J Street is appalled by the Trump Administration’s cynical exploitation of the real fears and legitimate concerns of Jewish Americans about antisemitism as cover for its all-out assault on key pillars of American democracy and success: Immigration, higher education and the rule of law.
The administration seems hell-bent on destroying all that has made this country a secure and welcoming home for Jewish Americans for generations. The American Jewish experience is rooted in our own families’ stories of immigration, of opportunity provided by public and higher education and of protection of our civil and equal rights through enforcement of the Constitution.
We are absolutely shocked by scenes yesterday of a young graduate student at Tufts University, Rumeysa Ozturk, being ambushed on the street in front of her home and pressed into a car by masked agents – images straight out of playbooks run by authoritarian regimes that Jews spent generations escaping. This is just the latest example of the administration’s disregard for rights and freedoms that make none of us safer. In fact, this administration’s actions are more likely to increase tensions for Jewish students on campuses and in communities around the country than to ease them.
It is simply chilling for us – as Jews – to see the rights of immigrants and minorities being undercut by state authorities in our name. Our history and our values compel us to speak out, and we call on the leaders of other major American Jewish institutions to speak out as well. Even as we fight antisemitism and other forms of hate and bigotry with all our strength, so too we must be all in on the fight to protect fundamental pillars of this country’s strength – including the right to free speech and academic freedom.
We urge the Trump Administration, if it is truly committed to fighting antisemitism, to start by taking responsibility for the hateful rhetoric and thinly veiled antisemitic conspiracy theories propagated by those it has elevated to senior positions and to immediately stop weaponizing very real Jewish concerns to push its own anti-democratic agenda, undermining the vital fight against those who actively fuel antisemitism.