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By Shane Burley

October 7 was one of the largest global political shifts since Trump’s first candidacy in 2016, especially for the U.S. Jewish community. Mainstream Jewish organizations, which often track liberal, fractured as many purged their ranks of anti-Zionist voices critical of Israel. At the same time, the ranks of long-established Jewish leftist organizations swelled, even as some of their established relationships with the mainstream Jewish world were cut off. For example, the Boston Jewish Community Relations Council, a collection of mainstream Jewish organizations that coordinate at the regional level, expelled the Boston Workers Circle, a progressive and secular Jewish organization with a long history on the American Jewish left, for partnering with anti-Zionist organizations like Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP).

This realignment came as many young Jews looked to define their identity without accepting complicity in Israel’s violence in Gaza. As the political ground shifted, many of these progressive Jewish organizations increased their collaboration. This was evident as JVP and IfNotNow came together in joint actions across the country, including a massive action on the National Mall followed by an occupation of the Capitol rotunda, demanding a ceasefire in the weeks after October 7. Groups like JVP (which was founded in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1996 and broadened into a group with a nationwide grassroots base in 2002) and IfNotNow (which was founded in 2014 in response to Israel’s invasion of Gaza that year) have been friendly with each other and covered similar issues for many years, but in 2023 their shared urgency in response to Israel’s attacks on Gaza cemented a working relationship between many of these organizations at a scale that had not previously existed. Those relationships only expanded with groups like the established New York City-based Jewish secular organization Jews for Racial and Economic Justice (JFREJ), as well as newer groups like the Halachic Left, which hopes to change the discourse on Israel-Palestine in Orthodox and observant Jewish communities. New organizations such as Rabbis for Ceasefire also formed that often held organizational overlaps with existing groups, further broadening the coalition and cementing relationships.

With Trump promising that his second term will be built on revenge and repression, these organizations leaned on the relationships they had cultivated so that they could meet the moment quickly by depending on the established base each group had. This created a de facto coalition of groups that could collaborate in ways that increase their responsiveness to the threats coming, allowing each to maintain their own main focus and also pivot with relevant resources and expertise when the situation called for it. Because the Jewish left may be split up between a number of different organizations with different political positions, demographics and regional ties, the collaboration allows all of their constituencies to begin moving together on issues of such shared importance. With Trump’s threats escalating, and establishment Jewish organizations putting up little in terms of resistance, the commonalities between Jewish left groups are significant as they push back on the assault on immigrants, universities, unions and activists.

“We sort of read the writing on the wall over the last year and a half we have strengthened some of the relationships… [and] really invested in building those relationships and getting clear and aligned,” said Sophie Ellman-Golan, the communications director of JFREJ.

This became especially important as arrests and crackdowns escalated after Trump took office, and as some established Jewish organizations supported and collaborated with his administration’s attacks on basic rights. Groups across the Jewish left had been watching as Trump, Republicans and especially the right-wing Heritage Foundation leveraged Jewish fear to push through an agenda of stripping civil liberties. Project 2025’s “Project Esther” document, published in 2024, outlined Trump’s current strategy of treating universities as a war zone and targeting immigrants, particularly immigrant students, under the guise of “protecting” Jews from the alleged dangers of campus antisemitism. The idea was to use claims of antisemitism as a way of attacking liberal and progressive institutions, such as universities and non-profits, under the guise of fighting antisemitism, thus aiming to pull in constituents who care about that issue while also mobilizing fear for Jewish safety as a weapon against their political enemies.

As Senior Research Analyst at Political Research Associates Ben Lorber told Truthout, Project Esther is significant because it “draws from pre-existing campaigns to suppress criticism of Israel and really amplifies them” while taking up the strategies and lessons of earlier eras of state repression and then “synthesizes all of them into a single program to suppress the movement for Palestinian rights.”

Lorber added: “It’s ironic, as many people pointed out that, you know, it’s supposedly about protecting Jews from antisemitism. But very few Jewish groups were involved in creating the document.” Moreover, Lorber notes that the document gets very basic facts about American Jewish life incorrect. Instead, it invokes Jewish safety as a pretext for its authors’ unrelated agenda, such as the defunding of elite universities. “We’ve seen a lot of it before. The right has been calling to deport students for a while now,” points out Lorber, but now seeing it in a central document that cites Jewishness as the prime cause is significant.

Even as the far right is the primary culprit in the rise in antisemitic incidents, and even as Trump’s administration has allowed antisemites and antisemitic rhetoric into his regime, the far right has used Project Esther in an effort to claim authority over the fight against antisemitism. In doing so, it has shifted entirely away from progressive remedies against bigotry and has instead stoked a pro-Israel political consensus that locates Palestinians and Palestine advocates as the greatest anti-Jewish menace in the country.

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A coalition functions by allowing each organization to do what they do best and work on their own projects while coming together to amplify each other and share in a coordinated strategy.

“We recognize that we are different groups … [and while] we are all supportive broadly of each other’s work, there’s reasons we have different organizations,” said Rubin, pointing out that disagreements exist between some of the organizations who are collaborating, not to mention among individual members. “We also recognize that we are under a threat that, certainly in my lifetime, doesn’t have precedence, and that requires us to come together to build the power we need to resist it.” Some of these organizations, like JVP, take an explicitly anti-Zionist stance, while others, like JFREJ, do not. The coalition then creates ways of bridging those differences to create working relationships where participants don’t need to suppress their own political convictions to collaborate.

Organizations like JFREJ have a long-standing constituency among the city’s progressive Jewish community and are fighting to maintain the city’s sanctuary status and against Mayor Eric Adams’ anti-immigrant agenda. A coalition exists not by creating perfect alignment on every political question, but by locating shared values and common threats and figuring out how to create bonds that can bridge the distance.

“In light of what’s been happening both with what we’ve been seeing in New York City but also nationally, with rising authoritarianism, we’ve been seeing a growing need for people to come together and for organizations to unite and build power.” Zoe Goldblum, from IfNotNow’s New York City chapter, told Truthout. “And because of that we’ve been working together and building a strong coalition so that we’re able to grow our movement and that’s been really successful. When we show up together, we’re stronger, and we know that.”

And as the coalition started to confront Khalil’s arrest, several more mainstream and liberal Zionist Jewish institutions also joined in denouncing the retaliatory deportation. Organizations like T’ruah, the Jewish Alliance for Law and Social Action, J Street, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs and New York Jewish Agenda all expressed public outrage, while a letter from New Jewish Narrative was signed by organizations like Reconstructing Judaism, Aleh, Habonim Dror North America and the New Israel Fund (even the Zionist group Zioness raised concerns while still condemning Khalil).

While Khalil’s imprisonment is connected to Israel’s U.S.-backed genocide in Gaza, it can also be understood as an issue of both freedom of expression and the rights of immigrants, issues of long-held importance for U.S. Jews. This commitment to immigration justice comes in part from the legacy of Jewish immigrant experiences in the U.S., especially when Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany and occupied Europe were roundly denied entry to the U.S. in the lead up to the Holocaust. The State Department is citing the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, a law used during the Cold War to prevent immigration to the U.S. under the guise of national security, which blocked the immigration of many European Jews and was written by a known antisemite.

Part of what grew this coalition was the understanding that Khalil was not an isolated case but a signal of the growing threat Trump presents. “We’re not going to let people take away our rights and we are definitely not going to let the Trump administration use Mahmoud Khalil as an authoritarian test case and use Jews as a scapegoat in that instance,” said Goldblum, adding that Jews are safer when they are in partnership with people like Khalil.

This analysis has proven correct as the repression that started with Khalil quickly expanded: In recent weeks a Cornell University student protester was told to “surrender” to ICE, a South Korean student from Columbia may also face deportation, and a third Columbia student fled to Canada after ICE came after her for allegedly posting on social media about Palestine; these are just a few cases of the dozens or possibly hundreds who have been targeted. All of this is occurring as several academic groups sue the Trump administration over its attacks on education.

But these attacks are not occurring without pushback. On April 17, the sixth day of Passover — three days after Jewish Voice for Peace’s April 14 “emergency seder” in front of the New York City ICE headquarters — Jews for Racial and Economic Justice (JFREJ) will be leading another seder action, this time confronting the various forces of repression in New York City and demanding a new future for the city they love. Alongside songs sung in Yiddish, Ladino and Hebrew, they will lead a march into a “seven-foot-tall portal to the future” and into Central Park to hold the liberation seder. By bolstering relationships and building bonds they are vying to cultivate the power and community necessary to not only push back on attacks, but to fight for new possibilities.

As Trump promises more deportations and repression in the name of fighting antisemitism, the Jewish left in New York City and across the country is charting an alternative path forward for Jewish safety and a powerful anti-Zionist movement, rooted in coalition with each other and solidarity with directly targeted communities.

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