Slaves in Egypt, Expelled from Europe, Turned Back During the Holocaust: We Are All Refugees

We firmly believe there should be swift and severe consequences for those who provide material support to foreign terrorist organizations, incite violence in support of terrorist activities, or conceal their identities in order to harass and intimidate Jewish individuals and… https://t.co/HOxhtVUlHJ

— ADL (@ADL) March 10, 2025

American Jewish groups have been disjointed in their response to the Trump administration’s immigration policy.  The major pro Israel groups like the ADL (see tweet above) have gone all-in on a draconian approach in which immigrants and students, including US citizens, would be deported for any reason or no reason at all.

Yet more recently the ADL has detected a shift in the political winds.  Americans, including Jews, are growing disgusted with ICE thuggery.  So one might expect it would tack back toward the center. Almost, but not quite.  Its CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt, a craven opportunist, spends hundreds of words and eight paragraphs in this op-ed spouting claims of anti-Semitism against the pro-Palestine campus rallies.  In the ninth, he offers a faint endorsement for what he calls “due process.”  Which goes something like this: these immigrants may be guilty of the crimes they’re accused of committing.  But we owe them at least a hearing before we deport them.  In other words, due process means offering a fig leaf to Trumpian tyranny.

Another major group, the American Jewish Committee, offered this appalling statement regarding Columbia University graduate student, Mahmoud Khalil.  He was kidnapped and disappeared by ICE last month. He is now languishing in a Louisiana prison in which detainees are held indefinitely, without trial, and without the right to consult counsel:

AJC is appalled by the views and actions of Mahmoud Khalil. Universities have an obligation to ensure that antisemitic behavior such as his does not lead to intimidation and harassment of Jewish students.

U.S. law is clear regarding the necessary predicate that justifies deportation. Under that law, there is a difference between protected speech, even when deplorable, and statements and actions that justify deportation.

Should the government prove its case in a prompt and public legal proceeding, and Khalil is afforded due process, then deportation will be fully justified.

We detest him and everything he stands for. He is a rotten anti-Semite and deserves to be expelled from the country.  But there’s a little thing called “US law” (actually the US Constitution, but who’s quibbling).  So we want to dot our I’s and cross our T’s, before we give him the old heave-ho.

This approach exploits fake anti-Semitism claims of pro-Israel groups and the Israeli government over the past few years.  By creating this non-real reality, they believe they are doing Israel favors.  When in reality, they’re helping destroy the liberties and rights enshrined in our founding documents 250 years ago.  Our grandparents came to this country because of these blessings, which enabled many of us to become prosperous and proud citizens of their adopted land.  Now groups like the AJC are willing partners in Trump’s attempts (successful, so far) to smash these principles and trample them underfoot.  Whose interests are we serving?

Demonizing student protesters and immigrants

The leading NGO providing security to hundreds of synagogues throughout the country, the Secure Community Network (SCN), released an odious statement last January, criminalizing “non-citizen aliens” (i.e. legal immigrants) as terrorists. It calls for:

…Immediate action to…protect the Jewish community and all Americans by…deport[ing] non-citizens who provide material support to designated terrorist organizations like ISIS and Hamas or threaten to harm Americans.

The group’s CEO wrote the following in a letter to Trump, calling for expulsion of college student protesters, who were doing nothing more than protesting a genocide in Gaza–constitutionally protected speech; and protected, whether you’re a citizen or a “non-citizen alien.” It calls on the president:

…To enforce the laws and expel any non-citizen alien who supports terrorism. This includes those who have taken to the streets of America and on our campuses in support of designated foreign terrorist organizations, like Hamas and Hezbollah.

Again, as I wrote above, this is a complete, willful distortion of the Gaza war encampments.  Few of the students supported Hamas or Hezbollah.  They opposed the genocide. They supported Palestine.  Again, constitutionally protected speech.  I can’t tell you how much damage this hate does to a country which has been so good to us.  What will they do if another president, who hates Jews, is elected and comes after us?  Then you will cry out that you’ve been wronged. But it will be too late, as Pastor Niemoller so memorably said.

@bostonglobe A Guatemalan immigrant with no Massachusetts criminal record was arrested Monday in New Bedford after federal agents shattered the glass on his vehicle as he and his wife waited inside the car for their lawyer to arrive. Juan Francisco Méndez, 29, who was taken to an undisclosed location, has been in the United States for two years and was undocumented, but pursuing an adjustment of his immigration status, according to his attorney, Ondine Gálvez. The tense standoff took about 30 minutes. The couple were taken from their car after an agent smashed in the rear right window. Click on the link in our bio to read more. This story and video originally appeared in The New Bedford Light, @thenewbedfordlight, a nonprofit digital news outlet that covers the South Coast. ♬ original sound – The Boston Globe

The CEO closes with this exhortation to, in the words of Great Leader, make America great: to become a country in which ICE agents smash your car windows with sledgehammers and drag you out by your hair and disappear you into a prison that is more like a concentration camp. That’s some kind of greatness.

The Jewish resistance

Until recently, no one in the Jewish community appeared willing to protest the visit of Israeli terror minister, Itamar Ben Gvir.  It seemed like a repetion of the ambivalence toward Trump’s immigration police.  But the liberal Zionist group, Unxeptable, plans a major protest :

*CALL TO ACTION – SAY No To Kahanism and Ben Gvir In The U.S.*
*Being Silent is not an option* – Join UnXeptable, hostage families, and leading Jewish organizations in declaring Ben-Gvir persona non grata
*Sign the letter now* – ITAMAR BEN GVIR IS BEYOND THE PALE https://bit.ly/Itamar-Ben-Gvir-is-beyond-the-pale
*Mark your calendar: Protest in NYC while he is there*- Thursday, April 24th 12:30, Upper East Side, NYC https://facebook.com/events/634313436092591/
*Join the WhatsApp group* for the latest updates and more rallies in D.C and Miami : https://bit.ly/Ben-Gvir-Is-Not-Welcomed
He doesn ot represent us as Jews or Israelis. 
He is NOT welcome in our communities. 
We will not be silent as he spreads hate and sabotages hostage deals. 
*Join us in the fight for Israel’s character!* 
*Please consider making a gift to support this vital fight:* 
https://zeffy.com/en-US/donation-form/unxeptable

The growing opposition led a Brooklyn Chabad group supporting settler colonists in Hebron, to cancel a fundraiser for the settlement featuring Judeo-terrorist government mininster, Itamar Ben Gvir. It claimed the cancellation was a result of a “unforeseen changes in the minister’s schedule.” Given that he has only three events scheduled during his stay, it’s unlikely this is the case.  As for what other possible reasons there might be: given that the group supports some most violent extremists in the West Bank, it certainly didn’t cancel. Either the museum venue or the Chabad hierarchy, perhaps sensitive to the growing controversy around the visit, dictated it.

A right-wing “intellectual society” based at Yale and led by a former Chabad rabbi, remains on his schedule.  Though followers of the group are Yale students, Shabtai is not formally affiliated with the university.  Its modus operandi is what ultra-Orthodox groups like Chabad call keyruv: “drawing close.” Meaning proselytizing–“converting” secular Jews to Orthodoxy.  Oddly, years ago I was invited to speak to the group (before they realized I lived in the Pacific Northwest).  Once I learned more about it, I declined.

Returning to the immigration issue, a Jewish human rights group, T’ruah, brought together nearly 300 rabbis who expressed their distaste for SCN’s hateful rhetoric. They wrote:

“It is well-documented that the primary perpetrators of domestic terrorism in the United States, and particularly against Jews, are white American citizens. We do not deny that in select circumstances, immigrants have carried out and attempted terrorist attacks. But to frontload them as the primary threat to Jewish security is not only morally irresponsible but dangerous for the Jewish people and for American society.

One wonders why the American Jewish community puts its trust in such a racist organization.  Security is one thing. But basking in hatred of immigrants is something else entirely.  Do Jewish leaders want a thug a Jewish version of ICE and its Brownshirt boss, Tom Homan, protecting their institutions? Or do they want protection that is grounded in Jewish values of solidarity with the stranger. Synagogues, community centers and other institutions should rethink their involvement with SCN.  Instead, give the undeserving group a pass. Instead of sucking up to it as in T’ruah’s statement: “We need you to continue doing your crucial work to help keep Jewish communities safe.”

After Tufts grad student, Rumeysa Ozturk, was similarly arrested by ICE and disappeared to the same Louisiana prison as Khalil, her attorneys filed suit.  A group of Boston-area synagogues banded together to file a friend of the court brief.  This is the full version.  In it they argued:

“Jewish people came to America to escape generations of similar predations,” the brief says. “Yet the images of Ozturk’s arrest in twenty-first century Massachusetts evoke the oppressive tactics employed by the authoritarian regimes that many ancestors of amici’s members left behind in Odessa, Kishinev, and Warsaw.”

Groups like the ADL and AJC are trying to have it both ways: hate the message, love–or at least tolerate–the messenger.  That’s not how it works. If you hate the message (and lie about it) you’re betraying the messenger.