Jewish
groups protest Trumps EO on Muslim immigrants
Source: https://www.yahoo.com/news/jewish-groups-add-their-voices-to-protest-immigration-ban-142004790.html
Jewish
groups add their voices to protest immigration ban
Protesters rally against
the new immigration ban issued by President Trump at John F. Kennedy
International Airport in New York City Saturday night. (Photo: Stephanie
Keith/Getty Images)
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President Trump’s
executive order halting the admission of refugees to the United States for 120
days and temporarily barring entry of citizens from seven majority-Muslim
nations was condemned by leaders of Jewish organizations as protests swelled at
U.S. international airports where refugees, tourists and longtime U.S. resident
green card holders alike were detained and denied entry.
That the executive order
had been issued on a day when the Jewish survivors of the Holocaust and their
descendants marked International Holocaust Remembrance Day intensified the
outrage, as the vast majority
of Jewish families originally came to the United States as refugees from
religious persecution.
“The fact that
President Trump’s order appears designed to specifically limit the entry of
Muslims evokes horrible memories among American Jews of the shameful period
leading up to World War II, when the United States failed to provide a safe
haven for the vast majority of Jews in Europe trying to escape Nazi
persecution,” the progressive pro-Israel group J Street said in a
statement Friday. “President Trump’s decision to suspend the U.S. refugee
program is a profound affront to our values as Americans and as Jews.”
Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism,
went even further in a Saturday evening tweet, writing, “Yesterday’s EO
will be remembered with Dred Scott and WWII internment of Japanese Americans as
gov actions most antithetical to Amer. Values.”
Rebecca Vilkomerson,
executive director of Jewish Voice for Peace, called the executive order “a
travesty” and vowed to “resist” it directly.
“Turning away refugees
and immigrants seeking safety and opportunity goes against all of our basic
values,” she said from John F. Kennedy International Airport, where she had
come together with thousands of New Yorkers in a flash protest Saturday
evening. “These policies will tear apart lives, families and communities.
People’s lives are at stake. We pledge to do everything to protect and defend
people’s rights and call on our elected officials to do the same.”
Also planning to speak
at the Kennedy International Airport protest were representatives for Jews
for Racial & Economic Justice.
“History will look
back on this order as a sad moment in American history — the time when the
president turned his back on people fleeing for their lives,” said
Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan A. Greenblatt in a statement on the
refugee order Friday. “For the Sunni family whose son languishes in prison
in Iran because of his faith, for the former Army translator in Iraq who has
been threatened because of his service, LGBT youth in Yemen terrorized because
of their sexual orientation or gender identity, for the widows and orphans
caught between the barrel bombs of [Bashar] Assad’s regime and the unparalleled
brutality of ISIS, this executive order could very well be a death sentence.”
Friday was International Holocaust Remembrance
Day. In a break with tradition, the White House statement for the day honored
“victims, survivors and heroes of the Holocaust” without mentioning Jews
specifically. On Saturday evening, CNN reported that administration spokeswoman Hope
Hicks explained the omission was intentional, saying, “Despite what the
media reports, we are an incredibly inclusive group, and we took into account
all of those who suffered.”
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