A radical Islamic held hostage a rabbi and Jewish worshippers during a Shabbat service at asynagogue in Colleyville, Texas this past Saturday. The terrorist demanded the release of a Pakistani neuroscientist who was convicted of trying to kill U.S. Army officers in Afghanistan.

One of the four hostages held at  Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville was released during the standoff; three others were rescued when authorities entered the building about 9 p.m., and the terrorist was killed, authorities said.

At a news conference after the hostages were released, FBI Special Agent in Charge, Matt DeSarno said that “the Texas synagogue hostage taker’s demands were specifically focused on issues not connected to the Jewish community.”

Pastor Mario Bramnick, President of Latino Coalition for Israel stated “to see that the FBI did not immediately see this incident as an Anti-Semitic hate crime is very troubling.”

Kenneth Marcus said that the attack was “obviously a matter of antisemitism. Failure of the FBI to understand this is something of a pattern with law enforcement in the United States and frankly in Europe. It seems that time after time, we see law enforcement officials fail to understand when antisemitic incidents occur, even when it’s entirely obvious, and sometimes the results of that are tragic. This time, fortunately, they have not been.” Marcus said.

“If the law enforcement community doesn’t understand what’s going on, they’re not going to be able to address the fallout from this,” he added. “This was not a mere slip-up. It is symptomatic of a widespread failure with law enforcement to understand the problems of antisemitism and anti-Zionism,” Marcus said.

“It is also dangerous to downplay an attack against Jewish people as being something else at a time of rising anti-Jewish bigotry that we should all be paying attention to. It makes no sense to try and separate Saturday’s hostage crisis from the people who suffered and who were the most impacted: Jews, their Jewish families and the Jewish world,” she added.

Later the FBI clarified by stating, “This is a terrorism-related matter, in which the Jewish community was targeted, and is being investigated by the Joint Terrorism Task Force. Preventing acts of terrorism and violence is the number one priority of the FBI.”

FBI statistics stated that Jewish people are the greatest victim of hate crime in America being 54% of all hate crime that the religious motivational.

Pastor Mario stated “In the last several years we have seen a troubling rise of antisemitic incidents in the United States and rampant anti-Israel and antisemitic actions unleashed on United States campuses. With the rise of anti-Semitism in America, the Christian Jewish Alliance is more important than ever before. When we see the rise of Anti-Semitism in America with the most recent incident of the radical Islamist holding Rabbi and Congregants hostage in a Texas Synagogue, the Christian-Jewish Alliances are more important than ever before.”