U.S. Antisemitism Envoy Calls for Armed Guards at Synagogues, Jewish Institutions

TEL AVIV – Armed security guards should be deployed at every synagogue and Jewish community center across the United States, the U.S. Special Envoy for Monitoring and Combating Antisemitism Elan Carr said on Wednesday 

“We live in a time of danger,” Carr said during an interview at the Global Coalition 4 Israel Conference in Jerusalem. “Any synagogue, every JCC, should have guards. God willing, may they never be needed, but they should be there.”

Carr is a former Los Angeles prosecutor and a U.S. Army veteran who served in Iraq. In February, he began his new role at the State Department in a position that had remained unfilled for two years.

Carr said on Wednesday that President Donald Trump is fully committed to fighting antisemitism in the US.

“The rhetoric of the president couldn’t be clearer. Every time the president speaks on this issue, he calls it [antisemitism] a vile poison that must be rooted out,” said Carr.

He also noted that the president has explicitly said that “if you go after the Jews, we’re coming after you.”

Greenblatt added that combating antisemitism must be “a joint bipartisan fight.”

“All decent people — Jewish and not Jewish — need to do it together. I don’t care what ideological clothing it wears, Jew-hatred is Jew-hatred, we need to fight it and oppose it and that’s got to be the message,” he said.

Separately on Wednesday, the Senate Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee approved bipartisan legislation to grant $75 million per year for nonprofits and faith-based organizations to provide security for their institutions against potential terrorist attacks.

Breitbart Jerusalem Bureau Chief Aaron Klein has for years advocated for the U.S. to adopt the Israeli model of deploying private security guards at soft targets like synagogues, churches, night clubs, shopping centers and restaurants.