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The historian who uncovered the ADL’s secret plot against the far-right John Birch Society
(JTA) — A historian leafing through files in an archive discovered how a Jewish organization helped bring down an influential far-right extremist movement in the United States in the 1960s and ’70s by going undercover and acting as self-appointed spies.
The discovery of the Anti-Defamation League’s covert operation targeting the John Birch Society is the basis of a chapter in a new book by political historian Matthew Dallek of George Washington University. Published in March, “Birchers: How the John Birch Society Radicalized the American Right” is Dallek’s fourth book. It examines the roots of today’s emboldened conservative movement in the United States.
“Birchers” is a history of a group that at its height numbered as many as 100,000 members and “mobilized a loyal army of activists” in a campaign against what it saw as a vast communist conspiracy. He also examines how the Birchers’ mission to defend Christianity and capitalism morphed into a radical anti-civil rights agenda that groups like the ADL saw as an existential threat.
Dallek, who grew up in a Reform Jewish household in Los Angeles, recently sat with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency to discuss the rise of the Birchers, how the ADL infiltrated their ranks and whether such tactics are justified in the name of fighting extremism.
The conversation has been edited for clarity and brevity.
JTA: Before we get into the Jewish aspect of the book, meaning the chapter on the Anti-Defamation League’s relationship with the John Birch Society, let’s take a step back. Who are so-called Birchers? Why do they matter?
Mathew Dallek: The John Birch Society was a household name in the 1960s, becoming the emblem of far-right extremism. It didn’t have huge numbers, but it did penetrate the culture and the national consciousness. Its leader, Robert Welch, had argued at one point that President Dwight Eisenhower was a dedicated agent of a communist conspiracy taking over the United States. Welch formed the John Birch Society to educate the American people about the nature of the communist threat.
In its heyday, the group had about 60,000 to 100,000 members, organized into small chapters. They sent out literature trying to give members roadmaps or ideas for what they could do. They believed a mass education of the public was needed because traditional two-party politics was not going to be very effective at exposing the communist threat. They would form front groups such as Impeach Earl Warren [the Supreme Court’s chief justice] or Support Your Local Police. They tried to ban certain books that they viewed as socialistic from being used in schools. Some Birchers ran for school board seats and protested at libraries.
Critics feared that the Birchers were a growing fascist or authoritarian group and that if they were not sidelined politically and culturally then the country could be overrun. The Nation magazine wrote that Birchers essentially had given their followers an invitation to engage in civil war, guerrilla-style. Those fears sparked a big debate about democracy. How does one sustain democracy and, at the height of the Cold War and in the shadow of World War II, Nazi fascist Germany, and the Holocaust?
As you were researching, you came across a trove of historical internal documents from the ADL in the archives of the American Jewish Historical Society in New York. Why did you devote a chapter to what you found in those documents? What did those files reveal to you about the John Birch Society?
These papers are a goldmine. They’re this incredible and often detailed window into the far-right and, in particular, the John Birch Society. They show the ADL had an extensive, multi-dimensional counterintelligence operation that they were running against the Birch Society.
People knew at the time that the ADL was attending events where Birchers were speaking. But the ADL also had undercover agents with code names, who were able to infiltrate the society’s headquarters in Belmont, Massachusetts, and various chapter officers. They dug up financial and employment information about individual Birchers. And they not only used the material for their own newsletters and press releases, but they also fed information to the media.
Another layer is about a debate that’s been going on: Were the Birchers racist and antisemitic? The Birch Society always insisted that they did not tolerate white supremacy and didn’t want any KKK members. They said they accepted people of all faiths and races. And it’s true that they did have a handful of Jewish and Black members.
But what the ADL found was that a lot of hate was bubbling up from the grassroots and also leaking out from the top. The ADL was able to document this in a systematic way.
Some critics of the ADL today say the organization has strayed from its mission by focusing not just on antisemitism but on a wider array of causes. But from reading your work, it sounds like the ADL even then took an expansive view of its role, examining not just direct attacks on Jews but also how the political environment can jeopardize Jews. Am I getting that right, and why did the ADL devote so many resources to a group like the John Birch Society?
So, a few things: It’s the late ’50s and ’60s, and a civil rights coalition is emerging. Benjamin Epstein, the national director of the ADL, was friendly with Thurgood Marshall, the Supreme Court justice, and Martin Luther King. John F. Kennedy went to an ADL event and praised the ADL for speaking out very strongly in defense of democracy and pushing for the equal treatment of all Americans.
Isadore Zack, who helped lead the spy operation, at one point wrote to his colleagues that it was only in a democracy that the Jewish community has been allowed to flourish and so, if you want to defend Jewish Americans, you also have to defend democracy.
There certainly were other threats at the time, but the Birch Society was seen by liberal critics, including the ADL, as a very secretive group that promoted conspiracy theories about communists who often became conflated with Jews.
Would you consider the ADL successful in its campaign against the Birchers?
They were successful. They used surreptitious and in some cases underhanded means to expose the antisemitism and the racism and also interest in violence or the violent rhetoric of the Birch Society in the 1960s.
The ADL was at the tip of the spear of a liberal coalition that included the White House, sometimes the Department of Justice, depending on the issue, the NAACP, Americans for Democratic Action, labor unions, the union-backed Group Research Inc., which was tracking the far-right as well. The ADL was one of the most, if not the most effective at constraining and discrediting the society.
Clearly, however, the Birchers’ ideas never died. They lived on and made a comeback.
It’s somewhat ironic that you reveal the existence of this spying apparatus devoted to targeting an extremist and antisemitic group in the 1960s given the infamy the ADL would earn in a later era, the 1990s, for allegations that they colluded with police agencies in San Francisco to spy on and harass political activists. They eventually settled with the Arab American, Black and American Indian groups that brought a federal civil suit. I know you didn’t study these revelations, which are outside the scope of your book, but could you perhaps reflect on why undercover tactics were seen as necessary or justified?
It’s important to remember that in the mid-20th century, law enforcement in the United States was often led by antisemites or people who were much more concerned with alleged internal communist threats — the threat from the left.
From the ADL’s vantage point, one could not rely on the government entities that were by law and by design supposed to protect Jewish Americans. There was a sense that this work had to be done, at least in part, outside of the parameters of the government.
When I first discovered the ADL’s spying, I didn’t quite know what to make of it. But I realized they weren’t just spying to spy, they exposed a lot of scary things, with echoes in our own times — like easy access to firearms, a hatred of the government, a denigration and defamation of minority groups. And this was all happening in the shadow of the Holocaust and World War II. I became much more sympathetic; they were very effective, and they had a vision of equality of treatment for all Americans.
It’s obviously controversial. I try not to shy away from it. But they had a lot of good reasons to fight back right and to fight back in this nonviolent way.
That last thought brings to mind another, right-wing Jewish group that existed in this era of taking things into our own hands, that did use violence, explosives even.
You mean the Jewish Defense League, led by Meir Kahane.
Yes, exactly.
He was a Bircher. Toward the end of my book, I mention that he was a member for a while, under his alias Michael King.
Antisemitism is on the rise, and lots of initiatives are being organized to address it, both by existing groups like the ADL and new ones. The ADL’s budget has almost doubled over the past seven years. I am seeing Jews talk of fighting back and taking things into their own hands. And we are in this politically precarious movement in American history, all of which suggests parallels to the era you examined. What kind of wisdom can we glean from examining the ADL’s secret and public fight against the John Birch Society as people who care about the issues affecting Jews today?
A lot of liberals in the 1960s and a lot of the leadership at the ADL grasped the axiom that things can always get worse.
In 2015-2016, you’ll recall, there was Trump’s demonization of Mexican immigrants, and the so-called “alt-right” around him and his campaign and expressions of vitriol by people like Steve Bannon.
There was an assumption among a lot of Americans and among a lot of Jewish Americans that the fringe right — the antisemites, the explicit racists, the white supremacists — that there’s not a majority for them and they can never achieve power.
If you go back and you look at Trump’s closing 2016 campaign ad, it’s textbook antisemitism. He flashes on screen these wealthy Jewish international bankers, and he argues that basically, there’s a conspiracy of these global elites who are stealing the wealth of honest Americans. There’s also 2017, the white supremacists in Charlottesville, who said “Jews will not replace us” and Trump saying there are fine people on both sides.
The sense that democracy is incredibly fragile is not just a theory or a concept: It’s an actuality, the sense as well, that the United States has only been a multiracial democracy for not very long and a haven for Jews for not that long either.
The work that the ADL and the NAACP and other groups did to try to constrain and discredit as fringe and extremist still goes on today. It’s harder to do for all sorts of reasons today including social media and the loss of faith in institutions. But it still goes on. You see the importance of institutional guardrails including the Department of Justice that is prosecuting 1,000 Jan. 6 insurrectionists.
The last thing I’ll say is that one of the admirable things in the 1960s about the ADL and the liberal coalition it belonged to is that it built support for landmark legislation like the Immigration Act of 1965, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of ’65. And a coalition eventually fell apart, but it was powerful, reminding us why Jewish American groups should care about or focus on issues that don’t directly affect Jewish people.
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Longtime pro-Israel Democrat Steny Hoyer announces retirement from Congress
(JTA) — Democratic Rep. Steny Hoyer, Maryland’s longest-serving member of Congress and a lawmaker with longstanding close ties to the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC, has announced his retirement.
“I did not want to be one of those members who clearly stayed, outstayed his or her ability to do the job,” Hoyer, 86, told the Washington Post ahead of his announcement on Thursday.
Hoyer, who has served in Congress since 1981 and stepped down as House majority leader in 2022, frequently made pro-Israel advocacy a hallmark of his tenure, including backing unconditional U.S. aid to Israel and supporting the recognition of Jerusalem as the country’s capital.
Hoyer’s departure deprives Congress of a pro-Israel stalwart at a time when support for Israel is on the decline in both major parties. Already, a Jewish Democrat who is harshly critical of Israel had been challenging him.
“Our country, the Democratic Party, and the pro-Israel movement are all in a better place today because of his service,” Brian Romick, the president and CEO of the Democratic Majority for Israel, said in a statement. “I will be forever grateful for his guidance, his friendship, and his faith in me. I am certain that future Democratic leaders will look to his career as a model and be inspired to embrace his legacy.”
Hoyer addressed changes in support for Israel in November 2024, when he celebrated after a proposal to restrict the sale of U.S.-made weapons to Israel was voted down.
“It is vital that we maintain Congress’ overwhelming bipartisan consensus supporting Israel. Israelis and Americans – and Democrats and Republicans – must continue to stand together as we navigate the most crucial period in the 76-year history of our U.S.-Israel relationship,” said Hoyer in a press release at the time.
Hoyer has also long been the unofficial leader of an annual tour of Democratic freshmen lawmakers to Israel with AIPAC. This year, Hoyer said in a video posted by AIPAC that he had been to Israel “22 times.”
“Contrary to world opinion, Israel has been doing everything it possibly can to ensure that there’s minimal damage to civilians who are not part of Hamas’ army,” said Hoyer in the video. “Unfortunately, the world is not seeing that, and one of the things I’ve tried to tell the leadership in Israel, please get that message out, please expose it.”
Hoyer’s trip to Israel was criticized by the only candidate who has already declared for his seat, Harry Jarin, who wrote in a statement at the time that Hoyer “knows what he is doing is wrong and unpopular, so he is deliberately hiding information about this trip.”
“While Donald Trump dismantles democracy here at home, Democrats lose all credibility by continuing to engage with an equally illiberal and self-destructive regime in Israel,” Jarin wrote at the time. “You cannot claim to defend democracy in one breath and embrace an authoritarian partner in the next.”
Jarin responded to Hoyer’s retirement announcement by saying that Hoyer had once represented Marylanders well. “His service deserves respect, and I acknowledge the role he played in shaping an earlier era of the Democratic Party,” he said in a statement, while also saying, while citing his outlook as the grandson of Holocaust survivors, that a new approach is needed to contending with the Trump administration.
Hoyer’s retirement comes as several other prominent backers of Israel have also announced their retirements from Congress ahead of the midterm elections.
Texas Republican Rep. Michael McCaul, who has close ties with AIPAC, announced he would not seek re-election in September. Democratic Illinois Rep. Jan Schakowsky, who is Jewish and closely affiliated with the liberal Israel lobby J Street, announced her retirement in May. Another pro-Israel Democrat in Illinois, Sen. Dick Durbin, announced in April that he would not seek a sixth term.
Amid the wave of retirements, several lawmakers and candidates have recently pledged not to take donations from AIPAC, as discontent with the longstanding U.S.-Israel alliance has grown significantly across the Democratic and Republican parties. Among Republicans, growing anti-Israel sentiment and the mainstreaming of fringe antisemitic voices has sparked outcry from top GOP leaders.
In Schakowsky’s district, the race for her seat currently includes leftist Palestinian-American influencer Kat Abugazelah, who praised Schakowsky for her stance on Palestinian rights, and Daniel Biss, the progressive Jewish mayor of Evanston, Illinois.
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Cameron Kasky embodies rising Gen Z Jewish criticism of Israel. Can it get him to Congress?
(JTA) — He’s running for Congress on Manhattan’s West Side, but lately Cameron Kasky has been focused on the West Bank.
Kasky, a 25-year-old Jewish progressive, recently went on a solidarity mission to the West Bank. He has shared experiences from the trip on social media, including chats with Palestinians who face security checkpoints and incursions by Israeli settlers, as well as videos of Kasky playing sports with Palestinian children. He joined Mehdi Hasan, a vocal critic of Israel and founder of the progressive media outlet Zeteo, for a live Q&A Thursday afternoon about the trip.
Among the pool of nearly a dozen candidates running in New York’s 12th Congressional District, Kasky is steering left of the Democratic establishment. His platform includes calling for sanctions on Israel, whom he accuses of committing genocide.
It’s a stance that could alienate some voters in one of the country’s most Jewish districts. The district covers the Upper West and East Sides as well as Midtown Manhattan, and has long been represented by Jerry Nadler, Congress’ most senior Jewish member.
But Kasky, the Jewish Parkland school shooting survivor and gun control activist, said in an interview that his stance on Israel doesn’t make him an outlier.
“I am not some anomaly,” Kasky told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “The next generation of Jewish Americans is changing their tune on the State of Israel and how it operates.”
In a year when Israel is expected to play a central role in a number of midterm races, Kasky’s candidacy will be a test of how going all-in against Israel resonates with voters. But Israel isn’t his only Jewish issue: He also spoke about plans to improve Holocaust education and address rising antisemitism on the right.
He’s also not wrong about shifting sentiments among younger Jews. A 2024 Pew Research Center survey found that Americans ages 18-29 were the only age group more sympathetic to Palestinians than to Israelis. Half of Jewish Americans ages 18-34 believe Israel has committed genocide in Gaza; that percentage number is hovering in the 30s among older groups, according to a September 2025 poll by the Washington Post.
While this shift on Israel is occurring in the electorate, Kasky said he’s not aware of likeminded Jewish Gen Zers who are running for office — but he expects that to change.
“I imagine we’ll be seeing plenty more soon, especially given that far more Jewish Americans in our generation are aligned with the foreign policy positions on peace to which I’ve committed,” he said.
Gen Z has not quite reached the age of typical candidates in national elections. Young progressive Jews with staunch pro-Palestinian views are, however, starting to appear in politics, and win races.
Across the Hudson River from Kasky’s district, a Jewish democratic socialist named Jake Ephros was elected to Jersey City Council last month. Ephros has been a vocal pro-Palestinian advocate. In October 2023 he co-organized an open letter titled “Not in Our Name! Jewish Socialists Say No to Apartheid and Genocide,” which compared Israel to Nazi Germany.
And a 26-year-old Jewish political strategist, Morris Katz, has made a splash behind the scenes, helping run the victorious mayoral campaign of Zohran Mamdani in New York City. He is now advising the U.S. Senate campaign of another anti-Zionist progressive, Maine’s Graham Platner. Katz has said he was “radicalized” by AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby.
“This is something that we are seeing all over the place,” Kasky said, of his sentiments about Israel.
In the aftermath of Mamdani’s election success, progressive candidates are starting to emerge as primary challengers to more moderate Democrats in this year’s midterm elections, and the topic of Israel figures to play a role in those congressional races. That may prove especially true in the race for Nadler’s soon-to-be vacant seat, where Kasky’s many opponents include several other Jews.
The 12th district includes younger neighborhoods such as Chelsea that voted strongly in favor of Mamdani, where Kasky, a democratic socialist and Mamdani supporter, could be well aligned with voters’ politics. But even for those who feel represented by his policies, Kasky’s youth and inexperience may prove too large an obstacle for getting their vote.
“I look at his positions — if he was an experienced guy, I would be very enthusiastic,” said Arlene Geiger, coordinator of the Upper West Side Action Group.
Geiger, who is Jewish, said she is also in a Signal group chat with about 15 other progressives in the district, including Democratic Socialists of America members who are “really enthusiastic” about Kasky.
“But he’s still too young and untested, so I don’t know,” said Geiger.
Eric Alterman, a journalist and author of the 2022 book “We Are Not One,” which looks at American Jews’ growing divide over Israel, said he doubted that Kasky could win the race, even as people’s views on Israel are shifting.
In the general election, Alterman pointed out, Mamdani was able to win the Upper West Side with similar views to Kasky on Israel.
“But Mamdani’s issue was not Israel, it was affordability,” said Alterman, who lives on the Upper West Side. “A lot of DSA types were there [supporting Mamdani] because of Israel, but most people were not there for Israel. They were there saying, ‘OK, I sort of agree with some of what he says, not all of it,’ or, ‘Who cares about the mayor’s foreign policy?’”
Brad Lander, another progressive Jewish congressional candidate and Mamdani ally, is challenging incumbent Rep. Dan Goldman on his support from AIPAC, and Israel figures to play a major role in their primary. But Alterman pointed to a key difference between Lander’s messaging on Israel and Kasky’s, which centers the charge of genocide.
“His position is, ‘I love Israel and I wish it would behave better,’” Alterman said of Lander.
In his race, Kasky has positioned himself as the democratic socialist candidate in a crowded — and decidedly Jewish — field that includes state Assembly members Micah Lasher, who is Jewish and considered Nadler’s preferred successor, and Alex Bores, whose wife is Jewish; John F. Kennedy’s grandson Jack Schlossberg, who has said he’s “at least 100% half Jewish”; civil rights lawyer Laura Dunn; LGBTQ rights activist Matthew Shurka, who is a Jewish Israeli-American; broadcast journalist Jami Floyd; ex-Republican lawyer and anti-Trumper George Conway; and Alan Pardee, who previously worked in finance.
Kasky said he wants to strike a dialogue with voters who may have liked much of Mamdani’s platform but were uncomfortable with the now-mayor’s harshly critical views on Israel.
“I intend to talk to them in their places of worship, I intend to talk to them in their community meetings, and just have a conversation about this,” Kasky said. He also said that, if people were against Mamdani solely because of Israel-Palestine, he found this “ridiculous” since the mayor does not have a say in foreign policy.
“Yes, he said he’ll arrest Netanyahu — Netanyahu can prevent that by going to the Hague himself and facing justice,” Kasky said, referring to the Israeli prime minister whom Mamdani has pledged to arrest if he enters New York.
Kasky, unlike Mamdani, would have a say in American foreign policy if elected to Congress. His platform on Israel includes opposing “sending money or weapons to the State of Israel, ‘defensive’ or otherwise,” and backing “meaningful sanctions against Israel and the UAE for their continued support of genocides in Gaza and Sudan.”
Kasky has drawn criticism from pro-Israel figures like Adam Louis-Klein, who recently launched the Movement Against Antizionism. Louis-Klein called Kasky a “young token” who “recently realized the political benefits of the anti-Jewish hate grift.”
On the other hand, Ro Khanna, the progressive California congressman, praised Kasky on X. “Thanks for the boldness you are showing @camkasky! You are inspiring a lot of folks,” he wrote.
After Kasky’s recent trip to the West Bank, he said in a video that he witnessed the “devastating human toll of the illegal actions that are encouraged right here” in the 12th district.
“This hell that our government and the State of Israel have created for the people living there — it is so much worse than you think,” Kasky said following his trip.
Kasky has said he will share more about the visit; he has so far shared videos of him playing sports with Palestinian children and photos from a Christmas peace march in Bethlehem. He has written that “we must end the settlements that violate international law and stop encouraging New Yorkers to move there. It is cruel.” He also recorded a video speaking to the camera, which he said he filmed at 5 a.m., during a night shift to look out for Israeli settlers.
His platform doesn’t only center on Israel: He also cites as priorities establishing Medicare for all, abolishing ICE, fighting artificial intelligence oligarchs and preventing gun violence.
Kasky said he gradually came to his current views on Israel after being raised with a rosy picture of the country.
“It was a slow drip over the years, following the news closely and seeing strikes in Gaza, where I learned that the reality of the situation was not the simple ‘milk and honey land’ narrative I was raised to believe,” he said.
He was raised in a Jewish area of South Florida, which he described as “basically just Long Island II.” He attended a Reform synagogue, Congregation B’nai Israel, and attended a heavily Jewish private school in Boca Raton before his family moved to Parkland.
He also attended Hebrew school, which Kasky said was a seminal experience — though he complained that he was cast as Haman what felt like “every single year in the Purim spiel,” and wished he could’ve played Vashti.
Kasky said the Hebrew school curriculum included things like learning about Jewish holidays and traditions. But it also meant learning about the Holocaust at a young age — an experience that he contrasted to the curriculum of his public school history classes in middle and high school.
“The Holocaust education in at least the Florida public school system is not very in-depth,” Kasky said, adding the caveat that he had dropped out of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School before he would have taken their dedicated class on the Holocaust. (Kasky had dropped out to focus on March for Our Lives with his classmates after the shooting.)
Kasky, who co-founded the gun-control activist group Never Again MSD after surviving the shooting, said he did not learn “that America was turning away Jews” until he was “much older.” He said his classes were fairly black-and-white, and did not include anything about Nazi collaborators in the U.S. government, which he said he had come to believe was important after reading a book on the topic.
Florida has required some form of Holocaust education in public schools since the 1990s, and was one of the first states in the union to adopt such requirements. Today 30 states mandate Holocaust education. The Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School gunman had fired into the school’s Holocaust class, killing two students and wounding four, as part of his killing spree; he had also scrawled a swastika onto one of his ammunition magazines.
Now, Kasky wants to expand Holocaust education, and said he is meeting with education policy experts and Jewish community leaders about the issue.
In an email, he wrote that his positions include expanding funding for the Never Again Education Act of 2020; working to “develop and advocate for K-12 teacher training on combating antisemitism and preventing Holocaust denialism from reaching our children, who are already being exposed to skyrocketing Jew hate around the world, especially on social media”; and expanding “federal grants for states who are leading the way in the development of Holocaust/genocide education standards.”
He also expressed concern about far-right figures like Nick Fuentes, who themselves speak to Gen Z audiences highly critical of Israel, but blend such criticism with sympathy for Hitler and Nazi Germany. Kasky said “dangerous antisemitic actors” like Fuentes “exploit the suffering of the Palestinian people as a way to spread Jew hatred, while having no real sympathy for Palestinians.”
Still, Kasky cautioned against Sen. Chuck Schumer’s resolution to officially condemn Fuentes in Congress, saying it would bear “unintended harmful consequences.”
“Fuentes’ base thrives on the idea that they are being attacked because they are right, and because the establishment and the Jews and the Zionists hate seeing how right they are,” Kasky said. “The idea that Fuentes’ name will even be uttered in the halls of Congress, I think only reinforces Fuentes’ message to his followers.”
Kasky said he and his family had been the subject of antisemitic conspiracy theories online in his time as a gun control activist. He has criticized pro-Israel organizations like the Anti-Defamation League for doing “everything they can to avoid indicting the Right and MAGA.”
Kasky has also blasted moderate Democrats including Goldman and New York Rep. Ritchie Torres, who’ve both received funding from AIPAC (and are both facing primary challengers calling out that support). Kasky, meanwhile, has been endorsed by Track AIPAC, the X account that posts candidates’ AIPAC donation numbers in order “to end AIPAC and the Israel lobby’s stranglehold on American Democracy,” according to its website.
Alterman noted that, since Oct. 7, American politics around Israel have changed in a way that he “could not have imagined” while he was writing his book, particularly among Jews. Before Hamas’ attack on Israel and the war in Gaza, the election of Mamdani as an anti-Zionist mayor of New York would have been “inconceivable,” he said.
“So things are moving so rapidly that I’m not here to predict the future,” Alterman said, of Kasky’s fate in this primary. “But there’s definitely a base there to begin a political career.”
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The ICE shooting in Minneapolis shattered my Holocaust survivor father’s’ American dream
Last fall, I visited a train platform in Zbaszyn, Poland, where my father saw his parents for the last time.
There, he and his brother boarded a Kindertransport to seek refuge in England in 1940. They survived the Holocaust; my grandparents and my aunt were murdered by Nazis. The years before that separation were marked by profound betrayals by the German government, which lied to them, their neighbors and the rest of the world about the violence being enacted against them, and what their future held.
I recalled that visit early Thursday morning, as I stood in front of the Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis, less than a mile from Bdote — the unceded land, sacred to Minnesota’s Dakota people, where the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers meet.
That land is where Minnesota’s earliest white settlers displaced, brutalized and killed the Dakota before building Fort Snelling, one of the first United States military outposts in the American West. Later, in 1862, the federal government set up a concentration camp in the same area. Some 1,600 Dakota were sent there, and hundreds died from disease and the harsh conditions.
Now, the thousands of ICE and Border Patrol agents sent by our federal government to terrorize Minneapolis gather and stage at the Whipple Building. And yesterday, an ICE agent named Jonathan Ross left that building, traveled a couple of miles west to South Minneapolis, and murdered Renée Nicole Good.
Good, 37, was a beloved community member. I didn’t know her, but I have friends who did. Their grief is devastating.
Renee was a treasured wife, they tell me. A mom to three children. A poet, an artist, and a community caretaker.
Her unjust death is horrific. And the resonances between our federal government’s bad faith response to it, and the kinds of stories I grew up hearing about the authoritarian government under which my father was raised, are terrifying.
Within hours of Good’s killing, President Donald Trump was spreading false claims about how it happened, claiming that Good ran over the ICE agent who shot her. Multiple video analyses have shown how inaccurate his words are. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem claimed Good, who was driving at the time of shooting, was engaged in “domestic terrorism.” It has been sickening to hear these leaders not only desecrate Good’s memory, but also try to weaponize it to further energize their campaign against our immigrant neighbors and loved ones.
LIke many American Jews, I was raised to believe in the American dream, and in a government that was here to represent me, care for me, and be a force for good in the world. And as the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, I always knew how fragile principles of liberty and equality can be.
I have known for a long time that the U.S. government has never equally defended the lives and rights of all people — and that it has too often, as in the case of the Dakota and other Indigenous Americans, actively destroyed those lives. But amid the Trump administration’s campaign against immigrant communities, it’s the tragedy of Good’s death that has most completely shattered the vision of what my Holocaust survivor father had taught me to hope for in the U.S.
Our current federal government lies to us, and lies about us. They blur the lines between fact and fiction. They gaslight. They have specifically tried to foment discord within the Jewish community, and between us and our allies. They try to divide us because they’re afraid of the strength and power that we have when we rise up as one.
That is why we gathered at the Whipple Federal Building today to honor Good’s memory, and to protest ICE’s ongoing assault on our fellow Minnesotans. This is the place where some of our neighbors go to be detained, and never come back. Instead, they are deported — sometimes to countries where they have never before set foot — and ripped from those they love, just as my father was ripped from his parents.
As Jews, we remember our family histories not to make us fearful or to isolate ourselves, but rather to prepare us for moments just like this one. Our history is not meant to be forgotten. It is not meant to sit neatly on museum shelves or be tucked away in old family albums. We are meant to carry it. We are meant to learn from it. And we are meant to act because of it.
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