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I’M A JEWISH ISRAELI IN THE US STANDING UP FOR PALESTINE. BY
TRUMP’S LOGIC, I’M A TERROR SUPPORTER  
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Eran Zelnik
April 10, 2025
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_ I have committed the same acts they have committed, including
publishing an article that calls the war in Gaza a genocide,
participating in a protest against the genocide in Gaza... being vocal
in general about the atrocities committed by Israel _

‘If Mahmoud Khalil, Rumeysa Ozturk, Yunseo Chung, Badar Khan Suri,
and other recent Ice detainees are considered threats to national
security, then so am I.’ , Photograph: Justin Lane/EPA // The
Guardian

 

To Kash Patel, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation
[[link removed]]:

Given recent patterns, the FBI might need to take a hard look at my
actions over the years. If Mahmoud Khalil
[[link removed]], Rumeysa Ozturk,
Yunseo Chung, Badar Khan Suri and other recent Ice detainees are
considered threats to national security, then so am I.

I have committed the same acts they have committed, including
publishing an article
[[link removed]] that
calls the war in Gaza [[link removed]] a
genocide, participating in a protest
[[link removed]] against
the genocide in Gaza, speaking and protesting in favor of BDS
[[link removed]] (boycott,
divestment, sanctions against Israel), participating in a sit-in
[[link removed]] at
UC Davis about 10 years ago, and being vocal in general about the
atrocities committed by Israel against the people of Gaza and
Palestinians.

Let me tell you a little more about myself and all the additional
reasons you might want to investigate and perhaps arrest me. I was
born in Israel [[link removed]] and became
a naturalized US citizen through my American mother. Given the
administration’s recent challenges to the 14th amendment, which
provides birthright citizenship, you might proceed from detaining
legal residents to revoking the rights of naturalized citizens. Like
other fascist regimes before you, you’ve been testing how much
resistance you face in your effort to turn the United States into a
fascist country. You start with the most marginalized, sending
incarcerated trans women to men’s prisons, Venezuelans accused of
gang affiliation to El Salvador, and detaining Arab and Muslim legal
residents. But if the past is any indication, your next target might
well be children of undocumented immigrants or naturalized citizens.
Of course, as every student of fascism well knows, the ultimate goal
is to apprehend all the supposed enemies of this administration,
regardless of their legal status.

Furthermore, I must confess to using academic concepts that have come
under scrutiny as antisemitic by the Department of Justice taskforce
for antisemitism. As a former member of the Israel Defense Forces, I
have come a long way. It took me many years of soul-searching to
realize that I was complicit in a settler-colonial occupation force
and that my best recourse to make amends for that was to be outspoken
about my country’s atrocities. As I tried to better understand the
terrible tragedy of Zionism – a nationalist ideology that sought to
free Jews from oppression only to end up as oppressors in Palestine
– I confess to describing concepts such as apartheid, settler
colonialism, ethno-nationalism and more. Perhaps even more disturbing
from your perspective, I recently employed such concepts as genocide,
settler colonialism and ethnic cleansing in a book I wrote
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early American history.   

The similarities between the actions of this administration and what
my grandparents have lived through are unmistakable

I also confess that in the past I have targeted white supremacist
allies of this administration in my community of Chico, California.
Clearly employing extralegal militias is part of this
administration’s fascist playbook, as Trump already proved during
the events of 6 January 2021. For instance, when my house was a target
of antisemitic leafleting, I sought the help of a colleague and a
local investigative journalist to make this very real form of
antisemitism known to authorities. In the process the journalist
uncovered
[[link removed]] troubling
information that there is an armed white supremacist in our community
who holds deep antisemitic convictions and now knows where I work. Had
you really been interested in investigating antisemitism, you might
have looked into the whereabouts of that individual. But since you
want people like him around so that they can be activated when needed,
and since all you really want is to cynically weaponize antisemitism,
you might want to arrest me instead. After all, according to your
standards, I – a Jew targeted by white supremacists – was all
along the biggest threat to Jews in my own community.

I have long heard stories about the rise of fascism in Europe from my
grandparents, all of whom fled Europe and were refugees from
antisemitism. The similarities between the actions of this
administration and what my grandparents have lived through are
unmistakable. I tell them here so that before you choose to arrest me,
you will have one more opportunity to decide whether you will go down
in history as aiding and abetting the rise of a fascist regime or as
someone who refused to be part of another dark episode in this
country’s history. Be forewarned: even if you yourself never
directly suffer for your crimes, history will judge you.

My dear grandfather, Otto, may his memory be a blessing, escaped
Austria by the skin of his teeth when he was only 13 after the Nazi
takeover of the country. Having witnessed the horrors of Kristallnacht
in November of 1938 – the night when local mobs violently rioted
against Jewish homes, synagogues and businesses across much of Germany
and Austria and arrested 30,000 citizens just for being Jewish – his
parents made the decision to flee to Shanghai, the only port that
would accept them. Clearly, our current president’s rhetoric
regarding enemies of the American nation from within and without,
against immigrants, trans people and people deemed un-American in
their political commitments (like myself), are eerily reminiscent of
the stories my grandfather told me about the scapegoating of Jews.

As I consider the memory of dear grandmother Rachel, may her memory be
a blessing, who grew up in Poland and survived the Holocaust
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harrowing year in Auschwitz and the death march to Germany, I cannot
shake the sense of another parallel. As Hitler and the Nazi party were
consolidating power, they appointed sycophants like yourself and so
many others to positions of power in the Nazi administration. The most
important criterion for Hitler was not that the people in positions of
power were competent or even knowledgeable, but that they would be
spineless and loyal to him.

According to the historian Ian Kershaw, this type of leadership, where
all bow to the great leader, led to the Holocaust, as the people
surrounding Hitler constantly sought to outdo each other in their
loyalty to the Führer. Knowing Hitler’s hatred for Jews, they
constantly tried to curry favor by suggesting the most radical and
far-reaching policy ideas towards Jews. This dynamic, which Kershaw
called “working toward the Führer
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ultimately led Hitler and the people surrounding him to decide on the
“Final Solution”, the plan to exterminate all the Jews in the
world on an industrial scale in death camps. This idea of working
toward the leader is upon us today, as we see institutions and even
some in the Democratic party bowing before the great leader and his
will. Instead of standing up to the administration at every turn,
institutions, businesses and politicians across the country prefer to
anticipate the administration’s wrath and eliminate any behavior or
materials that might come under scrutiny. Meanwhile, Republicans rush
to outdo each other in flattering the great leader, as American
society seems frozen with fear in face of the rising tides of fascism.

So, Kash Patel, do you want to arrest me and help bring about fascism?

_[ERAN ZELNIK grew up in Israel and came to the US 15 years ago to
complete his PhD in history. He now lives and teaches in Chico,
California]_

* Israel-American
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* Jewish community
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* Israel
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* IDF
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* anti-Palestinianism
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* ICE
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* deportations
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* foreign students
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* Immigrants
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* Mahmoud Khalil
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* Oct. 7
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* Palestine
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* Palestinians
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* Gaza
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* Israel-Gaza War
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* U.S.-Israel relations
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* Donald Trump
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* Trump 2.0
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* homeland security
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* DHS
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* Rumeysa Ozturk
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* Yunseo Chung
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* Badar Khan Suri
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* war crimes
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* Genocide
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* U.S. foreign policy
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