Liberation Seder: Hundreds of Jewish Protesters Demand Release of Foreign Students Abducted by ICE

AMY GOODMAN: On the third evening of the Jewish holiday of Passover, Jewish Voice for Peace held a protest Seder outside the New York City immigration offices after ICE seized yet another Palestinian Columbia University student with a green card, Mohsen Mahdawi, a co-founder of Palestinian Student Union at Columbia with Mahmoud Khalil, also a Palestinian green card holder just like Khalil.

These are some of the voices from Monday night’s protest, including the lawyer who represents Khalil and also the Tufts University graduate student Rumeysa Ozturk, who was taken by ICE agents who were masked last month in Somerville, Massachusetts, just outside Tufts. But we begin with a member of Jewish Voice for Peace.

PROTESTERS: Free Mahmoud! Free them all! Free Mahmoud! Free them all! Come for one, face us all! Come for one, face us all!

MARIANNE PITA: My name is Marianne Pita. I’m here with the Jewish elders, part of the JVP. I’ve never been more proud to be Jewish. I’ve always thought of Passover as a celebration of liberation. And liberation can never be just the Jews, because there’s nothing free about being by yourself in some sort of country embattled. The only way to fight for liberation is to fight for everybody, and in this case the Palestinians.

PROTESTERS: Come for one, face us all! Come for one, face us all! Occupation must fall! Occupation must fall!

ANNOUNCER: Give it up for one of Mahmoud Khalil’s tireless attorneys, a law professor at CUNY and the founder of CLEAR, a vital legal clinic that challenges the U.S. security state, Ramzi Kassem.

RAMZI KASSEM: My client Rumeysa 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.”

PROTESTERS: Shame! Fascists!

RAMZI KASSEM: And so, I want to contrast that message with the second message, which is the message of gratitude from Mahmoud, from Yunseo, from Rumeysa, and I’m sure all the others, whose names you know, the message of gratitude for all of you, because you exemplify the grandest Jewish tradition, the truest Passover tradition. You have stood in solidarity with the Palestinian people as they have faced a genocide. You’ve stood with Mahmoud, with Rumeysa, with Mohsen, as they’ve faced abduction and detention. You are standing with Yunseo as she continues to fight to remain free, because she is still free. And for that, they are deeply, infinitely grateful for all of you.

ANNOUNCER: Please join me in giving a warm welcome to our dear friend, who has inspired millions around the world with her conviction and love, the co-founder of MPower Change, Linda Sarsour!

LINDA SARSOUR: I’m here to say I pray for you all to have a blessed Passover, and just to show my gratitude. And at any chance that I get to come and say “thank you” to you directly, I’m going to do that. In Islam, thanking people is thanking God. And I thank God for you every single day for being on the frontlines and saying to this administration, to the one before and to the Netanyahu administration, “Not in our name.”

PROTESTERS: When Palestine is under attack, what do we do? Stand up! Fight back! When Palestine is under attack, what do we do? Stand up! Fight back!

RABBI ABBY STEIN: My name is Abby Stein. I’m a rabbi here in New York City. I want to talk about Miriam, the cup of Miriam, which is just a cup of water, a tradition that has been added relatively recently but is very important to so many of us as a feminist tradition — I will say, as a queer person, as a queer tradition. But most importantly, right now I think about water, and I think for everyone here, I don’t have to tell you what water means to Palestine and to Palestinians and what occupied water, for the lack of a better term, looks like. I spent this summer in Palestine for a month and saw how that looks like, how you can tell whether something is a settlement or something is a actual Palestinian home based on whether they have access to national water or if they have to collect their own water.

So, water really is a symbol of occupation and oppression. And for us, it is a symbol of liberation. At the same time, water, Miriam, feminism and queer liberation is too often used to control people, whether it is the Israeli government and intelligence services threatening gay and lesbian and LGBTQ Palestinians to expose them, so to speak, if they don’t cooperate, or just using us, trans Jews and LGBTQ Jews, as an excuse why they keep killing people, while I have so many queer Palestinian friends who, before we can talk about liberation, just want to live. So, right now, as we celebrate Pesach together, as we keep water, as we keep Miriam, as we keep our feminist-forward mothers, as we keep our queer elders throughout history in mind, this is what Pesach is: liberation for all, whether it is land, water, people and each and every one of us, at home and abroad. Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: That last voice, trans activist Rabbi Abby Stein. Hundreds with Jewish Voice for Peace and others held a protest Seder outside New York City immigration offices on Monday.

When we come back, we’ll see a part of President Trump’s meeting with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele in the Oval Office, along with the Trump — some of members of the Cabinet, as Trump defies a Supreme Court order returning a Maryland resident wrongly deported to El Salvador. Stay with us.

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AMY GOODMAN: “Ella’s Song” by the Resistance Revival Chorus, singing at Monday’s “Liberation Seder” in New York City.