A pro-Israel political advocacy nonprofit with links to legislators on the state antisemitism commission and members of several area school boards has tapped activist Scott Hayes to organize veterans in Massachusetts.

In his work for the Israeli-American Civic Action Network (ICAN), Hayes, who plans and manages pro-Israel demonstrations locally, will lead veteran engagement and community organizing in the state. “Essentially, everything I’ve been doing since day one,” Hayes said.

Dillion Hosier, ICAN’s founder and CEO, said Hayes hasn’t been hired yet and is currently being onboarded. “We’re working on a program to get Israeli and American veterans more involved in civic life and advocacy for Israel, and also combating antisemitism and that kind of thing,” Hosier said. “So his mission would be to focus on bringing in members of that community and helping to represent our organization to that sector specifically.”

Hosier noted that as a new, small nonprofit, ICAN doesn’t yet have an organizing infrastructure in Massachusetts, so Hayes could help with that. To date, the group has operated primarily in its home state of California and in Massachusetts, but hopes to expand its efforts to other regions.

ICAN’s national cochair, Robert Mayer, lives in Newton, as does its Massachusetts cochair, Nirit Friedlander.

The nonprofit was incorporated in 2019 as a 501(c)4 social welfare organization – like a homeowners or employees association – a tax-free status that allows it to lobby officials and endorse candidates. Hosier said he founded the group to fill the gap between the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which promotes Israel’s political interests on the national level, and the Israeli American Council (IAC), which serves the social needs of Israelis living in the U.S. on the local level.

Prior to starting ICAN, Hosier was a lobbyist for the IAC-affiliated Israeli-American Coalition for Action for three years. He said the IAC has historically tried to pursue lobbying, but that as a nonprofit, “it was not a space where the real hardcore advocacy of politics could be done.” Before that, Hosier served for nine years as a political adviser for the Israeli Consulate in Los Angeles.

ICAN has already weighed in on several current Massachusetts issues. Hosier dismissed as unconstitutional the recently proposed bill that would have the state divest all pension funds from companies providing military technology to Israel, on the grounds that states do not have a right to engage in foreign policy or in international commerce.

Hosier said ICAN was “very supportive” of the work of the state’s Special Commission on Combating Antisemitism, although there, too, he had criticisms. “When they came out with their initial draft recommendations, we submitted a report analyzing those draft recommendations, pointing out some gaps,” Hosier said. “We’re very proud that many of the recommendations that we gave were included in the report.

“A big gap that we pointed out – and I think we’ve been pretty open about that – is that a lot of people have testified, but nobody from the Israeli American, the Persian Jewish, or Russian Jewish, the immigrant Jewish communities have testified. And in our view, that needs to be fixed.”

Hosier maintains those groups often experience antisemitism very differently from the American Jewish community. “Israelis in particular have to face a ‘national origin’ form of discrimination, which is antisemitic in nature, which American Jews don’t necessarily have to experience or don’t experience,” he said. “Some Jews perpetuate the anti-Zionist perspective, which harms Israelis differently from others.”

While to date Hayes’s Zionist activities have been limited to organizing and running pro-Israel demonstrations and counterdemonstrations, one of his first duties for ICAN will be facilitating a one-day educators’ retreat on Sept. 14. The seminar is for “equipping teachers to challenge harmful Middle East narratives, build critical thinking, and inspire respectful, fact-based dialogue,” according to the ICAN website.

“We’re looking forward to doing a couple of these a year, Massachusetts being the initial one, and then hopefully we’ll be able to take it nationally,” Hayes said. ICAN expects 75 to 100 teachers, administrators and donors to attend. “We’ve even invited some school board members,” Hayes said.

“Antisemitism’s just running rampant in schools,” he said. “The MTA and teachers unions across the country are pushing antisemitic views, values, a lot of pro-Palestinian propaganda that demonizes Jews and Israel and everything. So we started this project to push back against that narrative.”

Among the scheduled presenters is psychologist Miri Barr-Halpern, speaking on recognizing and addressing the early warning signs of radicalization among students. This year, Barr-Halpern has testified on the impact on Jewish and Israeli students of perceived antisemitism before the state antisemitism commission and the Natick School Committee. She also presented at ICAN’s June 2024 online conference “Combating Antisemitism Summit – Massachusetts Schools.”

Speaking at that conference were two of the three legislators on the antisemitism commission: cochair Sen. John Velis and Rep. Steven Howitt. (Cochair Rep. Simon Cataldo did not attend.) The commission held its first meeting four months later. Another conference speaker, Brookline Town Meeting member Scott Gladstone, would join the leadership of the American Jewish Committee New England within five months. That group’s regional director, Rob Leikind, also sits on the commission.

Other officials attending the online forum included Rep. Edward “Ted” Philips, then-Consul General of Israel to New England Meron Reuben, and Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) member Michael Moriarty.

Howitt, who won reelection to his Seekonk House seat last year, was one of three candidates for office endorsed by ICAN to attend the conference: Newton City Councilor Rick Lipof lost his primary bid for state representative in September 2024, and Yael Magen lost her bid for the Marblehead Select Board in June 2025.

Also in attendance was Brookline School Committee member Jesse Hefter, who would, within a year, lead that board’s passage of a resolution condemning as antisemitic the Massachusetts Teachers Association (MTA) online resources on Israel and Palestine. So, too, was Jennifer Schaeffner, whose Marblehead school committee passed an identical resolution two weeks later; and Shai Fuxman, whose Natick board passed a similar resolution a month after that. School board members Ben Bloomenthal of Acton-Boxboro and Joe Paru of Holliston also attended.

Other organizations participating in the conference included the CAMERA Education Institute, Christians and Jews United for Israel (CJUI), the Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM), Massachusetts Educators Against Antisemitism (MEAA) and StandWithUs.

Hayes, a 10-year U.S. Army veteran, came to the public’s attention in September 2024, when he was attacked by a pro-Palestinian passerby while leading a peaceful pro-Israel demonstration in Newton. In the ensuing scuffle, Hayes, who was carrying a licensed semiautomatic pistol, shot and seriously injured the attacker, Caleb Gannon.

Hayes was subsequently charged with one count of assault and battery with a deadly weapon, while Gannon was charged with assault and battery. In June, both men received pretrial probation deals from Middlesex District Attorney Marian Ryan. Assuming Hayes starts by Sept. 13 – the one-year anniversary of his arrest – the full-time job with ICAN will satisfy an employment requirement of his probation.

Most recently, Hayes led demonstrations at the Brookline Booksmith in protest of the sale of books and appearances by Palestinian authors. As reported by the Brookline News, when author Aymann Ismail – who is from Newark, New Jersey and whose parents are from Egypt – spoke on July 9 of his experiences as an Arab and Muslim father, Zionist protesters confronted him on the sidewalk outside the Harvard Street bookstore with accusations of antisemitism.

When asked if Hayes’s Brookline Booksmith activities were related to ICAN, Hosier said, “Not that I know of, no. We’re more of a lobbying organization, not so much of a protesting organization. Sometimes we’ll support an activity like that, if it makes sense, but that’s usually pretty rare.”