American Jewish groups shirked their primary mission, encouraged antisemitism

Jewish communal organizations, especially the network of Jewish Community Relations Councils (JCRCs), are long overdue for serious self-examination. For years, these institutions positioned themselves as the moral compass of the Jewish community, promoting expansive immigration policies, including from Muslim countries, as a matter of unquestionable principle.

However, in doing so, they substituted ideological reflex for strategic responsibility. They celebrated their own humanitarianism while failing to assess how the political, cultural and ideological backgrounds of the Muslim immigrant populations they supported might intersect with the specific vulnerabilities of American Jews. This gap between rhetoric and reality is now impossible to ignore.

HIAS, once the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Soc