The old leftwing weekly The Forward, like every national Jewish paper and virtually every regional or local one, adheres to the Jewish Establishment’s line on immigration, advocating an unspecified incarnation of the radically subjective policy termed “comprehensive immigration reform,” denoted increasingly by the less menacing-sounding, more user-friendly appellation “immigration reform.” Virtually identical robotized editorials appear ad nauseam in the Jewish press demanding the passage of “immigration reform,” arguing on the basis of the worst eisegesis, out-of-context and mistranslated quotation torn from Hebrew scripture, as well as allusions to “Jewish social values” as though that abstraction meant precisely the same thing to everyone and carried hard, fast and immediate policy implications reflecting a universal Jewish consensus. These astounding illogical leaps and arrogant assumptions are matched by a suffocating ideological conformity.
But The Forward evidently retains sufficient independence to wander off the reservation occasionally and publish a story dealing with a problematic aspect of immigration unlikely to originate elsewhere in the Jewish media: in this case the fact that several thousand illegal aliens who are Jews currently reside in the United States. Not only is the subject problematic, but the story paints a distinctly unflattering picture of the Jewish Establishment. Not, to be sure, for its being zealous in the pursuit of a bad cause, but for its own brand of hypocrisy with regard to a parochial but revealing aspect of the issue. To its credit, it should also be noted that the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) syndicated the story, giving it wide exposure. “Undocumented Jews Live in the Shadows of U.S. Society: Not the Usual Illegal Alien and Off the Communal Agenda,” by Nathan Guttman is a significant piece, and not solely or primarily for what would seem the most obvious reason: providing readers knowledge they didn’t previously possess.
More than a groundbreaking news story, Guttman has written a thinly-veiled editorial, a terse, surprisingly sharp moral critique of the Jewish Establishment as a whole and perforce the organization historically deemed most responsible for protecting Jewish immigrants, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS). Guttman indirectly berates them – showing as opposed to telling is invariably the more effective means of skewering one’s targets – for the political indifference to their own. HIAS has abandoned wholesale its historical mission by refusing to take up their cause of Jewish illegal aliens publicly and making them part of its political advocacy on immigration. This refusal is particularly telling in light of the fact that HIAS vigorously promotes the interests of every other group that comprises America’s vast illegal population, making an exception only for Jews while embracing groups with the highest levels of anti-Semitism on earth.
Though Guttman is too much a partisan of “comprehensive immigration reform” to make the point, the policy is a disaster for America and emphatically not in the interest of Americans who are Jews, as I have argued on many occasions. One would think the morally adolescent, universalistic, post-American Jewish Establishment must surely recognize this at some level, but in its complacency and blind fidelity to political correctness it ignores it, preferring its not-so-naive “disinterested,” and therefore make-believe higher morality. Its callousness regarding the Jewish illegal aliens is a species of the self-destructive policy they mistake for virtue.
The story thus constitutes a very welcome change from the usual Jewish media approach to immigration-related issues. It is not unsympathetic to the Jewish illegal aliens. But arguing their case is not what Guttman is primarily about. Rather, his purpose is exposing the remarkable failure of empathy of Jewish advocates of “comprehensive immigration reform” for other Jews.
Guttman telegraphs his message about this peculiarly Jewish psychologically problematic self-effacing or, perhaps more accurately, noblesse-oblige moral selectivity in the italicized words that conclude his title: “and Off the Communal Agenda.” The critique is all the more damning because of the reticent tone; the story’s compelling human-interest narratives; the comparison between the humane behavior of the those engaged in the charitable home visitation to the sick of the inward-looking, politically uninvolved ultra-Orthodox Satmar sect as opposed to the disregard shown by the well-heeled politically “compassionate” mainstream Establishment; and, finally, his rhetorical device of allowing the hypocrites to condemn themselves out of their own mouths.
There is also much in Guttman’s piece that is tacitly damning. For the Jewish Establishment figures he interviews — Gideon Aronoff, President and CEO of HIAS, and Melanie Nezer, HIAS’s senior director for American policy and advocacy — the story of the Jewish illegal aliens is of course not news. They have known about it all along and have consciously chosen to bury it. Aronoff, the Jewish Establishment’s “point man” on immigration, is evidently keen that this story is not regarded or allowed to emerge as an “issue.” Their various evasions, sometimes virtually incoherent, and senseless rationales are essential components of the indictment.
It is essential to bear in mind that Aronoff’s organization would never, could never, contemplate adopting so indifferent, nonchalant and disengaged an attitude when discussing Hispanic illegal aliens or the Somali refugees, whose highly-questionable resettlement in communities in the heartland suggests indifference at the highest levels to the strong Jihadist presence among that exists among them. The Somali resettlement is an important part of HIAS’s for-profit business; it is government contract work and not charity.
Even more shocking is its collaboration and joint ventures with U.S. Muslim Brotherhood legacy organizations. In a forthcoming piece, we will detail HIAS’s links, and those of Jewish fellow travelers, to such infamous organizations as the Muslim Public Affairs Committee and the Islamic Society of North America, groups whose agenda include proven material support to HAMAS’s annihilationist campaign against Israel, promoting the Islamization of America, and spreading Islamist Jew-hatred. The relationship HIAS has formed with these organizations is aimed at mainstreaming Muslim Brotherhood legacy organizations and increasing Muslim immigration to America.
Collaborating with those bent on destroying Israel and ridding the world of Jews and seeking to augment their numbers in the United States speaks volumes about the intellectual credibility and political and moral judgment of the Jewish Establishment’s “point man” on immigration. HIAS is not working on behalf of Jewish values or interests at all: it is a radical leftist organization disguised in Jewish trappings. As previously noted, in addition to heading HIAS, Aronoff is the current Chair of the National Immigration Forum, an organization whose meetings I attended during my years in the Jewish Establishment. I can personally attest to the extreme views of the representatives of its member organizations, their collective loathing for America, and their common espousal of the most aggressive forms of racial/ethnic identity politics. I do not use the term “anti-American” lightly given the abuse to which it is subject, but no term better describes the National Immigration Forum. Aronoff’s leadership of that body provides further evidence he is a doctrinaire leftist disguised in Jewish trappings.
The sole person working for the Jewish Establishment whom Guttman interviews that comes across as sympathetic is Angela Task, a social worker with the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty, who counsels Israeli illegal aliens who come to her office in Brooklyn for help and is not primarily a political actor.
Who are these Jewish illegal aliens and how many are there? Guttman tells us that not enough is known about this underground world to posit a more precise guesstimate than stipulating it totals “some thousands,” but he offers a clearer view of its sociological makeup. While all those he discusses come from Israel, they belong to three separate and distinct groups:
- Opportunistic Russians with some Jewish blood who settled in Israel unenthusiastically during the mass exodus from the former Soviet Union but wished to come to America in the first place and then entered illegally and remained, many for decades, seeking the material advantages that drives most others;
- Ultra-Orthodox Jews who desire to live in the American enclaves of their respective sects and remain, and, as they used to say in the ads for Hebrew National hot dogs “they obey a higher authority;”
- Young Israelis in their twenties, most of whom recently completed military service and traveled to South America, a favorite destination for many (along with South East Asia). After spending some months there they head to the U.S. to work illegally to pay for their globe-trotting before returning home. Few members of this group plan to remain for long in the U.S., but those that try quickly discover that the poor economy offers few opportunities and they are also unprepared for the what one characterizes as the “unhelpful” attitude of the Israeli expatriate community and adds, “that the broader American Jewish community is ‘very closed.”
It would appear that far from having been persuaded by the ceaseless harangues from the pulpit by the leftist rabbinate to “love the stranger,” these prosaic, law-abiding American Jews are no more thrilled by illegal immigration from Israel than they are from Mexico or Guatemala. If, to cite Guttman’s opening, many American Jews are reportedly “ashamed” of illegal aliens who are Jewish, so are many Americans of Hispanic heritage of Hispanic illegal aliens who have stigmatized the larger Hispanic community.
One commonality among the heterogeneous Israelis is that all enter on legal visas and then overstay them, disappearing into America like 40-45% of all other illegal aliens. Other common characteristics and experiences are not only shared by the Israeli illegals (most of all for the older Russians) but by the more typical illegal aliens from Mexico and central America: poor language skills, lack of employment opportunities aggravated not only by the present deep recession but the language issue previously cited and outmoded or non-existent skill sets, and their being preyed upon by unethical immigration lawyers who promise everything and deliver nothing.
The Forward’s piece is not without a modicum of comic relief, though the humor is unconscious. We learn the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv has begun an ad campaign, complete with a menacing video clip, to deter young Israelis from entering the U.S. illegally. The video includes testimonies by young Israeli illegal aliens caught by law enforcement who describe what it is like to spend time in a U.S. prison before being deported.
Of course no one should enter the U.S. in violation of our laws; take scarce jobs from Americans suffering the worst unemployment since the Great Depression; enjoy public benefits gratis; then commit the ancillary crimes required to remain undetected, including identity theft, the use of false driver’s licenses, lying to law enforcement and employers; and contributing to the wholesale violation of the rule of law and the outrageous devaluation of American sovereignty.
No one is suggesting that Israelis get a pass, and if the ad campaign acts as a deterrent, fine and well. But does the minuscule percentage of illegal aliens who are Israeli justify the need for a campaign of deterrence? One cannot help but wonder whether the State Department conducts such campaigns and produces similar videos for Mexican and Central American audiences. What about the many Muslim countries not on the risible absurd “terror watch list” whose regimes are putatively “friendly” but whose populations hate America, like virtually all the mass murderers of 9/11 who came from our “good friend” Saudi Arabia? If not, and one suspects that’s the case, this Israeli campaign amounts to a bad joke that leaves one wondering about the mindset of the people at State.
