Leo Terrell, a civil rights attorney and chair of the U.S. Justice Department’s task force to fight Jew-hatred, plans to begin a 15-stop tour of Jewish communities nationwide to amplify the worries that leaders have about anti-Jewish crime.
He also intends “to put indirect pressure on these cities,” the senior counsel at the Justice Department told JNS after a talk at the Hamptons Synagogue on Long Island on Sunday.
Terrell expects to announce the cities on his tour soon. He hopes the tour will begin in the second week of September and plans to spend a day in each city, bringing high-level federal officials from the U.S. Departments of Labor, Treasury and Health and Human Services, he told JNS.
In each city, he and the federal officials will meet with local Jewish leaders and leaders of other faith and ethnic groups, he told JNS. He also plans to use a new, as-yet unnamed digital app that is being developed to amplify information about the anti-Jewish hate that he learns about, he said.
The tour gatherings will include screening of pre-recorded videos from U.S. President Donald Trump, Attorney General Todd Blanche and Stanley Woodward, associate U.S. attorney general, Terrell told JNS.
When he approached the president with his idea for the tour, Trump fully supported it, Terrell said.
The tour has three goals, he told JNS.
One is to raise awareness of the nationwide problem of rising anti-Jewish hate crimes, he said.
Another is to put “indirect pressure” on local political leaders, who are not protecting their Jewish residents, he told JNS in an interview after he addressed the tony synagogue in Westhampton Beach.
Hundreds of people turned out to hear him early on Sunday morning, filling every available chair in a courtyard, with more perching on stairs to hear Terrell.
The Orthodox synagogue’s rabbi, Marc Schneier, delivered introductory remarks, in which he compared Terrell to Martin Luther King, Jr. The slain civil rights leader was a great supporter of Israel.
Terrell said that he came up with the idea for the nationwide tour because “we want to basically hold them out for their failure to address the Jewish community as far as protecting them, as far as making sure that they don’t have to pay what I call a ‘Jewish tax,’ these crazy fees,” he told JNS.
He referred to the many thousands of dollars that American synagogues and Jewish schools now need to pay to hire private security guards to protect their attendees from antisemitic intruders.
The timing of the tour is also no coincidence, according to Terrell.
He intends to remind people before the midterm congressional elections in November that Republicans are fighting antisemitism while, from his perspective, Democrats are not, he told JNS.
“I hope that influences people when they go to the polls,” the staunch Trump loyalist said.
Terrell told JNS that he intends to use “every form of social media, 24/7, before this tour starts, during this tour, after this tour.”
“We’re going to have to make sure that this fight is not just Jews fighting against antisemitism,” said Terrell, who is Christian.
He also noted, during his remarks to the crowd, that it is a benefit for people to see a black man, like him, leading this effort.
“Antisemitism is not only a Jewish issue,” he said. “It is not only an American issue. It is a challenge to Western civilization.”
“We want people to know that there are individuals,” in leadership, “who do not believe in antisemitism,” Terrell told JNS.
During his tour, “I plan to yell that out every day,” he said.
