Nazi and white supremacist, reinforced by four years in office of Donald Trump.
The JFNA is currently trying to raise $54 million for a program called LiveSecure, which should fund security training for the 146 Jewish associations it oversees.
The US Congress has also proposed increasing its aid to religious communities, not just Jewish ones, by tens of millions to invest in security systems, including video surveillance.
These initiatives took on even more importance after the Pittsburgh massacre, “a sort of 9/11 for the Jewish community”, for Eric Fingerhut.
But, he says, the 2018 attack would have resulted in even more casualties if security measures had not already been put in place.
Synagogue officials, for example, made sure that nothing blocked emergency access, allowing many worshipers to escape.
Breaking Shabbat restrictions, a rabbi also had a mobile phone on him and was able to call for help.
“We know that these measures have saved lives,” says Eric Fingerhut.
Faced with the risk of attack, some congregations are also discussing the possibility of arming the faithful, an option on which Eric Fingerhut does not wish to take a position.
“There are disagreements, of course, and some synagogues are more open to this possibility than others. »