Asylum and Its Discontents in the United States
I am an asylum attorney. I am also Jewish. In my role as a lawyer, I represent many Muslims and many people from the Middle East, including Palestinians. Today, I want to discuss what it means to be a Jewish attorney representing Palestinian asylum seekers during this time of conflict.
I’d like to start with a message I recently received from one of my Palestinian clients, about his family in Gaza.
The war between Hamas and Israel has prompted some American politicians to call for a ban on refugees from Gaza. Other politicos want to deport student protesters who express pro-Palestinian sentiments, or exclude Palestinians from the U.S. altogether.
I suppose that in a time of war, there’s an impulse to pick a side. Israel or Palestine. Muslim or Jew. Us or Them. And so in theory, I can understand why some leaders would want to punish those who appear to be supporting our adversaries. But as I see it, painting all Palestinians or all Muslims as Hamas supporters is counterproductive and harmful to our national interests, not to mention untrue.
They say that life is what happens while you’re making other plans. That’s true for death as well. I had no plans to write about Israel this week, but given the current conflict, I am finding it impossible to write about anything else.
Perhaps you’ve heard about the plan by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to derail U.S.-Iranian negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program. Many Republican leaders have joined the effort, and 47 Senators (all Republican) led by Tom Cotton wrote an open letter to the Ayatollahs warning them against a deal. All this is in the public record. What’s less well … Read more
If you talk to people working in the human rights field, many will tell you that they view their work as an expression of their political and moral beliefs. More often than not, those beliefs are grounded in religious faith. That is true for me. I am Jewish and I am an asylum lawyer. I … Read more
A couple of recent articles got me thinking about how the U.S. handles asylum seekers coming from countries that we view as friends–Western-style democracies that generally respect human rights. The first is an article from the Jewish Daily Forward (featuring a quote from my esteemed law partner, Todd Pilcher) about asylum seekers from Israel. The … Read more
A recent editorial in Al Jazeera by Charlotte Silver criticizes the Israeli asylum system. The first paragraph pretty much sums up the author’s feelings on the matter: The notion of a “Jewish and democratic state,” never a feasible reality, continues to unravel as its inherent racism is revealed in a new way. Any political discussion … Read more