St. Louis’s Establishment Jewish Organizations Are Enabling Trump’s Fascist Takeover of America, Pt. 2
Part one of this OpEd can be read here.
Arrest of Mahmoud Khalil and the Silence of Establishment Jewish Groups
As I type these words, Americans are looking at a centrally important test case for whether the President of the United States can direct his agencies to detain and punish a person based solely on speech. This is the case of Palestinian-Algerian American Mahmoud Khalil, a man with a green card who the Trump administration arrested and is trying to deport despite admitting that he has committed no actual crime. What he did was speak up in support of Palestinian rights, in the midst of an internationally-recognized genocide against his own people. In the America that I am from and love, this is legal. We have long been able to rely on the First Amendment of the Constitution to protect political speech. It is no exaggeration to say that the outcome of this case will have profound repercussions on the future of America.
As of now, none of the Jewish organizations mentioned in part one of this OpEd have made any statements supporting Khalil’s rights. Nationally, the American Jewish Congress (AJC) and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) have each spoken out – in support of the Trump Administration’s detention of Khalil and its plan to deport him.
After explaining away Elon Musk’s Nazi salute and bizarrely encouraging Jews to invest in Tesla, ADL’s claim to be a civil rights organization has to be called into question. But the major Jewish organizations in St. Louis (as well as mainstream St. Louis news organizations) continue to treat it as such. This same ADL has been all over the local news, especially concerning the recent incident of racist graffiti in the Affton school district. Racist graffiti is certainly reprehensible, but the US government actually behaving like Nazis is much more concerning.
Let’s be clear, the role of establishment Jewish organizations in giving power to Trump’s authoritarian moves is by no means limited to the ADL and AJC. As mentioned in the first part of this OpEd, local organizations in St. Louis have played a distinct and specific role. The unified attack on Cori Bush by those organizations, specifically because of her policy concerning Israel, has directly led to weakening the progressive movement’s ability to challenge Khalil’s detention and the Trump administration’s authoritarian moves to stifle domestic political dissent.
People in Congress got the message – as of writing only fourteen members of Congress have signed a letter condemning Trump’s outrageous attack on Mahmoud Khalil. Unsurprisingly, Bush’s successor, Rep. Wesley Bell, has not signed.
Basic freedoms are on the line. One must ask: why have so few congresspeople signed in a timely fashion?
The answer is clear – they don’t want to be “Cori Bush’ed”. Progressives in congress got the message that was sent from St. Louis. They don’t want to be targeted by AIPAC, other shady nonprofits, and the Jewish establishment’s rage over the offense of seeing Palestinians as fully human. This is especially true for Democrats who should be leading the resistance to Trump. It’s not a coincidence that Trump chose Khalil, a Palestinian, as a case to test the basic tenets of free speech and the Constitutional rule of law. Congressional Democrats have learned that there are consequences for standing up for people of his ethnicity and for people who support his cause, even if they have broken no laws. As America’s core democratic values are under attack, we have a Congress afraid to fight back, and I believe that St. Louis’s Jewish establishment groups have played a significant role in creating the atmosphere that makes this possible.
St. Louis Jewish Establishment Testifies Against Free Speech in Order to Protect Israel
As Mahmoud Khalil sits in detention, these organizations are working to codify into law campus speech codes for Missouri in order to protect Israel from criticism, furthering the Trump agenda to squelch dissent in America.
The Missouri House of Representatives recently had a hearing on House Bill 937, which is specifically designed to set up new codes of conduct for Missouri public high schools and universities that would punish multiple types of speech critical of Israel. This bill would put the International Holocaust Remembrance Association’s (IHRA) controversial definition of antisemitism into codes of conduct for high schools and universities. Codifying this into law would amount to a further assault on free speech rights, which is why its lead author has stated that it should not be codified into any laws. The official document on the IHRA website itself clarifies that its definition should be “non-legally binding”. This bill is designed to punish Palestinians and those who stand up for Palestinians’ right of self-determination. It is a clear attack on every Missourian’s first amendment rights, which is why the ACLU testified against it.
The biggest problem with the IHRA definition of antisemitism are its “contemporary examples”, most of which concern themselves with limiting critical speech about the state of Israel, even though there is little to no correlation between one’s political views on Israel and prejudice towards Jews. One instance of these problematic “contemporary examples” states that it is antisemitic to claim “that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor”.
There is a strong argument to be made that the State of Israel is a racist endeavor. Israel was founded in 1948 specifically by one section of the population of Palestine, the minority Jewish settler community, as the homeland of all Jewish people. This Jewish minority engaged in a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the native Palestinian inhabitants, known in Arabic as the Nakba, or catastrophe. Displaced Palestinians were not allowed to return to the newly formed State of Israel, while Jews from around the world were welcomed. They still have not been allowed to return. Israel’s structure is referred to as “apartheid” by leading world human rights organizations. All of this is uncontroversial in most of the world. If this bill passes and a student or professor were to make these statements and state the logical conclusion, they could be punished. It would basically ban the teaching of the globally dominant view on the subject.
If one does not agree with the most commonly held views on these issues, one should be allowed to express their views. Similarly, they should not be allowed to ban other people from expressing their views. Most of the Jewish establishment groups named in this OpEd’s first half testified in support of this grotesque attack on first amendment rights. It is unconscionable for these groups to testify in favor of such a bill at this moment, as Trump is blatantly attacking academic freedom and freedoms of press and speech.
Those testifying for the bill claimed that it is needed for the safety of Jewish students to protect them from antisemitism. However, the few personal and specific cases they cited were either criticisms of Israel, support for Palestinian rights or else they named actual anti-Jewish bigotry already punishable under existing law. The National Council of Jewish Women of St. Louis cited dubious statistics from the ADL on antisemitism that conflated opposition to Israeli policies with actual mistreatment of Jews.
Even though supporters sell the bill in the name of protecting Jews on campuses, Jews critical of Israel would also face sanction from its passage. This is one of the reasons many Missouri Jews testified against the bill. The real purpose of the bill is to make students and faculty constantly second guess themselves whenever they speak or write about Israel, wondering if they will be punished, wondering if their words will fall outside the boundaries considered acceptable by Jewish establishment organizations.
House Bill 937 is a Republican-sponsored and pushed bill that is part of the Trump / Musk agenda to stifle academic freedom and freedom of speech. All the committee votes in its favor came from Republicans. It is in line with Project Esther, meaning that it is part of the agenda of the same Heritage Foundation that created Trump’s administrative blueprint of Project 2025. The Heritage Foundation designed Project Esther to crush pro-Palestinian advocacy in the United States, including advocacy by Jews who oppose Israeli policies and support justice for the Palestinian people. So why are the establishment Jewish organizations in Saint Louis, that claim to speak on my behalf as a Jew, working with the Republican Party to advance the fascist agenda of our antisemitic President Donald Trump? Why have they put the agenda of Israel and Christian conservative extremists ahead of the rights of all Americans, Jew and gentile alike?
Conclusion
In the spring of 2024, students in St. Louis, like students around the country, organized protests in response to America’s support for Israel’s brutality against the Palestinian people in Gaza. St. Louis’s establishment Jewish organizations intentionally misrepresented these anti-war, anti-racist, pro-human rights protests as dangerous, violent and antisemitic. Simultaneously, these organizations were a central part of a successful campaign to oust Cori Bush from Congress, specifically due to her support of Palestinian rights. Bush’s ouster and the campaign against student activists set Trump up to use Mahmoud Khalil as a test case. Khalil was detained by the Department of Homeland Security with tactics befitting the world’s most notorious authoritarian regimes’ agents, outside of established legal norms. Yet the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Congress supported it. Bush is no longer in Congress to fight this outrage from the inside and too many Democrats who are in Congress have learned a dangerous lesson from the campaign against her. They believe that to speak up for Palestinian rights is political suicide – they don’t want to be Cori Bush’ed in a primary with money from AIPAC and the united effort of establishment Jewish organizations. Meanwhile, the local branches of these groups are working with Missouri Republican legislators to further Trump’s fascist agenda by stifling free speech on campuses, while unconcerned by the racist genocidal speech coming from their own ranks.
We have witnessed a year and a half of Israel’s genocidal campaign against the Palestinian people, followed by the outrageously dangerous moves of the Trump administration. We can’t afford to ignore what is happening. The hour is too late, and the stakes are too high. These local Jewish organizations have put the interests of the State of Israel not only above the rights of Palestinians, but also above the rights of all Americans. As uncomfortable as it is to look at, this needs to be named and it needs to be understood. I hope this OpEd has helped clarify these issues and provided context.
Michael Berg is a member of St. Louis Jewish Voice for Peace and the St. Louis Palestine Solidarity Committee. He used to be a baker at with the Black Bear Bakery, which produced the world’s best food item, the chocolate oat bar.
