![\"\"](\"https:\/\/fye-yemen.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/688392DE-84CF-4A5D-983A-624F01989141-300x200.jpeg\")
<\/p>\nNew York- Free Yemen Eye – From News FBI<\/p>\n
Anti-Defamation League (ADL) Never Is Now Summit
\nNew York, New York
\nNovember 10, 2022
\nDirector Wray Addresses ADL at Never Is Now Summit<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Remarks as prepared for delivery.<\/p>\n
My thanks to the entire ADL for inviting me here today.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve been in this line of work for a long time now, starting out as a prosecutor in the \u201890s and then in various roles in the Justice Department, which included time overseeing what was then the Office of Special Investigations\u2014or as they were more commonly known, the Nazi hunters\u2014whose particularly rewarding work demonstrated to the world\u2014and anyone who might contemplate heinous crimes against the Jewish people\u2014that we\u2019ll hunt murderers right to their dying days.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m proud to say we helped the U.S. track down, denaturalize, and deport more Nazis than all other countries combined. And much like the work we\u2019re doing together today, that effort both required and benefitted from a close partnership with the Jewish community.<\/p>\n
The main reason I took this job was my belief in the FBI\u2019s core values and mission \u2013 to protect the American people and uphold the Constitution. And I think our mission gels very well with yours: \u201cTo stop the defamation of the Jewish people and to secure justice and fair treatment to all.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s one of the reasons we\u2019ve been such great partners in fighting to stamp out the recent uptick in hate crimes in the U.S., I think, because both of our organizations understand what can happen when hate is allowed to fester and grow.<\/p>\n
At the Bureau, we confront that reality from the moment we bring someone new onboard. And I want to thank the ADL today for your support in conducting the training that all of our new special agents and intelligence analysts participate in at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.<\/p>\n
Because of your work, our new agents and analysts confront the reality of just how widespread antisemitism, and the willingness to turn hate to action, really are. Your work reminds them what\u2019s at stake; why we all\u2014particularly those of us in law enforcement\u2014must aggressively counter antisemitic violence everywhere it appears.<\/p>\n
Our FBI historian recently pulled the course evaluations written by the first new agent class to visit the Holocaust Museum, more than 20 years ago. I found one of them particularly striking. That new agent wrote:<\/p>\n
\u201cThe part that lingers in my memory is the photo of the police officer and the German SS officer standing side by side, and the police officer was failing to protect his own citizens.\u201d<\/p>\n
That observation gets to the heart of why standing up to hate is an active pursuit. And it applies now every bit as much as it did back then. It reflects what we stand for and the values we aspire to at the FBI\u202f\u2013 to protect Americans from harm with unwavering resolve.<\/p>\n
Hate Crimes and Extremism<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, as Jonathan outlined, antisemitism remains a pervasive and present fact. And we at the FBI see\u2014up close, day in and day out\u2014the actions that hatred drives. Jewish people continue to face repeated violence and very real threats, from all kinds of actors, simply for being who they are.<\/p>\n
A full 63% of religious hate crimes are motivated by antisemitism\u2014targeting a group that makes up just 2.4% of our population. Foreign terrorist organizations like ISIS have promoted antisemitic violent extremism for decades. They continue to target Jewish Americans in their attack plots. But we also confront the threat of people here, on our soil, whose hateful views\u2014often paraded online\u2014boil over into acts of violence.<\/p>\n
There are too many grim examples to choose from, but consider the members of the Jewish community in Poway, California, whose synagogue was the target of domestic terrorism in 2019. The gunman in that attack, in a vile act driven by hatred, murdered one member of the congregation and wounded three others, including a rabbi.<\/p>\n
Thanks to the investigative work of our San Diego Field Office, he\u2019s now serving a life sentence without parole, plus an additional 30 years. But his victims, their loved ones, and their communities have to live with the trauma of what he did for the rest of their lives, too.<\/p>\n
The attack at the synagogue in Colleyville, Texas, earlier this year was another tragic example. It happened almost three years later and over a thousand miles away from Poway by a perpetrator who cloaked himself in a different motivation\u2014he referenced violent Jihad. But it demonstrates the tragic reality that the Jewish community uniquely ends up on the receiving end of hate-fueled attacks from all sides. And I\u2019d venture to say no community feels more threatened by that boiling over into violence than yours.<\/p>\n
FBI Efforts<\/p>\n
The threats may be coming from all sides, but we\u2019re hitting back at them full-force. And from multiple FBI programs\u2014our Criminal and Counterterrorism Divisions\u2014that right now are laser-focused on the problem.<\/p>\n
On the criminal side, we\u2019ve designated civil rights, specifically including hate crimes, as a national threat priority. That means we\u2019ve surged more agents and analysts to work those cases across the country. And on the counterterrorism front, with the Joint Terrorism Task Forces we run out of all 56 of our field offices, we have nearly 4,500 agents and state and local law enforcement partners working counterterrorism.<\/p>\n
And in 2019, we established\u202fthe Domestic Terrorism-Hate Crimes Fusion Cell, bringing together experts on both. That team addresses the intersection of domestic terrorism and hate crimes, and they share information and resources with our partners in real time. And the fusion cell\u2019s efforts are bearing fruit.<\/p>\n
Just last year, in 2021, Richard Holzer was convicted on both hate crime and explosives charges for plotting to bomb the Temple Emanuel Synagogue in Pueblo, Colorado. Holzer told undercover agents he wanted to do something that would tell Jewish people in the community they weren\u2019t welcome in the town.<\/p>\n
But thanks to the work of our fusion cell, instead, we disrupted his plot before it occurred, and for the first time in recent history made a proactive arrest on a hate crimes charge.<\/p>\n
So whether we\u2019re confronting the threat through a hate crime or counterterrorism lens\u2014or both\u2014our focus is on preventing violent attacks. And within the bounds of the law, we\u2019re creative in how we do that.<\/p>\n
When tragedy does strike, we move heaven and earth to find those responsible and to help heal the victims, their families, and their community, much like we did four years ago this October, after the horrific attack on the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh. We raced our SWAT team, Lab, explosives experts, crisis negotiators, and more to the scene.<\/p>\n
We also remain a fixture for those affected afterward. In the way our Victim Services Response Team provided food and clothing, grief counseling, financial assistance, and one-stop shopping for federal resources, but also in our continued engagement with the Pittsburgh Jewish community.<\/p>\n
When I visited Tree of Life and saw the scene firsthand, I was struck not just by the evil done to individuals that day but by the depth of the wound to that community. It made me angry. It left me feeling the steel in our commitment to battle hate-fueled violence everywhere it touches Jewish Americans. And it once again left me grateful for your help in bringing our new folks to the Holocaust Museum. Because there just can\u2019t be enough reminders of what we\u2019re up against.<\/p>\n
Those are some of the things we in the FBI are doing to address the violence.<\/p>\n
But these threats increasingly require a whole-of-society approach<\/p>\n
So we\u2019re raising awareness through our National Anti-Hate Crimes Campaign, which aims to educate witnesses and victims on how to identify and report hate crimes. And we\u2019ve been engaging the public\u2019s help, too. That includes community leaders,\u202fmental health and social services professionals, faith communities, and civil rights and minority groups.<\/p>\n
Now, I mentioned that our mission is both to protect Americans and to uphold the Constitution, and both aspects are equally important. We can\u2019t stop people from thinking or saying hateful things. But there is a right way, under our Constitution and within the rule of law, for someone to express their beliefs, whatever they may be. And violence ain\u2019t it.<\/p>\n
So what we can do\u2014and will always do\u2014is bring the full force of the FBI and our partners to bear across the country, and in every community, when someone threatens or commits violence, we don\u2019t let up, and\u2014like the Nazi Hunters in OSI\u2014our memory is long. We never forget.<\/p>\n
Conclusion<\/p>\n
I\u2019d like to leave off with a famous quote from Hillel, the ancient Jewish scholar. Many of you will be familiar with this, but he wrote, quote, \u201cIf I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now\u2014when?\u201d<\/p>\n
This teaching goes hand in hand with that photo from the Holocaust Museum I mentioned earlier, of the police officer standing next to the SS officer and failing to protect people from harm.<\/p>\n
I love the FBI because it\u2019s a collection of men and women who answered Hillel\u2019s question for themselves and underlined their answer by offering their careers, even at the risk of their lives, in service of their purpose. We are for others. For those under threat who need protecting from the violence and destruction of Kristallnacht in Germany 84 years ago this week, to the threats and violence targeting Jewish communities here in the US just across the river last week, we at the FBI recognize that the threat of violent extremism is real, and it\u2019s urgent.<\/p>\n
We devote ourselves every day to protecting the Jewish community\u2014and all American people\u2014from these heinous acts. And I assure you, we\u2019ll remain relentless.<\/p>\n
Thank you very much.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
New York- Free Yemen Eye – From News FBI Anti-Defamation League (ADL) Never Is Now Summit New York, New York November 10, 2022 Director Wray Addresses ADL at Never Is Now Summit Remarks as prepared for delivery. My thanks to the entire ADL for inviting me here today. I\u2019ve been in this line of work …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":90669,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-90668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-diverse-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fye-yemen.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90668","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fye-yemen.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fye-yemen.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fye-yemen.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fye-yemen.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=90668"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fye-yemen.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90668\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fye-yemen.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/90669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fye-yemen.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=90668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fye-yemen.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=90668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fye-yemen.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=90668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}