And Dispel Myths About Antisemitism.
A growing number of Jewish people stand for Palestinian liberation. Neither Khalil’s detainment, nor broader assaults on Palestine solidarity activists or continued attacks on Palestine, are protecting Jews.
Hundreds of Jews mobilized with Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) in New York and Michigan, joining many thousands of non-Jews taking the streets across the country to demand the release of Mahmoud Khalil. They want freedom for Palestine and ICE out of our campuses and communities.
Jewish protesters in New York City packed the lobby of Trump Tower last Thursday, and staged a sit-in at Columbia University to demand the release of Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, who was seized from his home on Columbia campus by ICE and is now in custody in Louisiana. Jewish protestors also gathered at the house of the president of University of Michigan in Ann Arbor the following afternoon to rally for Khalil and make it clear that ICE is not welcome in our communities or campuses.
Trump’s White House premised Khalil’s arrest March 8 on protecting Jews from antisemitism. These mobilizations make clear: attacks on Palestinians, immigrants, and the movement for Palestine are not making Jews safer, and they actually dilute real and growing threats of antisemitism.
Jews On The Front Lines For Palestinian Liberation
Videos of a rabbi, as well as other Jewish participants and allies, getting carried out of Trump tower by cops have been making the rounds. Wearing red shirts that say “NOT IN OUR NAME,” carrying banners that read “FREE ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS” and “FREE PALESTINE,” they chanted “Never again for anyone! Never again is now!”
The hundreds of Jews at these recent JVP actions represent but a fraction of Jewish people in the movement for Palestine. Always alive despite suppression, Jewish support for Palestinian liberation has grown in recent years, especially among the youth. For a long while after the Holocaust, World War II, and the McCarthyist purges, there were barely undertones of an anti-Zionist Jewish presence in the U.S. mainstream.
Still, over decades of what Israeli historian Ilan Pappé termed a “slow genocide,” Jews joined protests across the country and world to Free Palestine. As far as American Jewish organizations, JVP took an explicitly anti-Zionist stance in 2019. More moderate Jewish organizations, who explicitly oppose the detention of Khalil but have not completely broken from Zionism, If Not Now and Bend the Arc, were founded in the past 15 years. In the religious sphere, several synagogues now explicitly support Palestinian liberation. Rabbis from across affiliations formed a Rabbis for Ceasefire group that has staged militant protests in DC, Israel, and beyond. Especially as Israel has turned more explicitly right-wing, American Jews have become more outspoken in criticizing the Jewish ethnostate and the U.S. government for funding it. For example, in the 2024 elections, 62 percent of Jewish voters were open to arms embargoes against Israel.
These various Jewish forces have all been on the front lines of struggle since October 7. The war on Gaza brought out a new layer of Jewish youth in the U.S. to explicitly consider themselves anti-Zionist, to take the streets, and protest on campuses, with JVP in particular tapping into the power of this new wave. They have been pushing back with fiery militance against the assertion that anti-Zionism is antisemitism.
More than ever, many Jews agree with Khalil: “the liberation of the Palestinian people and the Jewish people are intertwined and go hand-by-hand, and you cannot achieve one without the other.” None of us can be truly free while others are oppressed.
Indeed, many who were raised with a strong Jewish identity now boldly proclaim support for Palestinian liberation. A poll conducted in May 2024 by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs found that nearly one-third of Jewish Americans believed that Israel was committing genocide. This has made space for many who had been alienated from their Jewishness, due to its Zionist connotations, to reclaim their Jewish identity. They are demanding that Judaism not be equated with Zionism, and anti-Zionism not be equated with antisemitism. The Jewish diaspora is participating in the movement for Palestine, along with a brave few Israeli Jews proclaiming the need for Palestinian liberation. Jewish anti-Zionists have integrated with and marched alongside Palestinians as well as protestors from all ethnicities and backgrounds.
Weaponizing Antisemitism To Repress Anti-Zionist Jews
The Trump administration is escalating repression against this uprising, under the auspices of fighting terrorism and antisemitism. This move draws strength upon the carefully laid foundations of repression against the Palestine movement implemented by Trump’s Democratic predecessor, Joe Biden. Indeed, protestors from UM and the City University of New York (CUNY) are still facing felonies for their activism last spring. The bipartisan regime has misrepresented the causes and occurrences of antisemitism to put a target on the Palestinian liberation movement — including anti-Zionist Jews — with a new wave of repression represented by Khalil’s abduction.
Jews who support Mahmoud Khalil are loud and clear. Although we are a minority in the Jewish community, we are a significant minority. Among Jews, opposition from the Jewish Left to a Jewish ethno-nationalist state predates the inception of Israel. While this Left was whittled down over the decades, this historic opposition has reemerged in a vocal and growing tendency among Jews today. Nevertheless, the mainstream of Zionism — both Jewish and non-Jewish — is still doing its best to drown us out, erase us, and claim we don’t exist. Or they say that we aren’t actually Jews. Or, contradicting that, they call us self-hating Jews. And yet, many, many Jews — especially younger Jews — are proclaiming that Palestinians (and all oppressed people) must be free and safe in the world for Jewish communities to be free and safe in the world.