This Could Never Happen Here

Arrests by masked security agents? Deportations to foreign jails with no remedy? Universities under attack? A President set to defy the courts? Never in our wildest dreams!

This weekend, at Passover seders across the country, Jews recalled that “in every generation” threats and enemies rise up against us.

My parents’ generation never tired of sharing stories of their lived experience – of having bags packed, ready to flee. They never lacked for stories of dictators trampling the rule of law. Of relatives hiding in fear from state-sponsored terror. Of schools and teachers threatened. Of media outlets bent to the state’s will.

Until now, American Jews shared something else at their seders: A belief that these things could never happen here and immense gratitude for the life our families had built in the United States.

Nearly all our families came here as refugees, fleeing something. We studied and learned in amazing educational institutions. We leaned on the Constitution and the rule of law to protect our rights as a minority. We thought quietly what we hesitated to say out loud: perhaps at last the cycle had been broken.

In the background, though, that message from the seder lurked: in every generation, a threat arises.

Which brings me to the story of Columbia University graduate student Mohsen Mahdawi.

Mahdawi was arrested Monday by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in Burlington, Vermont. Having been tricked into showing up for a fake naturalization interview, he was taken into custody, apparently because the Trump administration deems his political views and activism unacceptable.

Born in Jenin in the occupied West Bank and educated in a refugee camp, Mahdawi has been a lawful permanent resident of the US for a decade as well as a student at Columbia, where he was co-president of the Palestinian Student Union and active in protests against the war in Gaza.

A practicing Buddhist, Mahdawi took a step back from leading campus pro-Palestine organizing and participated in dialogue efforts that brought him into regular contact with Israeli and Jewish students, many of whom are speaking out publicly on his behalf.

He was a visible figure at Columbia and nationally, appearing on 60 Minutes in December 2023, where he made the case that, “The fight for the freedom of Palestine and the fight against antisemitism go hand in hand because injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

The constructive role Mahdawi tried to play, attested to by his fellow students, doesn’t appear to have mollified the far-right Jewish organizations pushing to deport students like him. The Canary Mission, for instance, has a page on its site devoted to Mahdawi, and Betar-US boasted on X back in January that Mahdawi was on their “deport list.”

I am astounded by how unaware the broader Jewish community is about the role a cabal of right-wing Jewish thugs is playing in fueling this assault on students in the name of fighting antisemitism.

It is time for the Jewish community to call these groups out and to distance ourselves from their rhetoric and tactics.

And – even more important – it is time to call out President Trump and the far MAGA right for using the fight against antisemitism as a pretext for enacting their anti-immigrant, anti-education, anti-rule-of-law agenda.

When they come for Mohsen Mahdawi through deception and deceit, when they seize Rumeysa Ozturk off the street in broad daylight, when they ship legal immigrants abroad without due process and say there’s no way to get them back – Jewish America needs to stand up and make clear that this is not how the fight against antisemitism, against hate and against bigotry should be conducted.

A lot of issues divide American Jews – whether it’s our opinion of what Israel’s government is doing, what constitutes antisemitism or even who we think should be allowed to speak in Jewish institutions.

Many of us at J Street have strong opinions on all these things and deep, legitimate disagreements over them with Jewish organizations to our left and to our right.

But I am sure most people who support groups like AIPAC, the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League are as horrified as those who support J Street are by what this administration is doing.

It was good to see yesterday a coalition of important Jewish groups issue a statement rejecting the false choice between confronting antisemitism and upholding democracy. More are joining.

In the days and weeks ahead, as the going gets even tougher, we will need much more of this. Jewish leaders – left, right and center – who may disagree vehemently over other issues at times must come together to meet the threat posed by this administration.

We must oppose how the fight against antisemitism is being used as a pretext for its assault on fundamental pillars of our country – immigration, higher education, the rule of law and more - the very things that made us believe the cycle of threats and enemies might have been broken.