Once we were strangers, too

The CEO and National Director of the American Anti-Defamation Commission in an op-ed piece on Haaretz, responds to Trump's ban on refugees entering the US....

"History will look back on this as a sad week in the United States — as the week that the president turned his back on people fleeing for their lives, in defiance of a proud promise indelibly inscribed on the Statue of Liberty that America will provide safe harbor to the world’s “huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”

President Trump signed an executive order on Friday to stop refugee admissions for at least several months, including shutting the door to all Syrian refugees; drastically reduce the annual cap on refugee admissions to 50,000 annually; and temporarily bar even visitation to the United States from some Muslim majority countries.

With more than 65 million people forcibly displaced from their homes, today the world faces the worst refugee crisis since World War II. Sadly, as we in the Jewish community know all too well, shutting the doors to people desperately fleeing for their lives harkens back to the World War II era."

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"Mark Twain taught us that history may not repeat itself, but it certainly rhymes. So now it is up to us to write a different verse. The Jewish community must stand up against this heartless attack on refugees, not only because it is the moral and ethical thing to do, but because we know all too well what happens when people fleeing for their lives have nowhere to turn.

We must stand up to remind the Trump Administration and the world – once we were strangers, too. And we must do better."

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Mahler's Prodigal Son

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