Security and Crisis Centre by the European Jewish Congress

Faith communities working together - The terrorist attacks in New Zealand and Sri Lanka happened beyond Europe but they serve to remind us that the threat particularly exists within Europe’s borders.

Increasingly the targets for terror attacks are faith-based institutions and places of worship. Some extremists specifically call for attacks against religions. Daesh or Islamic State may have lost its base in Syria and Iraq, but it remains a potent threat and has urged its supporters to attack Jews and Christians. In Break the Cross, and other recent publications it calls on supporters to attack Christians now, in addition to Jews, and the results have been a series murderous attacks on churches in south east Asia, as well as on a Catholic priest in his Normandy church in 2016.

In Germany, Protestant churches are attacked by neo Nazis for their open support of migrant communities and synagogues and European Jewish schools are guarded by police and army patrols to defend them against a twenty-year campaign of terrorism waged by jihadists, neo Nazis and other extremists.

The threat to Jewish communities, has prompted the European agencies to agree declarations, such as the 2018 European Council Declaration on the Fight against Antisemitism and the Development of a Common Security Approach, and the 2014 OSCE Basle Declaration on Enhancing Efforts to Combat Antisemitism. To protect themselves, Jewish communities have established security groups, answerable to their community leaderships, and which work closely with their governments and domestic law enforcement agencies.

To spread best practice in security preparedness and crisis management, the European Jewish Congress has established the Brussels-based Security and Crisis Centre (SACC by EJC), staffed by a small team of experts who seek to assist Jewish communities and actively help them in times of crisis. Over the past 18 months SACC has run crisis management workshops for European police forces, local authorities and Jewish community professionals, and in March this year organised a joint conference in Brussels with Europol and CEPOL, the European police agencies, on community resilience.

SACC by EJC now seeks to work with other faiths and local authorities in two ways: by providing short instructional videos on security related topics under the theme of ‘Together we are safer’ (https://sacc-ejc.org/security-awareness), and by providing security workshops, basic elements of which can be taught in one day.  Responding to a request for assistance from the Muslim community in Finland, SACC has recently run a workshop in Helsinki on security for mosques, and its UK affiliate, the Community Security Trust in the UK, has held many security briefings in mosques and Hindu temples since the Christchurch attack.

The offer will particularly appeal to local and city authorities concerned with the security and well-being of faith communities and for facilitating better relations between them.