Jews and Mexicans have a special bond; it’s even stronger after Oct. 7

SAN DIEGO — As a Mexican American, I’ve long felt a special kinship with American Jews.

Both Mexican Americans and Jewish Americans have immigrant histories. Both have suffered discrimination in the United States and have been accused of harboring “divided loyalties.” As recently as the second half of the 20th century, members of both groups were barred from colleges, country clubs and communities with restrictive housing covenants. Both have trouble fitting into a Black-and-White paradigm; they’re considered “White” one minute and “non-White” the next.

We also face the same bullies. White supremacists — many of whom subscribe to the “great replacement theory,” which holds that Jews are supposedly opening the borders to orchestrate a demographic shift in America that will result in fewer Whites — have engaged in hate crimes and mass shootings intended to kill Jews and Latinos.

And when Mexican immigrants have been targeted by policymakers and right-wing activists — as they were in California in 1994 by the ballot initiative Proposition 187, which sought to cut off services to the undocumented — Jewish groups have pushed back.

I’ve been schooled on the relationship between Mexicans and Jews by friends who are in both groups. There are about 50,000 Jews in Mexico, and according to some estimates, about 80% live in Mexico City.

I identified with Jews long before the Oct. 7 massacre of 1,200 people in Israel by Hamas, and before the global wave of anti-Semitism following Israel’s invasion of Gaza and the deaths of more than 20,000 Palestinians.

After the Oct. 7 attack, my emotional connection to the Jewish people grew stronger. I’m not the only one. On social media sites, I’ve seen Mexican American friends replace their profile pictures with Israeli flags and declare solidarity with the Jewish state.

Over the past several weeks, I’ve devoured hours of informative and thoughtful commentary and analysis by Israeli journalists, authors and podcast hosts. Along the way, I’ve learned a lot about what everyday life is like in Israel. There are deep emotional and psychological wounds that may not heal for generations, and widespread disapproval of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his administration — for not preventing the attacks and for not responding more swiftly once they occurred.

I already knew a little about Israel, much of which I picked up in January 2012 during an impactful trip to the Holy Land along with a handful of other Latino journalists. The visit — which was sponsored by a New York-based group, America’s Voices in Israel, whose mission is to expose journalists, artists and thought leaders to life in Israel — included an hour-long meeting with Netanyahu, who was then in his second term as prime minister.

Netanyahu’s father, Benzion, was a professor who taught history at Cornell University. He developed an expertise in studying Sephardic Jews, a subset of the Jewish diaspora associated with the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal). I could detect in the prime minister a genuine curiosity about Latinos, which I’m sure stemmed in part from the respect he had for his father.

A few weeks before my trip, I was invited — along with a couple dozen other Latinos — to a holiday party at the Washington residence of then-Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren. Raised in New Jersey and educated at Columbia and Princeton, Oren greeted us with a toast: “There is no more important relationship to Israel than the one with the United States. And we in Israel know that, in setting the future course for the United States, there is no more important group than Latinos.”

It should be easy for Mexican Americans to identify with Jews. Now, I wonder: Are Jews identifying with Mexican Americans?

We both know what it’s like to be killed not because of what you’ve done but because of who you are.

On Aug. 3, 2019, Patrick Crusius — a 21-year-old white supremacist — opened fire at the Cielo Vista Walmart in El Paso with a high-powered assault-style rifle. According to police, he intended to “kill as many Mexicans as possible.” In the end, 23 people were dead and 22 were injured. Almost all the victims were Mexican or Mexican American.

People moved on from that story. I couldn’t. I wrote one column after another about the tragedy.

From that perspective, I can relate to the way some Jewish American columnists feel isolated — as if they’re not being heard.