The Los Angeles City Council is considering whether to publicly fund private armed security patrols to protect religious communities after protests against the sale of West Bank settlement property at a Los Angeles synagogue last month turned violent.
Shortly after the attack, city council members introduced a motion to donate $1 million to several Jewish security organizations to expand their outreach in Jewish schools, religious institutions and neighborhoods.
Magen Am, a nonprofit that runs armed patrol services and firearms training programs for the Jewish community, was named as a recipient of $350,000 in the complaint. The group is primarily made up of former Israeli soldiers and U.S. military veterans, and was founded by a former mixed martial artist with ties to the National Rifle Association, according to its website and social media posts. According to multiple reports, most of the former IDF soldiers in the group are “lone soldiers,” individuals with no direct ties to the State of Israel who emigrated to serve in the IDF.
The City Council later introduced a new motion, this one to provide $2 million to various religious groups that want extra security guards, without naming Magen Am or any of the recipients, but Los Angeles activists remain concerned that city funds could end up in the hands of militant groups with hardline political stances.
“What we’re talking about is essentially a private militia that can use force and detain people, but is not accountable.”
“The fact that Magen Am was named as a recipient of the funds in the original motion reveals their intent,” said Miguel Camnitzer, an activist with Jewish Voice for Peace, which is alarmed that city leaders have chosen to fund individuals who served in forces engaged in ethnic cleansing and genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
“These are the same military forces that are carrying out this massacre, and to have them patrolling the streets with guns seems insane to me,” Kamnitzer said. The group also points out that the new motion contains no provisions calling for recipients of city funds to be held accountable to the public interest. “We’re talking about private militias that can use force and arrest people, but are not accountable.”
According to Instagram posts, Leibel Mangel, director of Magen Am’s veterans program, served in the IDF’s counterterrorism unit during the 2014 Gaza war and flew to Israel a few days after October 7 to join the conflict. He and other reservists were stationed along the Gaza border in southern Israel and later in the West Bank, “trying to protect communities there and strike down Hamas infrastructure,” he said in a podcast interview. One post shows him carrying an assault rifle and gazing out into the desert with the caption, “Their blood will be avenged.”
Magen Am lists former Navy SEAL Jason Pike as a firearms trainer on its website, and Jewish Voice for Peace supporters were troubled by the fact that Pike’s online presence is filled with violent, homophobic, transphobic and extremist military content.
In a post on his public Instagram account, which has nearly 15,000 followers, Pike shared a video of him waterboarding his son, a torture technique commonly used by the US government on detainees during interrogation. Its use in training US soldiers was banned by the Department of Justice in 2007 because it “does not provide educational or training benefit to students.” Pike tagged the video with the hashtags “mind games” and “train your brain,” and it garnered nearly 800 likes.
In December, Pike posted a video that purportedly showed an Israeli soldier repeatedly slapping a blindfolded Palestinian man. Pike captioned the post with a denial of the “rules of engagement” of war, writing, “What we’re doing is much worse… I know from firsthand experience.” The former Navy SEAL added, “The truth would put a lot of us in jail for good.”
Another post shared last month appeared to condone comments by a US veteran who threatened to open fire on anti-Trump protesters at a Veterans Day parade and “kill them all.” Referring to the veteran’s violent threats, Pike wrote that he felt the country was heading toward a “forced reset” and that the only thing stopping him from doing so was “God himself.”
Paik also shared a transphobic meme on his Instagram account that misrepresented the “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” song often cited by anti-trans groups, and on his podcast he condemned homosexuality as a “sin” that denies people entry to heaven.
Mangel and Pike did not respond to requests for comment.
“It’s really appalling that an organization would think it’s appropriate to hire them as one of their instructors and have that person tell other people how to patrol our city,” said Kamnitzer, who is gay and whose father escaped Nazi Germany with his family in 1939. “The fact that our city would think it’s appropriate to hire an organization that has someone like that on its staff is really disturbing.”
Magen Am officials did not respond to multiple requests for comment. The City Council office that filed the motion also did not respond to a request for comment. The Los Angeles City Council is currently on summer recess but is scheduled to vote on the motion when it returns later this month.
The push to defund Jewish community security companies began 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 up outside the Adas Torah synagogue in Los Angeles. They were there to protest a real estate event taking place inside the house of worship, where companies were advertising the sale of properties in both Israel and West Bank settlements, which are illegal under international law.
Authorities said at the time that demonstrators were met with opposition from pro-Israel counter-protesters, who instigated several fights, numerous injuries and several arrests.
City Councilwoman Katie Yaroslavsky, whose district includes the Pico-Robertson area where the protests took place, began calling for the immediate deployment of armed guards to prevent future incidents.
Later that week, Yaroslavsky and Councilman Bob Blumenfield introduced the first motion to appropriate $400,000 to the Jewish Federation, $250,000 to the Jewish Community Foundation and $350,000 to Magen Am. Nationally, Jewish leaders have used the Los Angeles synagogue incident as a rallying call for increased funding for security. Religious groups can apply for federal funding through the Nonprofit Security Grant Program, which California gave a $40 million boost in April.
“The threat is real, and the fear that a proxy war of what’s going on in the Middle East could spill over into the city of Los Angeles is real,” Yaroslavsky said at a City Council meeting on July 2. His remarks were met with boos from Jewish and Palestinian advocates who packed the council chamber and opposed the motion.
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At the meeting, a Palestinian teenager who was taking part in a protest at a synagogue told lawmakers she was attacked and harassed by pro-Israel agitators who followed her to her car, entered the vehicle and banged on the windows, preventing her from leaving.
Magen Am’s militant forces were at the real estate event. The group acknowledged in a statement that it had lost control of the crowds during the protests and misrepresented the demonstrations as “pro-Hamas protests.” The group was also at a pro-Palestinian student camp at the University of California, Los Angeles, where a group of several dozen pro-Israel counterprotesters attacked students, injuring at least 15 people, according to university officials.
Jewish Voice for Peace feared that funding pro-Israel groups would only embolden violent agitators who shared the same pro-Israel leanings.
“When I look at the people who work for this organization, I see them as not only not keeping me safe, but putting me at extreme risk,” Kamnitzer said. “So who is the city trying to keep safe?”