Hostages taken at Texas synagogue

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A rabbi who was among the four hostages held during a nearly 11-hour standoff at a Texas synagogue managed to escape after throwing a chair at the gunman, he told "CBS Mornings" on Monday.

Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker said he and the two other remaining hostages were "terrified," especially during the last hour of the standoff Saturday night because the suspect "wasn't getting what he wanted." It was at that point that Cytron-Walker saw an opportunity to act.

The rabbi said he first made sure the other hostages were ready to run and that the group wasn't too far from the exit.

"I told them to go, I threw a chair at the gunman and I headed for the door," he said. "And all three of us were able to get out without even a shot being fired."

"It was terrifying," Cytron-Walker said. "It was overwhelming and we're still processing. It's been a lot."

When the man first knocked on the glass door of the synagogue on Saturday morning, the rabbi said he thought he might need shelter. Cytron-Walker let the man into the building and even made him a cup of tea.

"When I took him in, I stayed with him," the rabbi said. "Making tea was an opportunity for me to talk with him. In that moment I didn't hear anything suspicious."

Akram's story didn't quite add up, but Cytron-Walker said that type of visit was not necessarily uncommon. It was only during the prayer service that the gunman revealed his intentions.

"I heard a click, and it could have been anything. And it turned out that it was his gun," the rabbi said.

Law enforcement officials have praised Cytron-Walker for remaining calm and collected during the ordeal.

Cytron-Walker said his response was informed by different courses he has attended over the years with the FBI, the Colleyville Police Department, the Anti-Defamation League and Secure Communities Network.

"They really teach you in those moments that when your life is threatened, you need to do whatever you can to get to safety. You need to do whatever you can to get out," he said.

he rabbi, who also spoke with President Biden on Sunday, thanked the many organizations and people who offered their support following Saturday's incident.

"I just want to give thanks and appreciation for all of the love and all of the support from the Jewish community, my people; from the Muslim community; from the Christian community; from all faiths, all backgrounds," he said. "Friends, acquaintances, strangers all over the world. It's truly been overwhelming."

Malik Faisal Akram chose to hold synagogue worshipers hostage in Colleyville, Texas Saturday because he believed in antisemitic tropes and was convinced that the Jewish worshipers inside would have the power to organize the release of a Pakistani prisoner jailed nearby, one of the four worshipers held at gunpoint told The Times of Israel on Monday.

“He did not come there to kill Jews … He came here to release [Aafia Siddiqui], and he had bought into the extremely dangerous, antisemitic trope that Jews control everything, that we could call President [Joe] Biden and have him release her,” Jeffrey Cohen said in an interview over Zoom.

Cohen recalled the harrowing events of the day, nonchalantly referencing acts of heroism taken by himself and others in the CBI sanctuary that allowed the day to end with all four hostages alive and unharmed.

With the memories still raw, Cohen choked up several times throughout the 40-minute conversation, describing the phone calls he made to his wife and children that he thought would be his last, as well as the gratitude he had for having taken an active shooter course, which provided him with the “forethought” for how to conduct himself throughout the day and helped him stay alive.

“I went to school in Pittsburgh, and I used to regularly walk by Tree of Life,” he said, referencing the synagogue targeted in the deadliest antisemitic attack in US history less than four years ago. “Of course we had a very different ending here than we did there, thank God.”

When Cohen arrived at the Reform synagogue, Akram was already inside. CBI Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker greeted Cohen and told him to say hello to their guest who had been outside in the below-freezing weather and was having a cup of tea.

“All the things they tell you to look for in somebody — eyes darting about, hands being jittery or hidden, facial or body expressions being troubled — he didn’t have that,” Cohen recalled. “He was smiling, he was comfortable, he was relaxed… So I really didn’t think much of it.”

“After the Amidah [prayer]… and I sat down and… heard that unmistakable sound of a slide on an automatic weapon,” said Cohen.

Moments later, Akram pounced out of his chair and was yelling. Cohen doesn’t remember what the attacker said, but he took his phone out of his pocket, dialed 911 and turned it over so his hostage-taker couldn’t see what was on the screen.
The ordeal was also unfolding on the livestream that CBI has set up each week since the pandemic to allow members uncomfortable praying indoors to do so from home. While Cytron-Walker credited the livestream from ensuring that fewer members were in the synagogue when the standoff unfolded, to Cohen, the benefit of the feed was that it allowed those watching to quickly alert the authorities.

Akram would go on to order the Cytron-Walker, Cohen and the two others, whose names have not yet been disclosed, to move to a corner of the sanctuary. While there, Cohen carefully aligned himself with an exit door.

During the first half-hour of the ordeal, Cohen said he was convinced that the attacker intended to use his weapon.

Akram let the hostages call their families in what the worshipers believed would be the final conversations with their loved ones.

After those first 30 minutes though, Akram calmed down and focused on trying to release his “sister” Siddiqui.

“He had one objective. He repeatedly said that he didn’t want to hurt us… that he would let us go, that he was the only one who was going to die… and that if the police brought his sister there, he and she would go out on the front lawn and let the authorities kill him. He kept speaking about martyrdom. He was the only one who needed to die that day,” Cohen said. “He told us that he chose the closest synagogue to the facility where [Siddiqui was] being held.”

Referencing a statement issued by Akram’s brother on Sunday in which the latter insisted the gunman suffered from mental health issues, Cohen said he “believe[d] that to be true.”

Regardless, the hostage recalled the attacker railing against people of varying races, sexual orientations and religions — including fellow Muslims.

This continued for 11 hours inside the synagogue as Cohen and the other hostages sought to keep Akram calm.

I did not feel this way in the horrific aftermath of the Tree of Life massacre—the most lethal in all of American Jewish history.

Back then, in October 2018, it felt like the whole country grasped that a wound to the Tree of Life was a wound to the Tree of Liberty itself. That the monstrous attack in my hometown was not simply an attack on Jews, but an attack on our collective home. And that what was at stake in standing up against the deranged, conspiratorial mindset that led a neo-Nazi to the synagogue that morning was nothing less than America itself.

What I now see is this: In America captured by tribalism and dehumanization, in an America swept up by ideologies that pit us against one another in a zero-sum game, in an America enthralled with the poisonous idea that some groups matter more than others, not all Jews—and not all Jewish victims—are treated equally. What seems to matter most to media pundits and politicians is not the Jews themselves, but the identities of their attackers.

And it scares me.

The attack in Texas, the reaction to it, and the widespread willingness in our culture to judge violent acts based on their political utility, augurs a darkening reality for the six million Jews living in what the Founders insisted was a new Jerusalem. And for that new Jerusalem itself.

I first felt that sinking realization three years ago on a freezing day in Jersey City. If you don’t think “Jews” when you hear that place name, it’s because the murder of Jews that happened there in 2019 did not inspire the same national solidarity that enveloped Pittsburgh.

On December 10 that year, David Anderson and Francine Graham shot up a kosher supermarket on a street named for the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, killing three people in the process. We were very lucky the toll wasn’t higher. Just to the left of the supermarket is a cheder, a school for Jewish children. Federal officials discovered a bomb in the killers’ van powerful enough to kill and maim people five football fields away.

The pair hated cops and they hated Jews, a sentiment apparently driven by the twisted ideology of the Black Hebrew Israelites, who believe that they are the real Jews and that the real Jews are pretenders. Jews are “imposters who inhabit synagogues of Satan,” Anderson wrote on social media. “They stole our heritage, they stole our birthright” Anderson said, before he murdered a young mother named Mindy Ferencz, a young man named Moshe Deutsch, and a 49-year-old Ecuadorian clerk who worked at the deli, Douglas Miguel Rodriguez. (They murdered a police officer and father of five named Joseph Seals earlier in the day.)

The day after the shooting, I went to the supermarket to do some reporting for a column I expected to publish. Unlike in Pittsburgh, there was not a single flower or condolence card. Just broken glass, and Hasidic Jews working with construction workers to board up the ransacked building, which was riddled with bullet holes. There were no television cameras.

No one in my social media feeds, to say nothing of mainstream reporters, wanted to look very hard at the killers’ motives or at the responses among some members of the community. In one video I came across, a local woman said that her “children are stuck at school because of Jew shenanigans. They are the problem . . . I blame the Jews. We never had a shooting like this until they came.”

Joan Terrell-Paige, a school official in the city, explained on her Facebook page that the murderers effectively had no choice. The Jews (she called them “brutes”) had caused their killers to murder them. “I believe they knew they would come out in body bags,” she wrote of the killers. “What is the message they were sending? Are we brave enough to explore the answer to their message? Are we brave enough to stop the assault on the Black communities of America?”

The governor of the state and the mayor of Jersey City called for Terrell-Paige’s resignation, but until earlier this month, she remained in her job. Shortly after the attack, John Flora, a Democrat running for Congress described her comments as “an invitation for the entire city to discuss honestly what led up to such a horrific event,” going on to talk about various ills like gentrification.

I want you to imagine if, in the wake of the Walmart massacre in El Paso of August 2019, which left 23 dead and 23 others injured, a serious person—a politician—took the shooter’s complaint about a “Hispanic invasion of Texas” seriously.

When eleven Jews who look like me were shot by a white supremacist in Pittsburgh, it was a clean story. Here was unadulterated evil mowing down the innocent. But Jews dressed in black hats and strange clothes with obscure accents? The ones in Jersey City or in Monsey or Crown Heights or Williamsburg or Borough Park?

These are imperfect victims. They are forgotten and overlooked because they are not the right kind of Jews. And because they weren’t beaten or killed by the right kind of antisemites.

Since they record sabbath service and post it on YouTube, is there a link where I can watch this particular service? Did they actually post that attack or did they remove it?

For most of the Shabbat services streamed from Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas, over the course of the past two years, only a few dozen people ever tuned in, mostly from their homes in the Fort Worth suburb.

But as the regular Shabbat morning service led by Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker was transformed into a harrowing hostage situation Saturday, thousands of people tuned in from all over the world.

“How many people are in there?” one woman commented on the video as she watched, the strains of the attacker’s voice audible on the stream. “Prayers,” another person wrote, as heart and anger emoji “reactions” flowed alongside the video, which was frozen on an empty stage.

Another comment summed it up: “OMG. Is this LIVE??”

It was — and it remained that way for a significant amount of time before being taken offline, giving an unprecedented number of people a front-row seat Saturday into a dangerous attack on a Jewish community.

In Colleyville, the streaming was not a promotional strategy by a violent attacker but a function of the synagogue’s technology. Congregation Beth Israel began streaming services in March 2020, shortly after shutting down because of the pandemic, and like many synagogues it eventually set up cameras that are permanently trained on the bimah, where they remained focused on Saturday after the hostage situation began.

All over the world, thousands of people listened as the disembodied voice of the armed attacker came through their computers. Their screens showed the silent Amidah, the point in the service at which the attacker interrupted the prayers.

Those listening in included law enforcement representatives who benefited from being able to hear what was happening inside the synagogue and people close to the congregation who tuned in to see if people they know and care about were safe.

It likely also included people who had never heard of Colleyville before Saturday and people who may have never set foot in a synagogue before.

The attack’s transparency could be especially significant for them, Amy Asin, the vice president and director of Strengthening Congregations at the Union for Reform Judaism, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

“Most non-Jews don’t realize that Jews cannot worship free from fear,” said Asin, who works with Reform congregations such as Congregation Beth Israel on issues relating to security. “If this helps people understand that I’ll take it as a benefit.”

The fact that Beth Israel’s service was streaming likely changed the dynamics of the experience for the hostages, as well. The recent rise of the Omicron variant meant that fewer people than usual were inside on Saturday morning; most of the people who participated in the service did so from home. Only four hostages, including Cytron-Walker, were taken, and the streamed audio made clear that he and others had built a relationship with the attacker.

Some time into the crisis, the livestream was taken down, causing community members who had been watching with concern to be plunged into darkness.

“The live stream got shut down and I have no idea what’s happening anymore,” tweeted Ellen Smith, a congregant who commented widely during the crisis Saturday.

Since they record sabbath service and post it on YouTube, is there a link where I can watch this particular service? Did they actually post that attack or did they remove it?

The Texas rabbi who threw a chair at a gunman to help himself and two others survive a hostage situation held a prayer service in the wake of the deadly ordeal.

Just two days after a gun-wielding suspect took Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker and two other congregants hostage at the Congregation Beth Israel synagogue in Colleyville, Texas, the rabbi lead a service aimed to "put this terrible event behind us and be thankful for a good result," according to a post on the synagogue's Facebook page.

Cytron-Walker, greeted with applause at the outset of the service, spoke briefly, thanking law enforcement, first responders, clergy, political leaders and people around the world who have reached out with support. He then continued the service by describing both the beauty and cruelty that exist on Earth.

"God, I long to feel your presence -- not just this day but every day," the rabbi said. "I do not pretend to know your ways."

He thanked the "three amazing individuals" who were with him at the synagogue Saturday, saying that they managed to make it through the traumatic ordeal.

"Very few of us are doing okay right, now," he said. "We'll get through this."

Cytron-Walker also evoked Martin Luther King Jr., quoting the civil rights activists on the holiday dedicated to him.

"Without love, there's no reason to know anyone," Cytron-Walker said. "For love will in the end connect us to our neighbors, our children and our hearts."

Two teenagers have been arrested in England as part of an ongoing investigation into Saturday's hostage-taking incident at a synagogue in the United States, British authorities said.

The pair were detained in southern Manchester on Sunday evening and "remain in custody for questioning," according to a statement from the Greater Manchester Police. Multiple law enforcement sources in the U.S. told ABC News that the teens are the children of the alleged hostage-taker.

Law enforcement sources also told ABC News that after arriving in the United States, Akram stayed at homeless shelters at various points and may have portrayed himself as experiencing homelessness in order to gain access to the Texas synagogue during Shabbat services, sources said.

The FBI’s Dallas office has declined to comment on reports of a mystery man who was reportedly seen dropping off Malik Faisal Akram at a Dallas homeless shelter on Jan. 2, two weeks before he took hostages at a Colleyville temple.

Staff at OurCalling, a Dallas homeless shelter, said Monday they saw Akram embrace a man as he stepped out of the car at the shelter. In a statement, the shelter said it has provided security camera video and photos of Akram to the FBI.

The FBI has said initial indications are that Akram acted alone in carrying out the temple attack, taking four people hostage at gunpoint.

Meanwhile, a security source in the UK tells NBC News that Akram was the subject of a low-level terrorism investigation by the British MI5 intelligence agency in 2020.

The source said that the investigation lasted more than a month and concerned information that Akram might have been involved in Islamist terrorism, but that investigators determined there was no indication of a terrorist threat and the case was closed.

The one little thing about this that absolutely boggles my mind is that there is apparently (last I heard) no evidence where and how the man entered the country, and he was living in a homeless shelter prior to the attack, and yet he somehow manages to get a gun? I mean, I know it's Texas, but that just seems way too lax, so I'm guessing it was bought illegally, but I also haven't heard any information about the cops or feds trying to track the gun back to where it came from last time I checked. If this information has been updated then please correct me.

Simply claiming you stop refugees or migrants with "dubious" backgrounds from entering the border is irrelevant since almost all terrorists in the past were living in the country they launched their attack in.

Texas is as lax as it gets when it comes to guns. You don't even need a permit, and we're an open-carry state.

And the thing is, the FBI has been saying the biggest terrorist threat to America right now has nothing to do with immigrants. The alt-right, white supremacist groups that pose the biggest terrorist threat to America. But it's like we have this stereotype stuck in our collective cultural mind (courtesy of 9/11) that Caucasian men are less likely to be terrorist than men of another race or ethnicity, which is absolute nonsense.
Also, we need to be paying more attention to domestic violence as well. While not all domestic abusers go on to commit acts like this, or mass killings, most the the people who DO go on to commit such acts had a lot of priors for domestic abuse.

The Lockerbie bomber is another example of how sleeper cells can not only lie low but integrate seamlessly into the community they live in Scotland and nobody guessed he would be activated one day to kill innocent people (the same type he grew up with).

Simply claiming you stop refugees or migrants with "dubious" backgrounds from entering the border is irrelevant since almost all terrorists in the past were living in the country they launched their attack in.