CLEVELAND — Eric Fingerhut, a Cleveland native and President and CEO of Jewish Federations of North America, described being in Israel on October 7th as “chaos”.

Hamas attacked Israel which killed 1,200 Israelis. Fingerhut spoke at the Cleveland City Club about that day.

“It took days to clear all the terrorists out of the villages and it also was days before we came to grips with the true horror of the atrocities of what had happened,” he said. 

He hoped the conversation would spark some change.

“What’s next here is what we started to do here today at the City Club. We must speak out openly. People must know what happened,” he said. 

His advice to people was to stay off social media and get news from reliable sources.

“Everybody has to be a role model for our young people. People like me, parents, teachers, must provide the place for our young people to learn and understand what’s really happening,” he said.

Fingerhut expressed to the Jewish community that they should continue to celebrate their religion, especially this Hanukkah season.

“America is too important to allow it to be overtaken by hate or have any religious groups, not just Jews, to be afraid to practice openly their religion and so we won’t be afraid,” he said.