Jewish Palestine Defenders Hold Passover Protest Against ICE Kidnappings, Gaza Genocide

Continuing the Jewish left's tradition of adapting the Passover Seder to promote liberation, Jewish Voice for Peace led protesters at a New York City rally demanding an end to the Trump administration's targeting of Palestine defenders for deportation and U.S. support for Israel's genocidal war on Gaza.

JVP's Liberation Seder drew hundreds of rallygoers to Federal Plaza in Manhattan, where U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) New York headquarters are located.

"We are outside Federal Plaza to say: Stop arming Israel. End Israel's genocide in Gaza. Free political prisoners held by ICE. Stop the attacks on immigrants, trans people, and students," JVP said on social media during the event.

Since President Donald Trump took office in January, ICE has been arresting foreign nationals—including people with permanent residency like Mahmoud Khalil and Mohsen Mahdawi—who took part in nonviolent campus protests for Palestine.

Protesters chanted slogans including "Free Mahmoud, Free Them All!" and "Come for One, Face Us All!" and held banners with messages like "Deposing Fascism Is a Jewish Tradition," "Jews Say Exodus From Zionism," "None of Us Are Free Until All of Us Are Free," and "Jews Say Stop Arming Israel."

"This Passover, the Jewish festival of liberation, we cannot celebrate as usual while Palestinians in Gaza face famine and the U.S.-backed Israeli government uses starvation as a weapon of war," said JVP organizer Jay Saper, whose whose great-uncle was kidnapped by police when he was an immigrant student in Paris during the Holocaust and deported to the Auschwitz death camp.

"The Seder ritual cannot be theoretical: It calls us to strengthen our commitment to the liberation of the Palestinian people," Saper added. "We commend the courageous students and all people of conscience raising their voices in dissent to Israel's genocide in Gaza and call for the immediate release of Mahmoud Khalil and all political prisoners."

Israel's U.S.-backed 557-day war on Gaza has left more than 180,000 Palestinians dead, injured, or missing. Israeli troops have forcibly displaced nearly all of the coastal enclave's more than 2 million inhabitants as the far-right government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—a fugitive from the International Criminal Court—prepares to permanently seize and recolonize large parts of the strip. Widespread and sometimes deadly starvation and sickness have also ravaged Gaza as a result of Israel's "complete siege"—one of the policies under review by the International Court of Justice in an ongoing South Africa-led genocide case against Israel.

Through it all, the Biden and Trump administrations have given Israel unconditional support including billions of dollars in armed aid and diplomatic cover.

Rabbi Abby Stein, who presided over the Seder, accused Trump—whose Cabinet has been called the "most antisemitic in decades" and who has a history of purveying antisemitic tropes—of feigning concern for Jewish safety in order to persecute Palestine defenders.

"We refuse to allow the president to use our people as cover for its racist, anti-Palestinian, fascist agenda," she said.

Addressing the rally, Ramzi Kassem—an attorney representing Khalil and other targeted foreign nationals including Rümeysa Öztürk, a Turkish doctoral student at Tufts University in Massachusetts—said: "My client Rümeysa shared with me and my fellow lawyers representing her that when she was taken by ICE from her campus at Tufts, in the video that I'm sure you've all seen, and she was whisked across state lines by men in plain clothes in an unmarked van, one of these men turned to her, and he said, 'We are not monsters.' He said, 'We're just doing as we're told."

Öztürk—who was snatched off the street by masked plainclothes agents—was arrested despite a State Department determination that there were no grounds for revoking her visa. However, under the the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, the secretary of state can order the expulsion of noncitizens whose presence in the United States is deemed detrimental to U.S. foreign policy interests. Secretary of State Marco Rubio—who lied about Öztürk supporting Hamas—has used such determinations to target people for engaging in constitutionally protected speech and protest.

Inside Higher Ed reported that as of Tuesday, more than 1,200 students and recent graduates have had their legal status changed by the State Department, for various reasons.

In addition to moving to deport pro-Palestine students, the Trump administration is sending Latin American immigrants—including wrongfully expelled Maryland man Kilmar Abrego Garcia—to a notorious prison in El Salvador, and the president has repeatedly threatened to send natural-born U.S. citizens there.

"The people demand that ICE stop its reign of terror, and for the Trump administration to cease the predatory targeting of organizers and immigrants," Rami Abdelkarim, a San Francisco Bay Area-based organizer with the Palestinian Youth Movement, said in solidarity with Monday's rally.

"We are ready to face this moment with courage and solidarity, together," Abdelkarim added. "Mahmoud's case and all other cases show us that our just cause to stop the genocide in Gaza stands at the center of the fight against fascism and for migrant and democratic rights."

In addition to JVP, members of groups including Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, IfNotNow NYC, Rabbis for Cease-fire, and Shoresh turned out for the rally. The event was inspired by the 1969 Freedom Seder organized by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on the anniversary of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination and connected the Jewish exodus story with the U.S. fight for civil rights and against the war on Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.

Last year, JVP co-led a Passover Seder protest outside the home of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) at which more than 300 demonstrators were arrested.

Monday's rallygoers embodied the ancient Jewish tenets of tzedek, mishpat, and din—righteousness, judgment, and abiding by the law.

"As Jews of conscience, we remain steadfast in our commitment to Palestinian freedom, to protecting the right to protest, and to defending immigrants, trans people, and all those under attack by the Trump regime," said JVP political director Beth Miller.