27 US Jewish groups file support for detained anti-Israel Tufts student
Progressive organizations say detention of Rumeysa Ozturk violates ‘the most basic constitutional rights’
Luke Tress is The Times of Israel's New York correspondent.
Twenty-seven US Jewish groups on Thursday filed legal support for an anti-Israel student from Tufts University in Massachusetts who was detained by the government.
The student, Rumeysa Ozturk, was taken in by federal authorities last month as part of a broader crackdown on non-citizen activists by the Trump administration. The effort is being done in the name of antisemitism but has sparked concerns among Jewish groups.
Ozturk wrote an anti-Israel op-ed in her campus newspaper last year. Her detention by plainclothes officers on a city street was caught on video and caused alarm among many observers, including Jewish groups, due to concerns about legal protections, due process, and free speech.
The organizations backing Ozturk filed an amicus brief in her legal case in federal court. An amicus brief is a legal document filed by outside parties to a case who have an interest in its proceedings, often to offer arguments to the court.
The groups included the progressive organizations J Street, Bend the Arc, Keshet, New Israel Fund, New York Jewish Agenda, T’ruah, and the Workers Circle. The New York synagogues B’nai Jeshurun and Beth Elohim and Congregation Dorshei Tzedek, in Massachusetts, also signed on.
The groups were compelled to weigh in on the case “because the arrest, detention, and potential deportation of Rumeysa Ozturk for her protected speech violate the most basic constitutional rights,” the brief said.
The statement decried antisemitism, commended efforts to tackle anti-Jewish discrimination, and acknowledged that some of the signers disagreed with Ozturk’s statements but argued that the administration’s policies constitute a threat.
“Arresting, detaining, and potentially deporting Ozturk does not assist in
eradicating antisemitism. Nor was that the government’s apparent purpose,” the brief said. “The government instead appears to be exploiting Jewish Americans’ legitimate concerns about antisemitism as a pretext for undermining core pillars of American democracy, the rule of law, and the fundamental rights of free speech and academic debate on which this nation was built.”
The brief said the images of Ozturk’s arrest evoke past persecution of Jews by authoritarian regimes in Europe.
“To watch state authorities undermine the same fundamental rights that empowered so many Jewish Americans is chilling; to know it is being done in the name of the Jewish people is profoundly disturbing,” the brief said, warning that the crackdown could backfire and spur animosity against Jews.
The brief urged the court to grant a motion for Ozturk’s release.
The filing is the latest illustration of how Jewish groups are contending with the Trump administration’s crackdown on anti-Israel activists. Right-wing groups have applauded the measures, and left-wingers have unequivocally opposed the policies from the start, but a swath of US Jewry is conflicted, both supporting actions to combat antisemitism but alarmed about how the administration is doing so.
The Times of Israel Community.