Transcript

Arielle Angel: Hello, and welcome back to On the Nose, the Jewish Currents podcast. I’m Arielle Angel, back from a several-month sabbatical—feeling not quite rested considering everything going on in the world but happy to be back with you all—and I’ll be your host for today. Today, we’re going to be talking about Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia student who was abducted by ICE and the Department of Homeland Security, transferred to a detention facility in Louisiana, and is awaiting judgment on deportation. This is a former graduate student at Columbia who was a leader in the student movement—in fact, a negotiator with the administration in various rounds of negotiations—and also a green card holder married to a US citizen, who happens to be eight months pregnant at the time of his abduction. Obviously, this news is sending shockwaves through the activist community and through the country, frankly, about what it means about the latitude that the Trump administration is going to try to apply in dealing with Palestine activists and in dealing with dissent broadly. So today, I have associate editor Mari Cohen and senior reporter Alex Kane to parse this situation and parse, particularly, the Jewish communal role in this arrest and future arrests like it. So let’s get started. Mari, do you want to kick us off by describing the ways that different Jewish communal groups have reacted to this news and maybe also, of course, more importantly, how they have contributed to this outcome in the first place?

Mari Cohen: Yeah, absolutely. It’s great to be back here doing this with you, Arielle, although it is unfortunate that this is the occasion. So I think that there’s been a broad political landscape that has taken shape since October 7, 2023, in terms of certain Jewish groups that have really been pushing this primary concern about antisemitism on college campuses and wanting robust punitive government intervention against students, and then a smaller and less influential set of more liberal groups that have been trying to defend the civil liberties and protest rights of the students. And then, maybe even smaller but also relatively influential groups like Jewish Voice for Peace that have actually been involved in and a leader in activist movement and student movement in terms of protesting Israel’s genocide. So we’ve had that landscape already laid out for 15 months, and I think that there are some ways in which that’s holding true in response to Kahlil’s detention, but also, some ways in which that’s changing in response to this really blatant violation or flouting of US legal norms, and also in the fact that it’s now the Trump administration in power doing this, which I think changes the relationship of a lot of more liberal Democratic voting Jews to what’s going on.

MC: So that’s the preface or broader summary, but just to talk about a few of the things that we’re seeing right away. As people started learning about Khalil’s detention and freaking out, the ADL puts out a statement and essentially announces that they’re in support of this happening. “We firmly believe that there should be swift and severe consequences for those who provide material support to foreign terrorist organizations,” et cetera. That’s what they say, obviously implying that they believe that Mahmoud Khalil is guilty of that, even though no specific allegations have actually been made on that front, which I think we’ll get into later. And then, they say they appreciate the Trump administration’s bold set of efforts to counter campus antisemitism. And this action further illustrates that resolve by holding alleged perpetrators responsible for their actions. There’s a bit of throat-clearing; they say any deportation action or revocation of a green card must be undertaken in alignment with required due process protections. But then, they go ahead and say they hope this action serves as a deterrent to others who might consider breaking the law on college campuses or anywhere. And again, which we’ll talk about, not totally clear what law, if any, Mahmoud Khalil is guilty of breaking. As far as I know, he has not been charged with specific. So the ADL really comes out swinging in favor of this deportation, and that’s pretty consistent with the actions that they’ve been taking both rhetorically and politically over the past 16, 17 months, both in terms of the kinds of things that Jonathan Greenblatt says in his media appearances and also the ways that they’ve been pushing colleges to try to investigate students for material support for terrorism.

AA: Right. I mean, just to remind people that the ADL called for the National Guard to be brought onto campuses at different points, didn’t they?

MC: Yeah, I think Greenblatt called for that during the encampment. So they’ve been doing this. It’s not that surprising that they would support it. And then, you’ve got a few other groups that—it’s also not that surprising that they would support it. I mean the Orthodox Union, which has a pretty conservative position on all of this. A lot of other groups are being pretty quiet. I haven’t seen anything yet from the AJC, the American Jewish Committee, the last time I checked, but they’ve been very involved in advocating for more punitive actions toward protesters against Israel. Jewish Federations of North America is still quiet. I’ve also emailed some of these places asking for comment. No one has responded to me yet. Oh, and also, the other thing is the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, which is—this action happened in New York City, so the New York Jewish groups are especially relevant. And this is the body that’s supposedly charged with representing the largest group of New York Jews, in terms of its dealings with other communities and general community needs, and they have not said anything specific, but the CEO basically tweeted something complaining about the way that DSA was talking about Khalil’s abduction. So they’ve thrown their hat in the ring in a certain way. I think that both the silence and the fact that that’s the one thing they said speaks quite loudly. And then, obviously, you have groups that are on the more liberal side—Bend the Arc, [which is] progressive, Jews for Racial and Economic Justice. All of these groups like speaking pretty loudly about what happened.

AA: T’ruah, which is more liberal.

MC: T’ruah. I think a couple of the examples where there’s maybe a more interesting fracture in terms of dissent that we haven’t seen before would be the Jewish Democratic Council of America, which actually put out a statement opposing the detention, even though they’ve generally been quite supportive of all of the American pro-Israel policy and really have not had much of a dissenting word to give at all since October 2023. But obviously, I think because this is Trump doing it and they’re the Jewish Democratic Council of America, they probably feel like they have some opening to criticize. So they said, “We don’t revoke First Amendment rights or green cards to punish free speech, even if we disagree with it.” And then, the other thing that’s interesting is Zioness, which is this super Zionist but like, supposedly, quote, unquote, progressive Zionist, I guess, feminist group. They did actually make a statement expressing concerns because Jews have always fought to protect civil rights and civil liberties, even when totally disgusted by the content. And I do think that’s interesting, that at this moment, there are a few of these Jewish groups—and also Jewish politicians like Representative Jerry Nadler—who are speaking out and expressing some concerns about this action, even as they have generally been quite supportive of American pro-Israel policy—and often of anti-student protester policy over the past however many months.

AA: Right. So, I mean, it sounds like what you’re saying is people are largely acting the way that we would expect them to with the mainstream orgs, either in support or staying out of it, and the more progressive orgs being against it, and it’s this hazy middle of partisan politics in the Jewish world that is breaking. And I would add to what you’re saying, Mari, that we’re seeing a break among the supposed liberal constituents of mainstream Jewish organizations, who are not comfortable with this. I mean, Jews largely have been in support of civil liberties, and that argument resonates very strongly with them. And to the extent that they’ve gotten their wires crossed, because many of them are also Zionists on this issue, I think this is a real testing ground, right? I mean, we’re basically seeing people like Josh Molina being critical of this, where, in the past, they might also be very alarmed about campus antisemitism. So this is, I think, something to watch too, right?

MC: Absolutely. I think what’s interesting about all of this is that there is a pretty big gap in terms of how some of these mainstream Jewish organizations have been acting in response to the Trump administration and Trump’s position on Jewish and Israel issues and what the general Jewish voter or constituent wants. I think that even if many of those voters and constituents are quite pro-Israel and often quite hostile to student protest against Israel, they’re still also really against Trump, and disgusted with Elon Musk, and they’re disturbed about any type of policy that could be aligned with them. An example of this is that the ADL, recently, alongside JLENS, this Jewish investment network, they launched a new Jewish investment fund that’s supposed to avoid anti-Israel and anti-Jewish companies and be investments for Jewish values. The idea is that big Jewish federations and community funds can invest in it, and pretty quickly, over at The Forward, Arnold Rosenfeld broke the story that this fund actually invests in Tesla, even though obviously, Elon Musk himself is currently under fire for having done a Nazi salute at the inauguration. And I think a lot of American Jews, even if they, frankly, don’t care at all about how Palestine protesters are treated, at least really do care about what Elon Musk is doing in the federal government and are against it. But the question is: How much information about what these groups like the ADL, and the federations who are investing in ADL stuff, and the local federations and groups like the JCRC, who are lobbying to support these Trumpian decisions—how much information about that actually gets to the average Jewish voter, or Jewish constituent, or participant is a real question I have.

AAL: Well, and also, what does it even look like for them to lose their constituency if they don’t really have a constituency to begin with? I mean, let’s say that people stop recognizing the ADL or the JCRC as their voice because they aren’t aligned with them on, for example, these civil liberty issues or things happening in the Trump administration. Does that actually even change anything? Because the fact of the matter is these organizations—there’s no membership, anyway, and they’re not largely dealing with small donations. They’re dealing with large donors. So how long can these groups continue to be out of step with a broad Jewish constituency? I mean, I saw people saying, “Well, only fringe groups in the Jewish community are against this.” And I think actually, if you were to poll them, a majority of Jewish people in New York City, of all persuasions, would be against this. And I think this is a real case of showing how mainstream organizations are really out of step with a fundamentally liberal-to-the-core base.

Alex Kane: No, I agree. And just to unpack that a little more, I mean, there has always been a gap between liberal values at home and support for Israel in the liberal Zionist imagination. Of course, that is part of it. That’s part and parcel. It has long been part and parcel. Even though Israel was founded on an act of mass ethnic cleansing, even though Israel has been occupying the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem without giving voting rights to the Palestinians under their control for so many years, that has coexisted with a liberal American support for civil liberties in the First Amendment, and even pro-immigration laws, because there is, at least, a pretense that Israel is a liberal democracy. And so, that has coexisted. I would say, obviously, there’s always been a tension there, but in the liberal American Zionist imagination, that has been able to coexist.

AK: Obviously, that has come under more pressure in the Trump era, beginning in 2016 when Trump and Netanyahu first began their close alliance. Obviously, that put the liberal Zionist support for Israel under some tension, although obviously, it did not break that. And then, October 7 happened, where we saw a lot of liberal Zionist groups retreat to support for Israel because they saw Israelis and Israel as being under serious threat from Palestinian violence. And so now, I think, with the return of Trump, we’re seeing this tension come to the fore again, but I should say that we’re still living in the post-October 7 era, where liberal Zionist organizations can still cohere around both a politics of support for Israel’s security while being anti-Netanyahu and being anti-Trump. That’s a very common politics among people. So it’s not surprising that we’re seeing this opposition to a nakedly authoritarian action carried out by the Trump administration, although I think there’s not a recognition of how this is a step on a path that the Biden administration laid. And Democratic governors, more specifically, I should say, with their support for police crackdowns on encampments last year.

AA: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it’s a shitty time to say “I told you” so from Jewish Currents. I mean, we’ve been reporting on this for really the last year. And I also even wrote an article in the Guardian about it, that liberals getting on board with these crackdowns was not going to go very well. And you’re hearing a lot of Palestinian activists now adopting the language of the canary in the coal mine, which used to be the Jewish pet phrase, but that’s absolutely true that crackdowns on civil liberties that begin with Palestinians and their supporters will reach the general population. And also, people are talking a lot about the boomerang effect that Aimé Césaire talks about when colonialism and colonialist policies are pursued abroad and the way that the Nazi genocide itself was colonialism turned inward, in that way. We’ve talked about that on the podcast. Whether liberals are actually going to make those connections now, I don’t know. I mean, what they may do is oppose things—like, in the individual sense, we’re against this. But, I mean, it doesn’t seem as though they’re going to take responsibility for the path that led us here.

AK: Noura Erakat, I should say, has a great essay on this in the Boston Review where she says the boomerang has come hurtling back with astonishing speed and that Israel’s genocide in Gaza has expanded authoritarianism in the US, as well as increased police power with snipers on university rooftops training their weapons at unarmed protesters. And she says this might have been a galvanizing moment if liberals had recognized the entwinement between state and military violence targeting protesters and how that might advance in authoritarianism. But she says that the abuse against Palestinians became normalized and, as such, created some very harmful precedents.

MC: Yeah, I think it’s interesting. I mean, this is the second time in which we’ve seen liberals be able to complain about it a little bit more when Trump is doing it. I think the other example would be the nonprofit-killer bill from the fall, which is basically a bill introduced to try to strip tax-exempt status of organizations that could be accused of aiding terrorism. And it was obviously designed to target Arab and Palestinian organizations, and a bunch of Democrats initially voted for it, but then, when it came up for a vote again with Trump as president-elect, a bunch of people rushed to oppose it, including many liberal Jewish groups, because now they were worried that Trump would use it to pursue his political enemies. And I think it puts organizers in somewhat of a difficult position, in that you both want to encourage this liberal opposition, because I think it actually can make a difference in certain cases to have this really broad societal opposition to whatever proposed offensive. I mean, I think with the nonprofit-killer bill, it didn’t pass, so it actually made a difference. So you want to encourage that behavior, and also, you want to figure out how to redirect that so that it isn’t just permissible when it’s the liberals doing these crackdowns, or accepting the broader structure of the argument that student protesters for Palestine are a threat to Jews and Jewish students. And unfortunately, we haven’t really been able to do that so far.

MC: And the other thing I’ll just say too, about the non-representative nature of the Jewish institutions—I think that’s totally right. I think what the challenge is, is even though it’s not representative of the broader Jewish population in the United States, it is representative of a very large, energetic, and powerful portion of American Jews that do exist and are willing to spend their time on this. I mean, it’s interesting. It’s not just like there’s some centralized thing going on where the ADL is forcing all these other Jewish organizations to do what it says. It’s really like, anybody on a local level who gets absorbed into a federation or JCRC structure is on board. And this is their job, and they’re just like, “My job is to push for anti-BDS legislation and push for police crackdowns and protesters and all of that.” And so, even though it’s, again, not representative, you end up with a large structure of people who are doing that.

AA: I mean, I should say that it used to be different, and I think that this is a change in the sense that, for example, even in the seven years that I’ve been working at Currents, the amount of leaks coming out of the ADL has dwindled because the amount of people who work there who are dissenters has dwindled. I mean, I would guess if this is happening at the ADL that it’s also happening elsewhere, and that the people who work at these organizations are very ideologically aligned in this regard, and that you don’t go into a certain echelon of Jewish communal life anymore without being more right wing than the average American Jew.

AK: There are still pockets within the organized Jewish community who go into these organizations to work on liberal causes, including in the ADL, and remain there. But I do think, overwhelmingly, the trend that you’re talking about is happening.

AA: Maybe this is a good segue to talking about the ways that different Jewish groups have actually led to this outcome. And particularly, with Mahmoud Khalil, we see this right-wing group, Betar. I don’t even know how to describe Betar.

AK: They are am online heavy, small organization that is very adept at using social media to harass Jews in particular and also Palestinians who are dissenting against Israel. And they also tend to show up to Palestinian-led protests in New York City and harass people that attend there with some really vile rhetoric.

AA: It seems like they have JDL aspirations, but they’re not quite there yet. But they apparently had a list of students to go after. Khalil’s name was on that list, and they shared that list with Trump. There’s also the Secure Communities Network. Maybe, Mari, you could tell us a little bit more about that. I mean, Secure Communities Network, the way that we’ve generally encountered them is as a group that receives, first of all, a lot of federal money under these nonprofit security grants that largely go to Jewish groups to ‘ prepare synagogues for active shooter drills and stuff like that. But their role in this stuff is interesting.

MC: So Secure Community Network has actually not said anything about what their involvement has been—or there hasn’t been reporting that I’ve seen about what their involvement is—regarding Mahmoud Khalil and ICE. There’s this partnership, basically, that launched I think last August between Secure Community Network and Hillel International called Operation Secure Our Campuses that basically has all this work that they’re trying to do to—give all these campus Jewish safety training and a bunch of intelligence gathering that they were going to share with authorities, including, I think the FBI and various other recommendations. And they have not claimed any responsibility for gathering intelligence on people like Khalil or anything like that, or for advocating for deportations. I emailed them some questions about it. They haven’t answered them yet. But I do think you do have to wonder if they’re part of this group that is basically, explicitly saying that they’re doing intelligence gathering about antisemitism quotes on campuses and giving it to the FBI or giving it to other authorities.

AA: Right. They say right on their homepage: They work with law enforcement, with Homeland Security, and with the FBI.

AK: And they said that they support Trump in taking action against non-citizens who materially support terrorism and threaten Jewish Americans. And that it’s time for the US government to take meaningful action, which is a pretty broad statement. Nothing specifically around visas or green cards, but definitely pushing Trump to do something. And that something is now trying to deport a green card holder.

MC: Yeah. So definitely, also not out of the question. I think that they could have been involved in specifically getting details on individual activists that they are then providing to various federal government agencies. It seems like that is within the purview of what they could be doing. Obviously, we can’t confirm that. We’ll just say that it’s not out of the question. It’ll be interesting to see what reporting might emerge there. But I think also, the group that we do know that has been involved in that work is this Columbia Jewish Alumni Association. And there was really good reporting from the student newspaper, Columbia Spectator, about it. It’s this new group of Columbia Jewish alumni who had a WhatsApp group, where they were basically working to identify certain activists in the protests, and find their names, and find things out about them. Again, to what extent that means that it was actually shared directly from them to the Trump administration, or if they shared it with Colombia to complain—How much was Colombia collaborating with the Trump administration?—we don’t know. But we do know that there is a group similar to Betar, which is a smaller, ragtag, mostly social media group of angry individuals that—again, they might not have a lot of institutional power, but they do have a pretty big presence and voice that they can use to do this sort of lobbying, and they have been really big on that.

MC: And then there’s also that Facebook group, Mothers Against Campus Antisemitism, which has been super involved in pushing various universities to try to do certain disciplinary processes against certain activists. And it’s just a Facebook group that is full of a bunch of, I guess, as the name suggests, angry Zionist moms who want people to be punished for what they’re allegedly doing to the children. And so, I think we’re seeing this new, I guess, in some ways, grassroots network of these very right-wing, pro-Israel Jewish groups that are really dedicated to doing their own vigilante assistance and enforcement. So even if like a group like the Jewish Federation isn’t actually making a comment or isn’t actually getting involved, or if we can’t prove that Secure Communities Network did this, we do know that all these other groups are cropping up well.

AA: So I have some questions about that, and maybe like the cards aren’t on the table yet and we don’t have the answer. I mean, you’re—Mari—calling these groups grassroots. I know that Emmaia Gelman, who’s been doing a lot of research on the ADL and has contributed to Jewish Currents in the past about her work, is calling them astroturf groups. Groups that are potentially mega-donor aligned. Do we really have a sense of like; Are these just like some motivated individuals, or is this coordinated in some way? That’s one question that I have. But then the other question I have is also like: If these groups are basically small groups, why are they being listened to? Why do they seem so formidable? Like there’s a whole slew of new organizations, and they seem to be carrying the weight of old establishment organizations. That’s how the university is dealing with them. And so, what do we glean about like what the climate is or why this is happening based on that situation? Because like, who cares about Mothers Against Campus Antisemitism? They’re a new group. There’s plenty of opposition on the other side coming from faculty, coming from students. Why is this happening?

AK: I have two thoughts on that. One is that they are competing with the ADL. And so, the ADL is then responding to that right-wing competition, and are not quite doing exactly what they are doing, and are more nuanced in their rhetoric but are being pushed to the right, I think, by this new competition. And I know that the ADL is fearful that they will be outflanked from the right, and so I think there is a dynamic there in which the new organizations that attain some influence are pushing the more establishment organizations in their direction. I don’t know the answer to the question of whether they are astroturf or grassroots, but it doesn’t matter because the reason why they’re being listened to or why they have any influence at all is because they align with the Trump administration’s agenda.

AA: And the Biden administration’s agenda, just to be clear. I mean, the universities were being responsive to a government that was very willing to crack down on this. That considered campus antisemitism one of the major problems and also one of the things that was a harbinger of something being rotten in the university system. So I don’t know, I mean, I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that these groups were doing fine before Trump.

AK: No, no. But the specific immigration agenda of Trump—the Biden administration did not threaten or even come close to revoking the student visas of international college students or the green cards. Even though the Biden administration obviously made a lot of right-wing moves on immigration, that was something that they did not move toward. Now, I agree that the Biden administration very much laid the groundwork for this, but I do think there’s a significant difference there. And so, I just think that these new groups are aligned with the Trump administration’s naked anti-immigrant agenda and want to use that agenda to their own ends, which is about trying to crush pro-Palestinian activism on campus and using immigration law to serve as a deterrent to this activism. And so, anyway, I guess my point is the immigration agenda in particular—they are the Jews that align with Trump. And so, the Trump apparatus listens to them and takes some direction from them, and they’re very active on social media as they direct them toward who to target.

MC: And also, what I’ll just say is that some of what you need is—you just need one person who has a level of influence, especially when these universities—I mean, these university administrators are basically terrified of being accused of being antisemitic. And if a Jewish parent who has some level of power, who has done any donation or is an alumni—I mean, if you think about Bill Ackman, for example, and what he did at Harvard. I mean, obviously, that’s an extreme example because he’s such a rich hedge fund guy, big public profile, but he doesn’t have any political standing to be telling Harvard what to do, but he was really able to have a ton of influence there. And the firing of Claudine Gay—and just in general, even if you have a smaller version of that—I think the universities right now have been so cowardly and backed into a corner with how they respond. It’s that they’re going to listen.

MC: And so the Mothers Against Campus Antisemitism founder is a New York City-based lawyer named Elizabeth Rand. I never heard of her, but apparently, she’s a big deal as a lawyer. She’s got some money, she’s got some legal knowledge, and so she can tell NYU what she wants them to do, and they’ll probably take a meeting with her, and then she can have a Facebook group of 60,000 people who all are not that influential or powerful or necessarily rich but send an email to the administrator and bully them. And the administrators are not that trained in dealing with this thing, and they’re afraid and they’re being threatened with having Title VI investigations and losing their funding and all of that. So sometimes, it just takes one powerful person. And I think the other thing there, too, is in addition to them competing with the ADL, the ADL is on shaky ground with the Trump administration because they’re actually, shockingly, viewed as liberal softies in certain ways. I mean, Elon Musk and the ADL have this feud, even though Greenblatt has tried as hard as possible to suck up to him. So in some ways, Trump would actually rather listen to Betar or one of these other right-wing Jewish groups than have to deal with the ADL.

AA: I want to switch tracks. I know that there are probably a lot of activists who are feeling afraid right now, so I want to talk a little bit about the legal basis for this—what’s being brought up and how to think about risk in this moment. In the past, Alex, you’ve reported on material support for terrorism. I just want to hear a little bit from you about what the basis is for this and how it’s being discussed, and also the new legal areas or the new legal pathways that the Trump administration seems to be exploring. And then, I also want to think about this case in particular: Why Khalil, and what does it say?

AK: So immediately after Khalil was arrested, the Trump administration put out a statement saying that they were revoking his green card because he undertook activities, quote, aligned with Hamas. So quickly, the online discourse became around whether Khalil was a, quote, unquote, supporter of terrorism. And this invoked questions around the material support for terrorism law, which is a very broad law, but it has a specific meaning. The meaning does not have to do with speech, or protest activity, or even building occupations. It has to do with sending money to organizations on the State Department’s foreign terrorist organization list. Nobody has said—and there’s no evidence—that Mahmoud Khalil sent money to Hamas. That’s certainly the specter that the Trump administration is invoking, but if they had evidence for that, he would be brought up on much more serious charges. So there’s a head fake going on where they’re saying terrorism, but there’s actually no evidence for that, and there’s no evidence to accuse him of material support.

AK: What the Trump administration is actually doing, I think, is far more dangerous because what they’re doing is invoking a Cold War-era law that says that the Secretary of State—in this case, Marco Rubio—can target any alien in the United States who undertakes activities that are adverse to the foreign policy of the United States. I don’t know how that comports with the First Amendment. It seems like it doesn’t, and I think that’s going to be a real fight. But I think it’s really chilling that Marco Rubio is invoking that, because the Times reported that the argument of Rubio is that it is the foreign policy of the United States to combat antisemitism, and therefore, it is within my legal right to target Mahmoud Khalil because he was fomenting antisemitism.

AK: Now, I should also say there is literally no evidence Mahmoud Khalil ever fomented antisemitism. He is a Palestinian. He is in opposition to Israel’s genocide and apartheid. And obviously, that’s not antisemitic. I feel like that’s probably obvious to our audience, but should say that. So obviously, I don’t want to alarm people, but this is really chilling that there’s this incredibly broad law that was used in the McCarthy era and the Cold War era that has now been invoked. It’s very rare; it often does not get invoked, and now, the Trump administration seems to have found a tool they are using to, at the very least, strike fear in the hearts of students. We will see if it works. So far, a judge in New York has said that Mahmoud Khalil cannot be deported immediately and that the United States has to keep him in the United States. And we will see how this legal fight plays. But it’s just very, very, very alarming that this is the argument of the Trump administration because it has severe implications for free speech.

AA: I mean, it feels like we’ve almost overnight entered a new red scare. I mean, at least the way that this looked is they went to arrest him, and he’s a green card holder, and then they decided to find justification for keeping him detained and deporting him that would apply to a green card holder. And they’ve come up with something extremely broad, and they’ve made Jews the face of it. That is scary and, again, begs the question whether there will be a realignment within the Jewish community around this.

MC: Yeah, and I mean, he’s made the Jews the face, quite literally, in that Trump—he basically posted a picture of Mahmoud Khalil and said, “Shalom, Mahmoud,” which in itself kind of borrowed the bullying rhetorical style of the Israeli government or the IDF on social media. So there’s something notable there. But I think it’s also quite stark that the rhetoric of Jewishness politically in the United States is now really being mobilized as the face of the repressive state. And it’s something to see these Red Scare structures and laws that were originally used to, in many ways, primarily punish Jews, really now being mobilized on behalf of Jews and used primarily to punish Palestinians and Arabs (and also generally other immigrants). And it’s challenging to figure out what we make of that. I think in general, it parallels, in some ways, this broader historical moment that we’re dealing with, in which there was this period in which Jews were victims in various contexts in terms of—in the Red Scare, also obviously victims of Holocaust itself, genocide, all of this stuff. And then this like, entire world order is created in that wake; an international legal order, various American structures allegedly to counter that. Basically, now this facade of civil liberties that was all built up allegedly to respond to the type of fascism that targeted Jews is now being mobilized as a type of fascism, ostensibly to protect Jews. And it’s just a real striking circular turn of events that we’ve seen across all of our work. And I also think it raises real questions about what this means for Jewish positionality.

AA: Yeah, I mean, you had Peter Beinart, our colleague, tweeting these laws will eventually come for American Jews. So, I mean, what do you guys think about that?

AK: Well on the one hand, yes, for a particular kind of American Jew, but it’s not because they’re Jewish, it’s because they’re anti-genocide. But the principal targets are Arabs, Muslims, and Palestinians.

AA: And particularly those who are not citizens already.

AK: Yes, not American Jews. Not to say that they won’t get potentially swept up as activists, but that—let’s keep our eyes on the ball and say that Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims, and particularly non-citizens who are active in the solidarity movement, are the ones that we should be most concerned with, and that we have to protect and be in solidarity with.

MC: It just requires us, I think, in some ways to thread a certain needle, which is that there are these structures that were historically actually anti-Jewish; Red Scare structures and other types of fascist structures that are actually now not primarily anti-Jewish in content, and are being mobilized against other people. And so what does it mean to oppose that and understand this historical anti-Jewish angle without necessarily thinking that Jews in the US are in danger tomorrow, rather than the people who are actually in danger today?

AA: I mean, I think one thing that I would say is that we had a recent meeting with some folks from Palestine Legal, just to get a sense of what the threats were and how they were developing. And what I really appreciated about the way that they presented what they had to say, is that they wanted to foreground what is not yet happening. Because obviously (and everybody has been saying this), a lot of the work of fascism is in the way that people seed through fear preemptively. And I think what it means to say that Jewish American activists are not the first one on the list, both because of their positionality and because of their immigration status, is not to say that eventually it won’t get to prominent Jewish American critics of the American government and their policy on Palestine, but to say that it is, as Alex said, our responsibility to fight back now while we are not first on the list—to stop it from getting anywhere near there. I mean, we cannot preemptively cede this ground. I think that feels very clear. And to the extent that this is a line in the sand, I really hope that we’ll see not just left Jews, but what we’re talking about, the majority of the American Jewish community actually coming out forcefully against this. I mean, I have no hope for the institutions, but then the question is really, how do the people make their voices heard, and what alternate routes do they have for doing so?

MC: Yeah, and I think it’s the same thing we talked about before with the tenor of the liberal opposition in general, is that you want it to be broader and you want it to recognize that it’s wrong even when it’s done specifically to Palestinian and Arab students and immigrants, and that it’s wrong even when the Biden administration is targeting anti-genocide protesters. But often, I guess part of what makes them the liberal opposition is that they get on board more when they see it as a Trumpist threat, or specifically if they’re strategically told that it’s going to come for them as Jews and minorities and it’s going to affect them specifically. I feel like my take is that I also find it rhetorically quite frustrating, that argument, for the reasons that Alex laid out. And I also see the reason that people use it strategically to appeal to the self-interest of these liberal groups (unfortunately). The other thing I’ll say too, about just thinking about the role of Jews in this moment, I don’t think there’s a real material or structural threat to American Jewish life in this moment, besides just like certain general types of antisemitic violence and one-offs that rise in moments of societal turmoil. But I do think there is something about seeing Trump mobilize this language and mantle of Jewishness to conduct repressive action that is certainly concerning.

AA: There’s no question that this is going to increase antisemitism in the United States. And the fact that that is not clear to our ideological enemies is quite confusing, actually. I mean, I’ve never been a huge fan of middleman theory. Like the idea that Jews, at least at different points in history, have been both powerless and adjacent to power and are therefore always the release valve. It feels like too blanket a theory for all the different situations in which anti-Jewish animus arose. And yet, this seems like a very clear expression of that, where that visibility of proximity to power means that, when there is backlash against the government, they can offer Jews as scapegoats. And also, that Jews can then become a target of random violence in a number of different regards.

MC: I think what’s so wild about all of it is you really think about the history of the ADL and these elite Jewish groups and they were so concerned (in their early years, when Jews were recent immigrants in the country) about the idea that Jews would do something to make them more noticeable or to stand out or to cause problems. And it was often from the perspective of the left—very frustrating, because they basically were hostile to communists and activism, and they were somewhat amenable to the Red Scare and they were hostile to a lot of leftism because they didn’t like the idea that Jews could stand out in any way that could direct antisemitism toward them, which is obviously very problematic as an idea. But it’s just crazy now to see that the ADL does not seem to give a flying fuck about whether they are creating the appearance that Jews are pulling the strings of the federal government. And it’s just interesting that you would think that these groups that are so concerned with a supposed image problem don’t even have a cynical interest in managing the image problem.

AA: Well, also for a group of people that seems to be pushing the eternal antisemitism thread, it seems to rely on the idea that Jews stay powerful across the board. And maybe they do, maybe they’re right, or maybe that’s a reason for them to shore up that power. But it just seems like a bad strategy. I mean, I guess I’ll just close by saying that Khalil is a person who, regardless of what anybody thinks of his politics, has not committed a crime and is exercising First Amendment rights. Like, for a liberal, this is a slam dunk issue. Like, this is a student negotiator, so also someone who is trying to work with the administration. So, it does send a very chilling message, in the sense that this could come for any student protestor who’s visible, and who is particularly Arab, Muslim or Palestinian and who doesn’t have citizenship. Like, those are the people that it seems like they’re saying: you’re on the list and we are going to come after you.

MC: It doesn’t matter how carefully you conduct yourself. I mean, there’s a lot of testimonials from people who worked with Khalil saying that he was exceptionally disciplined. He was super strategic. He didn’t let the emotions get the best of him. He spoke really delicately and diplomatically, which is a lot to ask of any person, and is clearly the mark of someone that people say is quite remarkable, but that didn’t matter. And also, obviously, even if he hadn’t done any of those things—

AA: It still would be fucked up.

MC: Yeah.

AA: So, I mean, this sends a pretty strong message, and I think this is something to fight back against with all of our capacity. That much is clear. Thank you, guys. This has been another episode of On the Nose. If you liked it, share it, rate us and subscribe to Jewish Currents, JewishCurrents.org. Thanks a lot. See you next time.