By Daniel Sokatch, NIF International CEO
It’s been a bleak few months here in the United States as we’ve contended with the Trump Administration’s “flood the zone” strategy, a parade of autocratic actions aimed at stunning Americans into inaction while dismantling the building blocks of American liberal democracy. For me one of the most disturbing examples has been watching plain-clothed federal agents snatch green card or visa holders—people in the United States legally, accused of no crimes—from their homes, their cars, and, in the case of Rümeysa Öztürk, a Muslim graduate student at Tufts, my own grad school alma mater, straight off the street. Her offense? Writing an op-ed critical of Israel in her student newspaper. For this, she sits unlawfully detained in an ICE cell in Louisiana. This is not America, or at least not the America we thought we knew.
For people from across the political spectrum–not just progressives or democrats or environmentalists or even libertarians–what is happening in our country is outrageous. What we are witnessing is the crumbling of the essential and cherished principles of due process and free speech.
At the New Israel Fund, we have been talking to you, our supporters and friends, for years about how we seek to defend liberal democratic values in Israel. And we continue to do that work, every day. But it is now clearer than ever that the same challenges exist for us at home. And we also know that, just as Prime Minister Netanyahu and the other would-be and full-fledged autocrats like Putin, Orban, and now Trump collaborate, work together and rely on each other, so too must we, the democratic pushback.
This is why the New Israel Fund, in coalition with a variety of other progressive Israel organizations (J Street, T’ruah, New Jewish Narrative) alongside a broad swath of synagogues recently submitted an amicus brief in defense of Öztürk. While this is an unusual step for our organization—since, as you know, our focus is on what is happening on the ground in Israel—these are unusual times. As Ezra Klein recently put it, “the emergency is now.”
The amicus brief says what we believe. “The government instead appears to be exploiting Jewish Americans’ legitimate concerns about antisemitism as pretext for undermining core pillars of American democracy, the rule of law, and the fundamental rights of free speech and academic debate on which this nation was built,” it says. ”Jewish people came to America to escape generations of similar predations. Yet the images of Ozturk’s arrest in twenty-first century Massachusetts evoke the oppressive tactics employed by the authoritarian regimes that many ancestors of amici’s members left behind in Odessa, Kishinev, and Warsaw.”
It’s important to note that the Washington Post reported that an internal State Department memo on Ozturk’s case showed no evidence linking her to antisemitism or terrorism. And it makes this a clear cut case: You might or might not like what Ozturk says, but she must be free to say it. That is the founding, fundamental promise of America. That is the promise of the very idea of liberal democracy. And, as the amicus brief also says: “To watch state authorities undermine the same fundamental rights that empowered so many Jewish Americans is chilling; to know it is being done in the name of the Jewish people is profoundly disturbing.”
Trump is moving at lightspeed compared to Netanyahu, whose “salami method” has made Israel’s democratic erosion look like a slow-motion car crash for the last fifteen years. But now each is taking pages from the others’ playbook while comfortably ensconced in power and backed by a cadre of legislators who are sycophants at best, and extremists at worst. One of the worst of them–Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar Ben Gvir–was in the U.S. this week.
Even as this disciple of Rabbi Meir Kahane—convicted of incitement to racism and supporting a terrorist organization—was unable to wrangle any official meetings with the Trump administration, it is undeniable that this White House—and the ruling Republican Party broadly—is far too comfortable with his fascist sensibilities. After dinner at Mar-A-Lago this past Wednesday, he tweeted that “senior republican Party officials…expressed support for my very clear position on how to act in Gaza; to bomb food and aid depots in order to create military and political pressure to bring our hostages home safely.”
It is worth lingering on this: Israel’s Minister of National Security is recommending starving innocent people in Gaza while sitting in the plush dining room of an American President’s hotel-residence. He is speaking to officials in one of the major American political parties; multiple outlets reported that he spoke directly with GOP House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.). If you google “Republicans condemn Ben Gvir,” you will read that not only was he not denounced, he was invited to speak to members of Congress and senators from the Republican Party. My grandparents would have called this a shande.
Back in January, 90 Democratic lawmakers urged Biden to sanction Ben-Gvir for his extremism. How far we have fallen in less than 100 days. But we also know that Ben Gvir would not be here if it wasn’t for Netanyahu. It was Netanyahu who placed him in the mainstream of Israeli political life.
At the New Israel Fund, we will not sit quietly by as America becomes a place where people are whisked into black vans and deported. We will not stand by when the notion of “fighting antisemitism” is used cynically, disingenuously, and dangerously as an excuse to advance an authoritarian agenda. We will not sit idly by as Kahanists cozy up to decision-makers in our country just as we do not in Israel. We are part of the worldwide struggle for democracy. And we will fight for our vision and our values.