LOS ANGELES — Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean and founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center held a news conference Monday and called on President Donald Trump to launch a special FBI task force to tackle anti-Semitism.

The press conference was held at the Museum of Tolerance.

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"The Simon Wiesenthal Center calls upon President Trump to create a task force of the FBI to exclusively combat the cancer of anti-Semitism," said Rabbi Hier. "We need a task force 24/7 working on this issue."

The rabbi's remarks came in the wake of a spate of recent anti-semitic crimes, including a violent knife rampage at a rabbi's home just north of New York City over the weekend.

"I don't want to get into politics. I don't want to anticipate but they'll be people that might ask, so I'm going to answer the question right now. Who is responsible for this? Is it the Democrats? Is it a Republican president by the name of Donald Trump?" Rabbi Hier said. "In my opinion all of that is nonsense."

The weekend attack, which saw five people hospitalized, came in the midst of Hanukkah holiday. New York Governor Andrew M. Cuomo called the attack an "act of domestic terrorism." President Trump denounced the attack, tweeting "The anti-Semitic attack in Monsey, New York, on the 7th night of Hanukkah last night is horrific."

 

 

"For those of you that read the story in the New York, in the Los Angeles Times, there are many such people they don't eat in kosher restaurants. They're afraid it'll be attacked, others will not send their children to a shul, to a synagogue because the synagogue doesn't have the appropriate security," said Rabbi Hier.

The attack followed a shooting at a kosher grocery store in New Jersey earlier this month, and locally, the vandalism of a Beverly Hills synagogue.

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, the city's first elected Jewish mayor, tweeted "There is no place for hate in Los Angeles. The tragic attacks on faith communities in New York & Texas seek to make us afraid in our homes & sanctuaries, the places where we should fee safest," tweeted Garcetti. "But we refuse to live in fear. We will respond to anti-Semitism & all forms of hate & violence with courage, solidarity & love."

 

 

Garcetti also referenced a separate attack that saw a gunman shoot two parishioners in a Fort Worth, Texas church, before being taken down by armed members of the congregation.

"We call on the American people, Democrats and Republicans, to stand together against the cancer of hate, bigotry, and anti-Semitism," said Rabbi Hier. "That's the only way the United States will continue to be the greatest country in the history of this planet."

In the wake of the recent attacks, Los Angeles Police Chief Michel Moore tweeted that police controls would be increased around Jewish neighborhoods and places of worship.

 

 The attacker in the New York incident has been apprehended and is being charged with federal hate crimes.