The Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM) participated in a specialized training session in Philadelphia last Thursday attended by around 80 law enforcement officers from across southeastern Pennsylvania.
The purpose of the forum, held at the Alan Horowitz “Sixth Man” Center, was to teach police how to recognize and address antisemitism in all its contemporary forms and offer strategies and tools to prevent, respond to, and counter it.
Speakers included Pennsylvania Attorney General Dave Sunday, Senior Counsel to the Pennsylvania Attorney General Greg Rowe, Philadelphia Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel, Abington Township Police Chief Patrick Molloy, CAM Director of Interfaith Outreach and Engagement EJ Kimball, George Washington Program on Extremism Senior Research Fellow David Collins, and Anti-Defamation League (ADL) Philadelphia Regional Director Andrew Goretsky.
The event took place a day after the anniversary of the October 7th massacre in Israel, which triggered a global spike of antisemitism that continues to persist three years later.
In his presentation, Kimball called the post-10/7 surge a “new baseline, entrenched at historically-high levels.”
“That makes it more important than ever to stand with our law enforcement partners and equip them with the tools to address this evolving threat,” he noted. “Recognizing a crime is easy. Identifying the motivation behind it is the challenge. Today’s antisemitism is supercharged, often relying on coded language in which terms like ‘Zionists’ or ‘Israel’ are used as proxies for ‘the Jews.’ To protect Jewish communities from antisemitic hate crimes and acts of violence, law enforcement must be able to understand these symbols and slogans.”
CAM works hand-in-hand with law enforcement authorities on a daily basis to secure and nurture Jewish life around the world.
Similar CAM-organized law enforcement seminars have been conducted over the last two years in New York, Florida, Georgia, Ohio, and Virginia.