Please Urge Hillel to Support Our Campus Communities

We are Jewish students across the country horrified that Trump and ICE are moving to deport students who protest on campus. While our opinions on Israel-Palestine and free speech may vary widely, we all agree that encouraging targeted deportations of our peers, even if they are individuals whose speech some of us might oppose, is not an acceptable way to address the issues at hand on our campuses. We are disturbed to see some Jewish organizations, like the Anti-Defamation League, cheering on the detainment and deportation of students. Supporting such authoritarian acts will only serve to intensify distrust, divisions, and hostilities towards Jewish students, feeding already alarming rates of antisemitic sentiment. It also sets a dangerous precedent empowering our government to target people that a public official opposes or disagrees with. Given the trend of antisemitism in our executive administration, Jews may very well soon be included in such targeting. For multiple reasons, regardless of our opinion on Israel-Palestine, we need to keep such authoritarian actions off of our campuses.

We ask Hillel International, the largest Jewish student organization in the country, to speak out against the detention and planned deportation of Mahmoud Khalil and make clear that they will not assist ICE in its deportation efforts. We urge Hillel to serve its thousands of student members across this country through Jewish community-building, not through divisive and detrimental government action that will endanger Jewish and all students alike.

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