A 28-year-old Jewish man and his 31-year-old sister were about to board an EL AL flight to Tel Aviv at Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport when an airport staff member made an antisemitic remark.
While they were standing in line for passport control, the agent told the sister he wanted to “rip off his cap,” gesturing toward his own head—clearly referring to the black kippah worn by her brother.
Stunned, they asked him to repeat himself. He doubled down, repeating the threat two more times.
SENTINEL is a European project funded by the European Commission and led by the Security and Crisis Centre (SACC by EJC), the security arm of the European Jewish Congress. It brings together the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism (ICCT), national-level Jewish communities from Austria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Italy, and Spain, the European Union of Jewish Students, with the support of the Italian Carabinieri and the Police Presidium of the Czech Republic.
The project is designed to strengthen the protection of Jewish places of worship across the European Union through a coordinated set of activities over a three-year period.
SENTINEL will harness AI-enhanced open-source intelligence to monitor and assess current, emerging, and future threats. It will also equip Jewish communities with practical tools, including a mobile security application with a panic button and an interactive map built on real-time incident data.
Training and capacity-building are at the core of the project. These include scenario-based security exercises, crisis management seminars, and both in-person and online training sessions for community security trustees. SENTINEL will also organise EU-wide and local conferences to foster collaboration between Jewish communities, public authorities, and law enforcement agencies.
Complementing these efforts, national and local workshops will promote knowledge-sharing and preparedness, alongside pilot training programmes for law enforcement. A dedicated podcast series will help raise awareness by exploring threat assessments and potential responses.
With its wide-reaching and inclusive approach, SENTINEL will directly benefit to Jewish communities across 23 EU Member States, enhancing resilience, strengthening preparedness, and building long-term cooperation with law enforcement to meet today’s evolving security challenges.
