StandWithUs released a report on Jan. 7 accusing Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) of being a “shield for hate.”
Formed in 1996, JVP openly opposes Zionism and supports the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, as their platform states: “Anti-Zionism supports liberation and justice for the Palestinian people, including their right to return to their homes and land. Anti-Zionists believe in a future where all people on the land live in freedom, safety, and equality.” The report noted a Jan. 2024 post on X from JVP stating that “when we say free Palestine we mean ALL of Palestine.”
“JVP’s framing of Zionism is deeply misleading,” the report stated. “Zionism represents the Jewish people’s age-old desire to be free in their ancestral homeland. On a political level, it is a liberation movement supporting Jewish rights to self-determination in Israel. Many states around the world are built on similar principles, including numerous democracies where there is a majority population, along with legal protections for minority groups. If they were consistent, JVP would demand that all of these countries be dismantled. They would oppose the creation of a Palestinian state, on the basis that Palestinian self-determination is inherently discriminatory against non-Palestinians. However, in practice the one country JVP seeks to tear down is the world’s only Jewish state.”
“JVP’s framing of Zionism is deeply misleading … Zionism represents the Jewish people’s age-old desire to be free in their ancestral homeland.” – from the report
The StandWithUs report contended that if JVP’s goals were realized and Palestinians were granted the “right of return” then “Israel would be replaced by a majority-Palestinian state.” In that scenario “Jews would be forced to live under the rule of parties like Fatah or Hamas, which dominate Palestinian politics. Both factions promote violent antisemitism through schools, media, and other institutions, and Hamas actively engages in genocidal terrorism. Israeli Jews have every reason to believe that dismantling Israel would be extremely harmful to them, and no reason to trust that their rights would be protected in such a scenario.”
The report proceeds to highlight JVP’s ties to and support for terror, noting that the organization has held events with Samidoun, an organization that has been sanctioned by the United States and Canada for fundraising for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terror group. JVP has signed onto a campaign calling for the release of PFLP Secretary-General Ahmad Sa’adat, who was convicted for assassinating Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam Ze’evi in 2001. JVP has also endorsed a campaign from the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM) calling for the release of Walid Daqqa, who was died in prison in 2024 after he was convicted for commanding a PFLP cell and that abducted and murdered an Israeli soldier in 1984. Other examples cited in the report included JVP’s call to release a member of Palestinian Islamic Jihad as well as an April 2024 Instagram post supporting the Houthi terrorists in Yemen.
Following the Oct. 7, 2023 massacre, JVP has characterized Hamas’ actions that day as “resistance” and blamed for Israel the Hamas-led attack. JVP has since characterized Zionism as Nazism, a tactic that the report describes as “Holocaust inversion,” which the report defined as “an antisemitic tactic in which the genocide Jews faced in the past is used to promote baseless
hatred against Jews today. In reality, nearly half of the people killed in Gaza have reportedly been members of terrorist organizations. During the war, Israel has sent millions of warnings to civilians urging them to evacuate ahead of military strikes, helped deliver over one million tons of humanitarian aid to Gaza, facilitated medical evacuations, and accepted numerous ceasefire proposals from international mediators. It has also opened dozens of criminal investigations into the actions of Israeli soldiers. While none of these facts make the suffering of civilians in Gaza any less horrific, they once again show how JVP fans the flames of this tragic conflict with disinformation.”
The report goes onto assert that JVP shields anti-Israel activists from accusations of antisemitism, as the group claims that such accusations are aimed and silencing criticism of Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians. But the report alleges that JVP itself has promulgated antisemitism through, among other things, its Deadly Exchange campaign falsely blaming “police brutality against people of color in the U.S. on exchange programs with Israel, led by Jewish organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). This echoed a long and deadly history of conspiracy theories scapegoating Jews for the worst injustices in society.” The campaign “helped influence the shooter who murdered Jews in a New Jersey deli in December, 2019,” per the report, and prompted antisemitic statements from figures like Louis Farrakhan and Linda Sarsour.
The report also notes that JVP allows for non-Jewish members and that its rabbinical council consists of a rabbi who met with then-Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2008 and another who “denied the Oct. 7 atrocities, arguing that the IDF, not Hamas, killed most of the Israeli citizens, and dismissed Hamas’ mass rape of Israeli women.” A California JVP chapter created an image of a seder plate with Hebrew text going from left to right, the opposite direction of how Hebrew is supposed to be read. Additionally, the report points out that “one of the primary locations of the people managing JVP’s Facebook page was Lebanon” and that “JVP’s communications director worked at numerous organizations in Beirut for at least 17 years.” The report also lists several organizations with ties to Lebanon and Iran that JVP has received funding from and calls for further investigation.
“JVP’s harmful rhetoric and alliances make it clear they are not a voice for peace,” StandWithUs CEO and Co-Founder Roz Rothstein said in a statement. “This organization fuels hate and shields extremists from accountability, while doing nothing to bring about peaceful coexistence. To help fight rising antisemitism, the public, media, and leaders across our society must finally recognize JVP’s dangerous agenda and reject it.”
JVP did not immediately respond to the Journal’s request for comment.
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