The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), the nation’s oldest pro-Israel organization, spoke out Wednesday against a coalition of left-wing Jewish groups that protested against President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement.
On Monday, a coalition of 88 left-wing Jewish organizations released an open letter to President Trump in which they objected to his ongoing pursuit of criminal illegal aliens through Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
The letter said, in part:
As 88 organizations that represent millions of diverse American Jews across the country, we write in opposition to your Administration’s plans to launch mass deportations, build massive detention camps, and conduct sweeping raids. We urge you to chart a different course and change your stated plans for widespread persecution of immigrants.
America has long prided itself on being a place of refuge, a beacon of hope for those fleeing persecution and seeking a better life. Our nation’s diversity and its commitment to religious freedom have shaped the fabric of our society. Jewish families—past and present, here and elsewhere—know what it is to live in fear for the immediate and long-term safety of our families. We have been forced to flee, denied access to safety, scapegoated, detained, and exploited. This history and our Jewish values make immigration policy – including ensuring a functioning and welcoming refugee program and protection of the right to seek asylum – deeply personal to the Jewish community.
ZOA president Morton Klein responded:
The Zionist Organization of America strongly criticizes the mostly far-left wing Jewish groups who sent a letter to President Trump opposing deporting unvetted criminal aliens even though this morally necessary action protects Americans and American Jews from potential acts of violence, rape and murder. These groups, from the Reform, Conservative and Reconstruction movements to J Street, Truah, Bend the Arc, HIAS, NCJW and JCRCs are dangerously opposing an important moral Jewish and American value. The ZOA strongly supports President Trump’s policy on illegal aliens, many of whom come from countries whose people and government are hostile to the Jewish State and are frequently antisemitic.
As ZOA has often explained, “Pikuach Nefesh” – preserving life – is a preeminent Jewish value, which trumps most other Jewish laws. The Torah commands: “Take heed and carefully guard your lives.” (Deuteronomy 4:9 and 4:15). Before his death, Moses blessed the Jewish people with a prayer for strong borders “sealed like iron and copper” to enable the people to live “securely” into healthy “old age.” (Deuteronomy 33:25, 28.)
Furthermore, keeping all Americans safe is “Job One” of a responsible U.S. president.
The need to deport unvetted criminal aliens is especially pressing in light of the rampant violent antisemitism on American college campuses and streets, much of it carried out by Jew-hating foreigners, Islamists and foreign students. On our campuses, Jewish students have been attacked with bottles, jabbed in the eye with a flagpole, blocked from attending classes and from walking across college quads, hit in the head with a megaphone (breaking the Jewish student’s nose) and confronted with daily calls to “globalize the Intifada” – meaning, to kill every Jew. (See ZOA letter to Attny Gen’l Garland et al describing multiple incidents.) As Eli Wiesel proclaimed, “If they say they want to kill you, believe them!”
No rational reading of Jewish law places foreign attackers’ freedom from deportation above the safety of our students, or above the lives of future Laken Rileys, a nursing student murdered by an unvetted criminal illegal alien.
President Trump signed the Laken Riley Act on Wednesday, requiring that illegal aliens accused of crimes be detained. He also signed an executive order directing the deportation of foreign students who engage in antisemitism.
Earlier this week, this author walked out of a public meeting with Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass about the Palisades Fire when the moderator, a local rabbi at a liberal congregation, exploited the fires to launch an attack on ICE.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
