EMERGENCY EPISODE: Is this the Global Intifada? - with Mitch Silber
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You are listening to an ART Media Podcast. We've seen deadly terrorist attacks that have been mobilized by jihadist ideology. We've seen a lot of them in Europe, whether it's France or Denmark or Belgium. We've seen right-wing extremism lead to deadly attacks against Jews here in the United States. Tree of Life, Poway in Southern California,

But we haven't seen this before. We haven't seen a deadly terrorist attack where far left-wing extremism was the mobilizing ideology. That's something new here. It's 8.30 p.m. on Thursday, May 22nd here in New York City. It is 3.30 a.m. on Friday, May 23rd in Israel as Israelis transition to a new day.

Last night, on Wednesday, May 22nd, two employees of Israel's embassy in Washington, Sarah Milgrom and Yaron Lashinsky, were shot dead in cold blood by Elias Rodriguez, a radical left-wing activist. "'I did it for Palestine. I did it for Gaza,' he said after being taken into custody and charged with first-degree murder."

It was only today, after their daughter had been murdered, that Sarah Milgram's parents learned that her boyfriend, Yaron, who she'd met while working at the Israeli embassy, had bought an engagement ring and was days away from proposing to her.

It's been almost two years since the chant, "Globalize the Intifada," has gone mainstream. Is what happened last night in DC a manifestation of that chant, the logical extension of what we have been watching over the last year and a half? Or was it just an outlier, a lone wolf incident not connected to anything larger? If we look around the world today from Canada to France to Germany, Sweden, the UK, Denmark, Australia,

It looks like the U.S. might be joining an already established club, albeit a bit later than the rest of them. How should the Jewish community in the U.S. and Jewish communities around the world prepare if this is indeed the beginning of, or maybe not the beginning, of a global intifada?

Which brings us to our guest today, Mitch Silber. Mitch served as director of intelligence analysis at the NYPD, New York City's police department, where he worked on counterterrorism and is one of the foremost experts on counterterrorism and radicalization. He is also today the head of the Community Security Initiative, which gives him a unique perch to evaluate and actually process.

address a number of security issues affecting the Jewish community in this country. Needless to say, the work that Mitch has been engaged in has become especially important. We'll ask Mitch to help us make sense of what just happened, why it matters, and what else we should be looking for going forward.

Mitch, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for being here. Thanks for having me, Dan. Big fan of the podcast. Thank you. I'm a big fan of your work. So there we go. As I said, it's especially timely. And we're going to talk about the Community Security Initiative in a few moments just so our listeners can get a better understanding of this particular project. But I just want to start with here we are on Thursday night, late Thursday night. This incident, this tragedy occurred Wednesday night.

What do we know now about what happened last night in D.C.? Sure. This event, Dan, is taking place at the Capitol Jewish Museum, an event sponsored by American Jewish Committee, AJC. It's for young professionals. It's multi-faith. It's interfaith. And it's talking about humanitarian issues, the type of issues that Yaron and Sarah were interested in.

And it's talking about North Africa. It's talking about the Middle East. And obviously, with the war going on with Israel and Gaza, humanitarian issues are top of the mind awareness. And as the event is wrapping up at approximately 9 p.m., Yaron and Sarah and some other individuals leave the event.

There's been an individual that we now know retrospectively was kind of lurking outside the door of the event. He pulls out a firearm and he tragically shoots these two young diplomats working from the Israeli embassy in Israel.

And he subsequently puts down the weapon and finds his way into the museum itself, where ultimately it's determined that he actually is the shooter. Why did he go into the museum? That was the part that I was confused by. He went in after committing this crime rather than fleeing? Yeah, he wanted to be caught. He was so committed to the idea. And now this individual has written a manifesto

that he was going to bring the war home, and home is the United States. And when you bring the war home to the United States, and the war is against Israel, you go and shoot two Israeli diplomats. And he was proud of his actions. He had committed to these. He had radicalized over time. And when he was inside, he said, free Palestine. So there was no doubt what the cause was that mobilized him into this violent situation.

and I think that's what he's doing. He's doing it for the people. He's doing it for the people. He's doing it for the people. He's doing it for the people. He's doing it for the people. He's doing it for the people. He's doing it for the people. He's doing it for the people. He's doing it for the people. He's doing it for the people. He's doing it for the people. He's doing it for the people. He's doing it for the people. He's doing it for the people. He's doing it for the people. He's doing it for the people. He's doing it for the people. He's doing it for the people. He's doing it for the people. He's doing it for the people. He's doing it for the people. He's doing it for the people. He's doing it for the people. He's doing it for the people. He's doing it for the people. He's doing it for the people. He's doing it for the people. He's doing it for the people. He's doing it for the people. He's doing it for the people. He's doing it for the people. He's doing it for the people. He's doing it for the people. He's doing it for the people. He's doing it for the people. He's doing it for the people. He's doing it for the people. He's doing it for the people. He's doing it for the people. He's doing it for the people. He's doing it for the people. He's doing it for the people. He's doing it for the people. He's doing it for the people. He's doing it for the people. He's doing it for the people. He's doing it for the people. He's doing it for the people. He's doing it for the people. He's doing it for the people. He's doing it for the people. He's doing it for the people. He's doing it for the people. He's doing it for the people. He's doing it for the

I have not read it. You described it to me to some degree earlier today. Can you talk a little bit of what you found in that manifesto? What was most striking about it? Yeah, he's got the same type of anti-Israel, anti-Semitic narratives that we have been hearing for 20 months on the streets in the midst of this festering protest activity, whether you're in New York or

or London or Melbourne, it is the same ideology that mobilized him. And ultimately, what's in this manifesto is that he found that nonviolent protest activity was ineffective.

So if you're him and you've got this worldview and you're 20 months into this war and you find that your protest activity is not changing Israeli policy, it's not changing U.S. foreign policy, what do you do? You escalate. And how do you escalate? You turn to violence. Okay, so he says in this manifesto, basically, I've tried this, I've tried this, I've tried this. Does he cite things he's tried that didn't work? No.

Well, he literally says that nonviolent protest has been, quote unquote, ineffective. And therefore, does he say, therefore, I must escalate or therefore I'm taking matters to a more violent expression, shall we say? Yeah, he does. In fact, he cites the individual a number of months ago, former member of the U.S. military who lit himself on fire.

as a form of protest in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington. And he essentially says, I want to replicate that type of violent action as a way to change things. That's his worldview. Okay. We're going to come back to him. I want our listeners to understand all the parties. So the victims, Sarah Milgram and Yaron Lashinsky, what can you tell us about them?

Yeah, Sarah is a young diplomat. She originally hails from Kansas City. And humanitarian-type issues, building a better world, finding shared and common ground between adversaries is one of the things that drives her in her career. That's why she's at this event.

That's why she essentially has taken this career path and ultimately why she's there last night at this event. I mean, if you just look at her bio and the work she's done, she would be what would be considered a pro-peace person.

activist trying to, you know, cross ethnic, religious, sectarian faith lines and figure out how to build bridges. I mean, that is that is who she was on the Israeli-Palestinian issue and on a whole range of issues. Yeah. I mean, it's kind of a tikkun olam type of, you know, progressive worldview. And, you know, how is she going to actualize those goals is by being in this role. You know, this is kind of a next generation diplomat. Both of them are.

Their view is that, you know, there are other ways to bring about a better world and their diplomacy is going to be the way that essentially, you know, does that. And Yaron, tell us a little bit about Yaron Lashinsky. Yeah, Yaron hails from Germany. As far as we understand, he's actually not Jewish. He's Christian, but has this similar worldview. Sounds like he has a Jewish father and a Christian mother, if I read correctly.

correctly, but he grew up in Israel. He grew up in Israel. He moved to Israel. And, you know, he's part of this, also this Israeli young demographic of diplomats who are thinking about a different way of representing Israel, a different way, you know, in many ways, some of the ideals behind the Abraham Accords, where there's cohabitation in the Middle East. This is the type of agenda that he wants to promote.

by joining the Israeli diplomatic corps. Okay, so now let's talk about Elias Rodriguez. You talked about his manifesto. Anything else about his profile that is noteworthy from your perspective, given the work that you do? What are you looking for in his profile that...

you know, that we should focus on? Well, look, you know, from a counterterrorism perspective, unlike many of the other cases we look at where someone has turned to violence, at least from what we've seen so far with his social media, and there'll be more that's discovered in the coming weeks and days as people get into his electronics.

On the surface, you know, he's kind of a socialist worldview, but it's not clear that you can see the stepping stones for him to turn to violence. You know, when we talk about radicalization, I'll teach about it. I teach up at Columbia and SIPA about radicalization for graduate students. You know, some people talk about radicalization as a pathway or an escalating step, a set of stairs.

So, you know, if you could look at his postings and see that he's slowly escalating and calling for violence, then one as a counterterrorism perspective might say, oh, there was an intervention opportunity. Law enforcement had a moment where they saw him on that trajectory and should have intervened, could have intervened. So far, we haven't seen the evidence of that escalation. We just know he was part of this socialist type grouping and hated Israel.

So, you know, what's different here from what we've seen, you know, more recently is the fact that we've seen deadly terrorist attacks that have been mobilized by jihadist ideology. We've seen a lot of them in Europe, whether it's France or Denmark or Belgium, ISIS-motivated. We've seen right-wing extremism lead to deadly attacks against Jews here in the United States. Tree of Life, Poway in Southern California,

But we haven't seen this before. We haven't seen a deadly terrorist attack where left wing, far left wing extremism was the mobilizing ideology. That's something new here. What do you mean we haven't seen that before? Meaning more of a normal kind of conventional figure in American society that, you know, gets activated, if you will, or activates himself, right?

But because what I'm hearing and what you're saying, Mitch, is that a guy like this is probably harder to identify early on as a threat of this nature. Yeah. I mean, listen, when we talked about the ideological strain and he's coming from the far left, it's not like we haven't had terrorism in the West from the far left.

You know, the Red Army faction in Germany, the Weathermen in the United States. But these are things we haven't really seen in any significant proportion in the U.S. since the 60s, 70s. And, you know, terrorism analysts have been looking at this and waiting potentially for something like this. There was a shooting in 2017 in Washington, D.C., where a number of Republican congressmen were shot at during a softball game.

And that was probably the last type of event that we can think of as looking at it from a terrorism analyst perspective that was mobilized by this kind of violent extremist socialist worldview. And so that's what's new here. OK. And then professionally, he was a medical professional, if I understand. I believe so, but not clear when the last time he worked or if he's still working. You know, it seems like he had the biographical availability to do this.

He flew from Chicago, we now know, and he flew from Chicago with a firearm in his check baggage. And this event wasn't being promoted, is my understanding. They kept it under wraps, as many Jewish communal events are these days. Yes.

So this required work, it sounds like, by him to figure out this target, this location. That's right. I mean, I've seen the invite. And the invite is just as you say, when we go to Jewish offense these days, location to be provided later. You sign up, someone vets you and maybe takes a look at your social media and decides, OK, this person is OK to come to the event. How he knew about this event, unclear, at least that piece at this moment.

And in terms of Rodriguez transitioning from being a nonviolent activist to a violent activist, how do you assess whether he does that, but he does it as a lone wolf gone rogue and taking matters into his own hands or that actually he's

we are potentially seeing with him the early signs of some kind of trend, a violent extension of the anti-Israel protest movement. Well, it's both new and old at the same time. What's old is that the concept is that there's low risk, low cost activism. I show up at a protest and it's low risk. Nothing's going to happen to me. Low cost. It doesn't take much time. And people do that.

But then, you know, whether it's right-wing extremism, jihadist extremism, or here, far-left extremism, some people, a small fraction of the movement, say, hey, the movement is not working. We're not affecting societal change in the way we want it to happen. So that's the old part, that someone decides...

action is necessary to make this change. And, you know, we'll see if this turns out to be true. But I think that his targeting was not because they were Jewish. The targeting was because they were Israeli diplomats. They were a governmental target. And he viewed himself at war with the state of Israel. And do you think he was acting alone?

I think he was acting alone, but he lives in a virtual echo chamber online. If he follows the pattern of many violent extremisms, he is dealing with people who are validating his worldview. They're all posting things in Telegram chats in whatever the online forum is. And other people are saying, yeah,

That's right. You've got the right view. Israel is committing genocide. You know, violence is necessary. The protest activity isn't working. So he's not lone wolf. I don't love the terminology lone actor. It may be a small difference, but he has a virtual echo chamber that's validating him. He's the one who's decided to act.

And by the way, someone like Robert Bowers in Pittsburgh Tree of Life, same thing, just the other side of the spectrum. He was in Gab talking to people. They were concerned about immigration issues. But Robert Bowers decided to be the person to act on that. So someone eventually decides action is necessary and that all the talk is ineffective. I want to talk about CSI New York, the Community Service Initiative New York.

which is the organization you formed after the Tree of Life shooting. What do you do? Why were you formed? You know, New York is kind of coming to the game late. You know, for Jewish diaspora populations, if you lived in the UK, most European countries, Australia, South Africa, South America, there was a program underneath the Federation. And that program was designed to protect Jews

the jewish community in that particular region there were volunteers young men and women who would stand outside a synagogue during shabbat services they were trained in krav maga they were trained in some basics of surveillance and their mission is to protect the community

In the United States, just because of the way this has been an unbelievable experience, and you talk about it at the 92nd Street Y, the fact that the population of the United States hasn't dealt with terrorist attacks like this until Tree of Life, we didn't have programs like this other than in a few cities in the United States. So after Tree of Life in October of 2018, and Poway six months later, and then Jersey City in

in 2019 and then Munzee, four different deadly attacks that left 15 Jews dead over 14 months. The UJA Federation, who had been looking at this, said, hey, we need to create a security program to protect our population here in New York. And oh, by the way, we've got a population of close to 1.8 million Jews. We're the largest Jewish population in the diaspora outside the state of Israel. So our organization was created to protect

this population and it's kind of like where counterterrorism and community affairs come together. And I should say in full disclosure that founding partners of CSI New York

include the Polly Singer Foundation, which I'm involved with, and Mark Rowan's foundation and the Kirsch Foundation working with UJA. It's an extraordinary project and what you guys are doing is very important. I want to talk a little bit about the techniques you use. Can you just give us a couple of examples of the techniques you use and of any attacks that you managed to thwart before they were able to be executed upon?

Sure. You know, the backbone of our organization is having a dream team of former law enforcement intelligence officials. We have a number of people who are regional security directors. They come from the NYPD. They come from the New York State Police. They come from the Shin Bet. They come from other police departments in the region. And

And their role is to work with every synagogue, JCC, Jewish school, camp, museum, Hillel or Chabad on campus and make sure that the physical security of that institution is as good as it can be. They harden the doors, put blast mitigation film on the windows, CCTV cameras. They consult with the institutions when they're having events for the high holidays, organizing

And they train them, active shooter training, which unfortunately, when you're a Jew in 2025, you need to know how to respond in an active shooter situation. And incident response, when someone scrawls a swastika on the sidewalk in front of the institution, when they get some hateful voicemail, these regional security directors, these law enforcement veterans respond and interact quickly.

with the institution. So that's on the physical security side. The other side is the intelligence side. And one of the things I learned from NYPD, based on my counterterrorism experience there, is that as much as you can harden the target,

And we think about Tree of Life a lot. Wouldn't it have been even better if you could have detected the gunman who attacked Tree of Life when he was posting online, damn the optics, I'm coming in. So our intelligence analysts, and I can't go into it too much because I want to protect their tradecraft,

But essentially, they live in the deep and the dark web. They're in the sewers of the Internet and they're looking for violent extremists who are posting things, giving us a hint, like we talked about before, that they're on their escalating stairs of radicalization and that they may turn to violence. And we do have a few amazing successes that the team overall has had in the last couple of years. Can you give us one or two examples?

Sure. One of the most dramatic and it's gotten some attention is that on a Friday, and it always seems to be on a Friday, Dan, that morning, one of our intelligence analysts noticed on X that an individual said that he wanted to attack a synagogue and he was going to do it today and it was going to be in New York.

And we immediately spun into action because that wasn't just someone ideating that they hated Jews. No, we've got someone saying that they have the intention to do that. You try and find out where someone like this is. We passed it to law enforcement on Long Island because it seemed like where that individual was. We passed it to FBI in New York.

And by the evening, there was a manhunt, a full-on manhunt in a city of 8.5 million in New York. All law enforcement entities were looking for one individual.

midnight that night at Penn Station, he's arrested by some very sharp-eyed MTA cops who identify this individual because a be-on-the-lookout, a BOLO, as they say in law enforcement, has been put out for this person. And when they arrest him, he's got a Glock, he's got ammunition, a Glock's a firearm, he's got a Nazi swastika armband, and he's got a hunting knife. So we believe we interrupted him

a tree of life type attack in process, if you will. And the analysts found it and tremendous law enforcement partners, NYPD, FBI, others. So big success. And the more recent one was just this past Valentine's Day. By the way, that last plot was 12 hours from detection to disruption. Wow. Again, on a Friday at one o'clock, another one of our analysts finds someone who says, I'm coming to Central Synagogue and he's not coming for Shabbat services. He's going to come to kill Jews.

We pass that to the NYPD. They begin to investigate it. It's someone who dropped out of Marine Officer Training School and is from Utah. Okay. At this point, we think, hey, he's from Utah. NYPD is able to identify where he is. He's no longer in Utah. He was in Ohio in the morning. He's leaving the Philadelphia area. And it seems like he is coming on a direct path to New York City.

NYPD comes up with a plan to intercept this person on the Jersey side of the Lincoln Tunnel. Our team is in touch with the central synagogue, speaking to the rabbi, speaking to security. They decide, with our advice, to go ahead with Shabbat services because there's going to be an army of NYPD in front of the synagogue. We put out a warning to every Manhattan institution, hey,

this individual, be on the lookout for this individual because, you know, he might see this army in front of Central Synagogue and decide to go to Park Avenue Synagogue or Temple Emanuel or Central. And thankfully, NYPD and Port Authority police arrest him at 5.55 a.m.

on the Jersey side of the Lincoln Tunnel. Plot averted five hours from detection to disruption. So, you know, these were kind of heart-stopping days. We were just hoping it doesn't end badly. I think it's a safe assumption to say that most of the Call Me Back listenership does not spend a lot of time on the dark web.

So how would you describe to our audience here what one sees on the dark web in terms of anti-Semitism? You know, this is just a cesspool. This is where there are no minders. There are no prohibitions on what you can say. And people egg each other on talking about their sick, violent fantasies of killing Jews and saying,

Thankfully, most of the time, it's just people talking about it. And as our analysts say, they're shit-talking. But sometimes you do see people who give evidence that they're going to move to action. And by the way, this is full spectrum. This was a left-wing violent extremist. We're looking at people who are mobilized.

by Hamas, by ISIS, and by neo-Nazi ideology. So, you know, our community, unfortunately, is in a bit of a perfect storm. We have threats coming at us from all parts of the spectrum. And how would you, I know you're in touch with law enforcement and intelligence community, not only in the U.S., but internationally, where there are large Jewish communities, or I guess even small or medium-sized Jewish communities. How would you describe the security landscape

for Jewish communities around the world right now, outside of Israel? You know, I think if we look at some of the United States' closest Western democracies, the countries that we look in the mirror and say, hey, they look the most like us. Let's take the UK, France, Canada, Australia. You know, we've recently learned that in the UK, while 10-7 was going on,

The Palestine Solidarity Movement was trying to get a permit for an anti-Israel protest in the midst of London. The Community Security Trust, which is kind of the national analog to CSI and actually an organization we try and model ourselves after in the UK, they track people.

anti-Semitic events there. And there are record numbers, numbers that they've never seen in the UK. You know, in Canada, we've seen girls' schools firebombed, shooting at synagogues in Canada. And, you know, I know you've talked about this. And in Australia, you know, similarly in Melbourne and Sydney, the police,

their community security groups, which are like us, like CST, and those communities feel under fire. So, you know, wherever you go, in a sense, it's the same. And we're all fronts in the Israel-Gaza war, whether in London, Paris, Melbourne, or Toronto.

Okay, Mitch, you know, one question when a lot of these crazy protests have been taking place since October 7th is it's been unnerving for a lot of us and terrifying, actually. And then there's been others who say, you know, don't worry. It's just, you know, a bunch of lost, rambunctious, overconfident,

over-exuberant young people. And yeah, they're saying crazy stuff, but just let them do what they're doing. It's nothing to the world. And then the protests, we get more protests and vandalism and violence against cops and, you know, taking over of libraries. And it's always just, oh, they're just kids. They're just, you know, don't really confront them because they're only going to escalate. I want to play something for you, which is from this exact scene

or party that Rodriguez was a member of, which is the Party for Socialism and Liberation. And this is from a rally on October 8th. So the day after October 7th. We feel the Palestinian blood. We feel the Palestinian blood. And we stand in solidarity with Palestine. We have the historic responsibility. We have the historic responsibility. Of defeating. Of defeating. Israel colonialism.

And U.S. imperialism! So this was, and there's a ton of this stuff, and this was immediately after October 7th. Again, this is the organization that Rodriguez associated with.

How does one think about, because we see all this stuff going around us and we're all kind of told often by political leaders or by other leaders in the civic square, just, you know, just ignore them. You're only, you know, don't confront them. The authorities shouldn't confront them. You're only going to provoke them more. That's one way to look at it. The other way to look at it is if you tolerate this kind of behavior that disrupts people's lives and then you allow it to escalate and escalate and escalate, you know,

Sometimes the escalation looks like we saw 24 hours ago. Yeah, there's not a satisfying answer to this issue because I think all of the law enforcement agencies throughout the U.S., France, U.K., Canada, Australia, they're trying to calibrate this situation

in such a fine way. To some degree, letting people vent, having this protest activity, you know, here, obviously, it's First Amendment rights in the United States is protected. And if you talk to the NYPD as frequently as I do, this is one of the things that they've been so mindful of is to allow people to have their first

Amendment rights protected. You know, this past Sunday in New York, we had the Celebrate Israel Day parade. 50,000 people marched up Fifth Avenue supporting Israel, celebrating Israel. But there was a protest pen and there were some also pop-up protests. So, you know, where we've seen the NYPD draw the line here is really to allow the First Amendment protected speech.

But if you turn to vandalism, if you turn to violence, they're going to pluck those people out and they are going to arrest those people. And I do have to say, if you look at terrorism groups, there is some risk if law enforcement, as satisfying as it might seem to some people, uses such a heavy hand that that might even accelerate violence.

the turn to violence like Rodriguez. So you only really know in retrospect if you calibrate it finely enough to allow the steam to blow off, but at the same time, you're mindful of those people who might escalate, who might turn to violence.

And, you know, there's an intelligence component to that as well. Knowing who the leaders of these groups are, observing them, watching them. You may allow the protest to happen if you're law enforcement, but that doesn't mean you're not learning who's there, who leaders are. And, you know, taking a look at some people who might be worth further scrutiny.

Okay, last question for you, Mitch. It's easy to imagine how much worse you could get from here. I mean, once the mind starts wandering, it can go in some pretty dark directions. If a real global intifada, like the rhetoric that Rodriguez and others, as we just heard, have been using, if a real global intifada would be, say, DEFCON 1, and where we were before October 7th, call it October 6th, was DEFCON 5.

How would you describe the level of readiness Jews should be at today? I don't think that, you know, global intifada, as much as the terminology that we hear out there and everything that we've seen in London, in New York, in L.A., around in the Western countries is

We're not at an intifada level. And in some ways, when we look at college campuses, which in many ways have been kind of the epicenters, and here we are in New York, we're fortunate to have Columbia University as the epicenter of the epicenter. The steam is coming out of the movement now.

The numbers are dropping. Even if you look at the protest activity here in New York, as our team does so closely, it's fewer and fewer people are part of it. To some degree, they're tired. They've been doing this for 20 months. To some degree, they have a similar conclusion as Rodriguez is that, you know what, it's not that effective. I need to go on with my life.

But there is a hard core of people who law enforcement and groups like ours are paying attention to. So I think that, unfortunately, an event like this clarifies things for people who aren't sure how this could turn. But my conversations with federal law enforcement agencies, local law enforcement agencies, they're on top of this.

And they are the Jewish community's allies. I tell you, one of the surprises, pleasant surprises that I've seen since 10-7 is how our law enforcement partners across the board, and I'm not even talking about just the major city police departments,

They are with the Jewish community because they see the Jewish community is under fire and they feel that it's their obligation to protect the community. So I know we have strong allies there. And they're not demeaning the police and they're not burning American flags. You know, Douglas Murray makes this point that if you go to a pro-Israel rally, they're waving Israeli flags and they're waving American flags.

and they're celebrating both countries. If you go to an anti-Israel rally, they're burning American flags and they're trying to provoke the police. So it's just a completely different relationship. That's right. I spoke to a former FBI senior official who's just coming off of five years working for a Jewish security organization like our own. He said to me, Mitch,

I was a Marine. I was in the FBI. I never got as many hugs as I've gotten in my career working these last five years for the Jewish community. And I will always treasure that and I will do whatever it takes to keep this community safe

in any way that I can. And when I hear things like that, you know, the things that succumb so naturally to Jewish communities worldwide, what we do so well, the thank yous, the appreciation, it's meaningful and we need to keep doing that. Mitch, thank you for this conversation, participating in this emergency episode, and really just thank you for the work that you and the CSI New York do. I have been a

a consumer of the information you provide to the community. And it's really invaluable. And I can honestly say you guys have saved lives. So thank you. Thank you, Tim. Appreciate it. That's our show for today. Before we wrap up, one housekeeping note. On June 4th, I'll be hosting a live Call Me Back episode at the Manhattan Jewish Community Center. My guest will be Brett McGurk, who was the top Middle East ambassador

Thank you.

please follow the link in the show notes where you can purchase tickets. I think it'll be an illuminating conversation. I've known Brett for some time, worked with him in the Bush administration many years ago. He's a very thoughtful guy and obviously very experienced practitioner who's served in multiple administrations.

As for this episode today, if you found it valuable, please share it with others who might appreciate it. Time and again, we've found that our listeners are the ones driving the growth of the Call Me Back community. So thank you. To offer comments, suggestions, sign up for updates or explore past episodes, please visit our website, arkmedia.org. That's arkmedia.org, where you can deepen your understanding of the topics we cover.

Call Me Back is produced and edited by Ilan Benatar. Sound and video editing by Martin Huergo and Marianne Chalice Burgos. Research by Gabe Silverstein. Our music was composed by Yuval Semo. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.