The Los Angeles City Council is considering whether to give public funds to private, armed security patrols to protect its religious communities, following a protest against the marketing of West Bank settlement properties at an LA synagogue last month that turned violent.
In the immediate wake of the incident, city council members introduced a motion to give $1 million to several Jewish security organizations that would expand their work around Jewish schools, religious institutions, and neighborhoods.
Magen Am, a nonprofit that runs armed patrol services and firearm training programs for the Jewish community, was named as the recipient of $350,000 in the motion. The group is largely made up of former Israeli soldiers, along with U.S. military veterans, according to the group’s website and social media posts, and was founded by a former MMA fighter with ties to the National Rifle Association. The majority of the former Israel Defense Forces soldiers in the group are “lone soldiers,” according to several reports, the term for individuals with no direct ties to the state of Israel who immigrated there to serve in the nation’s military.
The city council has since introduced a new motion, which would give $2 million to various faith groups that want to hire additional security and does not mention Magen Am or any recipients by name. But LA activists are still concerned that city funds will go to an armed group with hard-line political stances.
“We’re talking about essentially a private militia that can use force and detain people, and has no accountability.”
“The fact that Magen Am was even named in that original motion as a recipient of money, that exposes the intention,” said Miguel Camnitzer, an activist with Jewish Voice for Peace. The group is alarmed that city leaders are choosing to fund individuals who served a military that commits ethnic cleansing and genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank.
“It’s the same military that’s enacting this genocide, and we’re going to have them patrolling our streets with guns seems wild to me,” Camnitzer said. The group also notes that the new motion does not include any provisions for keeping the recipients of city money accountable to the public interest. “We’re talking about essentially a private militia that can use force and detain people, and has no accountability.”
Magen Am’s director for its veterans program, Leibel Mangel, who served in the IDF’s counterterrorism unit during the 2014 Gaza War, flew to Israel in the days following October 7 to join the conflict, according to a post on Instagram. He shared in a podcast interview that he was stationed with other reservists along Israel’s southern border with Gaza, and later, in the West Bank, “protecting communities there, trying to put a dent in Hamas infrastructure.” One post showed him carrying an assault rifle and looking out into a desert with the caption, “Their spilled blood will be avenged.”
Magen Am lists former U.S. Navy SEAL Jason Pike as a firearms trainer on its website. Advocates with Jewish Voice for Peace were troubled by Pike’s online presence, which was filled with violent, homophobic, transphobic, and extremist military content.
In one post on his public Instagram account, which has nearly 15,000 followers, Pike shared a video showing him waterboarding his son, a torture practice widely utilized by the U.S. government on its detainees during interrogations. Using the torture method to train U.S. military soldiers was banned in 2007 by the Justice Department because it “provided no instructional or training benefit to the student.” Pike captioned the video, which drew nearly 800 likes, with the hashtags “mindgames” and “trainyourbrain.”
In December, Pike posted a video purporting to show an Israeli soldier repeatedly slapping a blindfolded Palestinian man. Pike captioned the post by dismissing “Rules of Engagement” in war and wrote, “the crap we do is far worse … I know from first hand experience.” The former Navy SEAL added, “The truth would utterly put many of us under the prison.”
A separate post shared last month seemed to condone comments made by a U.S. veteran who threatened to shoot at anti-Trump protesters at a Veterans Day Parade and “wipe them all out.” Pike wrote he felt the nation was headed to where “we will be forced to do a reset,” referring to the veteran’s violent threats, and that the only thing that holds him back from doing so “is God Himself.”
Also on his Instagram account, Pike shared a transphobic meme that misrepresented a “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” song, a common reference by anti-trans groups. And in his podcast, Pike labeled homosexuality “a sin” that would keep people from heaven.
Mangel and Pike did not respond to requests for comment.
“An organization that thinks it’s appropriate to have that be one of their instructors who is going to then teach other people how to patrol our streets is really scary,” said Camnitzer, who is gay and whose father escaped Nazi Germany with his family in 1939. “The fact that then our city would think it’s appropriate to hire an organization that has those people among their staff is really concerning.”
Magen Am leadership did not respond to multiple requests for comment. The city council offices that introduced the motions did not respond to requests for comment. LA’s city council is currently on summer recess but is expected to vote on the motion when their session resumes later this month.
The push to fund security firms for Jewish communities emerged in late June, when a group of protesters made up of a coalition of Jewish and Palestinian advocates, including members of Jewish Voice For Peace, lined the outside of the Adas Torah synagogue in LA. They were there to oppose a real estate event taking place inside the house of worship, in which companies marketed the sale of properties in both Israel and in West Bank settlements considered illegal under international law.
The demonstrators were met with opposition from pro-Israel counterprotesters, whose agitation led to several fights, multiple injuries, and a couple of arrests, authorities said at the time.
Councilmember Katy Yaroslavksy, whose district includes the Pico-Robertson neighborhood where the protest took place, almost immediately started calling for armed guards to prevent future incidents.
Later that week, Yaroslavsky and Councilmember Bob Blumenfield introduced the first motion, which would set aside $400,000 for the Jewish Federation, $250,000 for Jewish Community Foundation, and $350,000 for Magen Am. Nationally, Jewish leaders used the LA synagogue incident as a rallying cry to call for more funding for increased security. Religious organizations are able to apply for federal funding through the Nonprofit Security Grant Program, which got a $40 million boost in California in April.
“The threats are real and the fear of a proxy war for what is happening in the Middle East spilling onto our streets here in LA is real,” said Yaroslavsky at a July 2 council meeting. Her comments were met with a wave of “boos” from Jewish and Palestinian advocates who packed the council chambers to oppose the motion.
At the meeting, a Palestinian teenager who was at the synagogue protest told the council that she was attacked and harassed by pro-Israel agitators who followed her to her car and, after she got inside, went on to bang on her windows, blocking her from leaving.
Magen Am’s armed units were present at the real estate event. The group admitted in a statement they were unable to control the crowd during the protest and misrepresented the demonstration, referring to it as “pro-Hamas protest.” The group was also present at the pro-Palestine student encampment at the University of California, Los Angeles, where a group of dozens of counterprotesters who support Israel attacked students, leading to at least 15 injuries, according to campus officials.
Jewish Voice for Peace feared that funding a pro-Israel group would only embolden violent agitators who align with the same pro-Israel leanings.
“I’m just looking at the types of people that work at this organization, and I’m thinking, not only are they not going to keep me safe, but these are the types of people that generally put me in extreme danger,” Camnitzer said. “So who is the city trying to keep safe?”