Jewish groups condemn Coast Guard for secret swastika policy

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After the Washington Post reported last month that the Coast Guard was reclassifying swastikas and nooses to no longer be considered hate symbols, Jewish leaders voiced their objections.

The Coast Guard’s acting commandant, claiming the report was inaccurate, sought to assure them. There would be no change to its categorization of the symbols, Admiral Kevin Lunday told Rabbi Jonah Dov Pesner in emails with the head of the Union for Reform Judaism’s Religious Action Center.

Lunday also issued a memo giving an explicit directive not to change them.

For a time, he seemed to put fears at ease. But this week, another Washington Post report revealed that the Coast Guard had, indeed, quietly gone through with the change. The Nazi insignia and the noose, a symbol closely associated with lynchings, were now labeled as “potentially divisive,” downgraded from hate symbols.

The policy had been codified in the Coast Guard’s updated workplace harassment manual on Monday.

Jewish groups 'deeply disappointed and 'outraged' by policy reversal
Now, Jewish groups are sounding off again, and they’re furious.
“I am outraged and baffled as to how the policy change has, in fact, occurred on your watch,” Pesner wrote in an open letter to Lunday viewed by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

The rabbi said the admiral had assured him, “The swastika has always been and remains a prohibited symbol of hate in the Coast Guard.” Now, Pesner said, he was doubting the sincerity of the exchange.

“Was your initial reply an outright falsehood?” Pesner asked. “In the last month, has USGC suddenly discovered an affinity for symbols under which millions were murdered, enslaved, oppressed, or otherwise dehumanized? Is there another justification for this newly adopted policy?”

He concluded, “The damage the USGC has done to itself and the United States through this new policy is enormous.”

In an open letter to Lunday on Thursday, leaders of Jewish War Veterans of the United States of America said the group was “deeply disappointed” by the apparent policy reversal.

“The Coast Guard must require active accountability,” Scott Stevens, the group’s National Commander, wrote in the letter shared with JTA.

Jewish War Veterans had previously posed “four questions” to Lunday seeking more information about how the swastika policy was changed in the first place; but, Stevens told JTA, the group never heard back. In an interview, Stevens expressed surprise and alarm.

“Now, several weeks later, we’re back to the original outrage,” he told JTA. “It makes no sense. Is this bad staffing? Was this intentional? Just what is going on in that office?”

If Lunday was truly unaware of the policy change, Stevens said, “then he should not be the commandant.”

The Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington also expressed its outrage. “Labeling Nazi swastika symbols and nooses as ‘potentially divisive’ suggests there is some context in which their use is appropriate,” the group’s CEO, Ron Halber, said in a statement. “Nothing could be further from the truth; few symbols have ever conveyed such unambiguous hate.”

The Anti-Defamation League struck a tone of exhaustion, writing on X/Twitter, “Here we go again.”

On the Senate floor, Chuck Schumer, the Jewish Senate minority leader, linked the Coast Guard’s actions to the Hanukkah terror attack in Australia over the weekend.

“Not four days ago, as I mentioned, 15 Jews were slaughtered in cold blood,” Schumer said Wednesday. “And a day later, the Trump administration chose to soften its stance against Nazis and swastikas. Can you believe it? Can it get any lower?”

Schumer also called the policy change “a ‘stand back and stand by’ in the form of an office memo,” referring to Trump’s remarks directed at the Proud Boys, a far-right group, during his 2020 reelection campaign.

Most significantly, one of Schumer’s Jewish colleagues has taken immediate action in an effort to discipline Lunday.

Late Wednesday, Sen. Jacky Rosen joined Sen. Tammy Duckworth, a Democrat and military veteran who is not Jewish, in putting Lunday’s nomination to lead the Coast Guard on hold, citing the swastika policy. Lunday’s bid to become its permanent commandant requires Senate confirmation, with a full vote having been scheduled for this week.

Some Republicans have also expressed concerns about Lunday’s nomination after the swastika stories.

Classifying swastikas and nooses as “potentially divisive,” rather than hate symbols, means that the Coast Guard may not remove them immediately if a service member was found to have used the signage.

The Coast Guard is overseen by the Department of Homeland Security, whose social media accounts in the Trump era have been accused of tweeting antisemitic dog whistles. A DHS spokesperson, while acknowledging rising antisemitism, accused Rosen and others of trying to score “cheap political points.”

“At a time when the threat of antisemitic violence is as widespread as it is right now, using this to politicize one of President Trump’s military nominations is simply disgusting,” spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin told the Washington Post

Late Wednesday, the Coast Guard’s official X account again denied the Washington Post’s reporting, stating, “The Coast Guard maintains a zero-tolerance policy toward hate symbols, extremist ideology, and any conduct that undermines our core values.”

There is too much hate in this society now.

After renewed objections from Jewish groups, the U.S. Coast Guard again removed language referencing a proposed policy that would have stopped classifying swastikas as hate symbols.

The retraction late Thursday, the second such reversal of the Coast Guard’s swastika policy, was enough to prompt Jewish Sen. Jacky Rosen to drop the hold she had placed on Admiral Kevin Lunday’s nomination to permanently lead the organization.

“While I continue to have reservations about the process by which this happened and the confusion created by leadership at the Department of Homeland Security, I am pleased to see that the policy now directly refers to stronger language against swastikas and nooses,” Rosen wrote on the social network X. A Democrat from Nevada, Rosen had placed the hold together with non-Jewish Democrat Tammy Duckworth, a military veteran.

Lunday was swiftly confirmed by voice vote late that evening, prior to the Senate’s adjournment for the holiday season.

Rosen wrote of Lunday, “I appreciate his lifetime of service to our country and look forward to working with him to continue to strengthen anti-harassment policy at the Coast Guard.”

Jewish leaders, including the heads of the Union for Reform Judaism’s advocacy center and Jewish War Veterans, questioned how such a policy could have gone through despite Lunday’s directive. Some told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that Lunday should not lead the Coast Guard if he was truly unaware of the policy change.

Yet Rosen appeared to feel differently after Lunday took additional steps Thursday. According to the Washington Post, Lunday issued a new directive to say the revisions involving swastikas and nooses had been “completely removed” from the policy manual. A copy of the manual itself now obscures the language with a large black bar.

In her statement lifting the hold on Lunday, Rosen added that, because she was still not satisfied with how the swastika issue was handled, she would be placing a hold on a different nomination: Sean Plankey, who had sought to lead the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, a component of the Department of Homeland Security.

“I will keep that hold in place until we see that this new policy works to protect our men and women in uniform from racist and antisemitic harassment,” Rosen wrote. Homeland Security also oversees the Coast Guard.

Plankey was not confirmed before the Senate adjourned, and his nomination would have to be renewed by Trump in the new year.