As American Jews, many of us are descendants of immigrants and refugees—those who fled persecution and state violence, seeking safety, dignity, and the chance to build a better life.
Watching the militarized crackdowns on immigrants in Los Angeles, New York and other “blue states,” and the deployment of the National Guard against many innocent, law-abiding people–pregnant women, restaurant cooks, construction workers and those arriving for legal immigration hearings–we are gripped by horror.
Innocent people are being targeted and violence being unleashed by a government looking to distract from an unfavorable news cycle. These are not the conditions of a functioning democracy that protects marginalized populations.
Modern political Zionism–based on Zionism as a core and inextricable piece of Jewish identity for thousands of years–is our response to dispossession and statelessness. It insists that Jews—and all people—deserve safety, self-determination, dignity and freedom. It’s rooted in our experience of understanding the trauma of a world that told us we didn’t belong. Zionism is the stubborn insistence that we, too, deserve safety, freedom, and agency. That history compels us to stand with the vulnerable today.
We stand unequivocally against the use of state-sponsored violence to terrorize communities whose only crime is seeking the same opportunities our families once sought. We call on our fellow Americans to reject repression and demand the protection of core constitutional commitments: due process, federalism, a pathway to citizenship for those who arrive here legally.
We echo the voices of protestors who are courageously standing up for those values, for basic humanity, and for the protection of the vulnerable. And we simultaneously affirm our commitment to nonviolence. We know the power of peaceful resistance, in the rejection of rage and destruction, in the work of solidarity rooted in love and justice.
Let this be a moment where our Jewish history, our Zionist values, and our American ideals converge—not in silence, but in fierce, principled solidarity.