Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP)

Key Points

• Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) is a radical anti-Israel and anti-Zionist activist group that advocates for the eradication of Zionism and the boycott of Israel.
• JVP does not represent the mainstream Jewish community, which it views as bigoted for its association with Israel.
• JVP promotes messaging that descends into the antisemitic vilification of “Zionists,” and can include classic antisemitic tropes and support for terrorists.
• JVP blamed Israel for the Hamas October 7, 2023, terrorist attack.
• JVP chapters have sponsored or co-sponsored dozens of anti-Israel rallies across the United States since 10/7 and many more prior.
• About 30 JVP chapters are active on college campuses, where members often work closely with fellow anti-Israel student group Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) to promote anti-Israel initiatives, messages and events.
• JVP is a strong proponent of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement and has, over the years, participated in several campaigns that push anti-Israel boycotts and divestment resolutions. It is also part of a campaign to force universities to ban Hillel on college campuses.
• JVP often links Israel or Zionism to prominent social justice issues in the U.S. -- like police brutality – in efforts to falsely implicate them in violations or offenses in the U.S.

Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) is the largest and most influential anti-Zionist Jewish group in the United States. JVP works to demonstrate Jewish opposition to Zionism and the State of Israel and to steer public support away from the Jewish State. It has adopted the view that Zionism – the belief in the self-determination of the Jewish people in their ancient homeland – is fundamentally racist.

It also promulgates the view that Jews who identify even tangentially with Israel are motivated by white supremacy, Jewish racial chauvinism and religious supremacism.

Some JVP members, leaders and chapters propagate rhetoric or sponsor events where participants express support for violence or terror against Israelis and vilify Zionist Jews. In a few instances, participants at rallies and events co-sponsored by the group have espoused blatant antisemitic tropes, including modern manifestations of the blood libel.

Over the course of its history, JVP has played a visible role in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and uses its Jewish identity to shield some in the anti-Israel movement from allegations of antisemitism and provide a veneer of legitimacy.

JVP also intentionally exploits Jewish culture and rituals to reassure its supporters that opposition to Israel does not contradict Jewish values.

The group organizes or co-organizes rallies and demonstrations that call for an end to U.S. support for Israel and the eradication of Zionism.

In the wake of Hamas’s mass terror massacre in southern Israel on October 7, 2023, JVP blamed Israel for the attack, claiming in a same-day statement that “the source of all this violence” was “Israeli apartheid and occupation — and United States complicity in that oppression.”

Some of JVP’s leaders have also released their own statements justifying the attack.

Demonstrators from Jewish Voice for Peace protest the war in Gaza at the Canon House Building on July 23, 2024 in Washington, DC. (Tierney L. Cross/Getty Images)

There is conflicting information about the number of chapters the group has. JVP told Moment Magazine in August 2024 that it has around 35 chapters and 32,000 “active dues-paying members” across the U.S. However, its website claims to have over 80 chapters and small “pods,” including over 30 on college campuses. 

As a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, JVP also receives funding from various of foundations and networks that back progressive causes and anti-Israel projects. In the calendar year 2022 (the most recent year for which information is available), JVP reported total revenue of $3,322,296, 36 employees, and roughly 1,500 volunteers, according to publicly available tax filings.

JVP also runs a 501(c)(4) advocacy organization, JVP Action, that serves as a PAC (political action committee) to back and endorse political candidates.

History

JVP was founded in 1996 in the San Francisco Bay area by three UC Berkeley undergraduate students. By 2003, the group expanded to include full-time staff and a dedicated office in Oakland, CA.

With a stated mission to move "U.S. Jews into solidarity with the Palestinian freedom struggle,” JVP became one of the primary organizers of BDS campaigns in the U.S. and has partnered with other anti-Israel groups to organize BDS initiatives on and off college campuses.

Its position on the issue grew more radical over time and in 2015, it adopted all aspects of the movement’s goals and agenda.

Its ideological positions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have also shifted. In the past, the group was committed to a two-state solution. Currently, JVP has stated that it doesn’t believe “it is our place to tell Palestinians and Israelis what the best political outcome is toward a just, equitable, and sustainable peace.”

The group also initially welcomed differing views on Zionism. Co-founder Julia Caplan said in an August 2024 interview, “One of the major decisions we had to make in JVP was whether we were Zionists or not. And in those early days we decided it was more important to follow principles than to have a label, so we didn’t take a stand.”

By 2019, however, it adopted an explicitly anti-Zionist position.

Structurally, JVP has also expanded over time to include subgroups for community outreach. It established a “Rabbinical Council” in 2011, made up of anti-Zionist rabbis and cantors, that promotes various anti-Israel and anti-Zionist initiatives under the guise of “Jewish thought.” The organization says the council serves as a “prophetic Jewish voice inside the Palestine solidarity movement.”

In 2016, JVP and an “autonomous group” called the “Jews of Color and Sephardi/Mizrahi Jews (JOCSM)” announced a partnership that soon became the JVP Black, Indigenous, Jews of Color, Sephardi and/or Mizrahi Jews (BIJOCSM) network for outreach to anti-Zionist Jews of color and Sephardi-Mizrachi descent.

Around 2021, JVP also set up a “Havurah Network” of anti-Zionist synagogues that work “towards Palestinian liberation and a Judaism beyond Zionism through practice and rituals.”

JVP is led by executive director Stefanie Fox, who joined the group as an organizer and was appointed to the leadership role in 2020.

Post October 7

In the days following the October 7 attack, JVP leaders and chapters justified the terror massacre and Hamas’s actions which included the killings of 1,200 people across southern Israel and the abduction of about 250, including children and elderly people.

In interviews, executive director Fox and JVP Action Political Director Beth Miller both blamed Israel for the attack and claimed it was the “root cause” of the violence.

Prominent JVP activist Ariel Koren said she believed Hamas’s actions were consistent with “Palestinians’ right to resist.”  

This support was also evident on social media. On the day of the attack, JVP DC Metro shared a post on Instagram pointing followers to Resistance News Network, a radical antisemitic and anti-Zionist English-language channel on Telegram that promotes violence and terrorism against Israel. JVP Indiana reposted a visual from USPCN, a prominent and radical anti-Israel activist group founded in 2006 that has on numerous occasions expressed support for terror and promoted antisemitic tropes, that read, “Our people are waging an anti-colonial, anti-occupation, and anti-Zionist liberation struggle.”

At national demonstrations and rallies co-organized by JVP in the immediate aftermath, speakers used inflammatory rhetoric and were dismissive of those in Israel who were killed, kidnapped and assaulted and focused on the Palestinians’ right to armed resistance.

At a rally in San Francisco on October 8, 2023 co-sponsored by JVP Bay Area, one of the speakers said: “The resistance is liberating land that has been occupied for 75 years. The intifada lives and Palestine lives!”

At an October 12, 2023 rally in Philadelphia co-sponsored by JVP Philly, one speaker decried the “Zionist biased coverage of Israel's slaughter of over 1,000 Palestinians in the past six days...” and the supposed “intentional media blackout on Palestinian resistance and our local media is a part of an organized effort to enable Zionist propaganda machine to dehumanize Palestinians and dispossess them of their land.”

At a rally in Providence, RI co-sponsored by JVP Rhode Island, activists engaged in blatant antisemitism, chanting, “Hey hey, ho ho, the Yahudi [Jews] have got to go.”

On college campuses, JVP chapters played a key role alongside SJP in organizing protests that created hostile environments, especially for Jewish students. For example, at a February 2024 protest at Hunter College co-sponsored by the local JVP chapter, activists chanted, "We say no to genocide, Jews on campus pick a side.” These chants echoed age-old antisemitic tropes accusing Jews of disloyalty. 

Some of this harassment worsened over time to the point where some universities took action. Columbia University suspended its JVP and SJP chapters in November 2023 for “threatening rhetoric and intimidation.” George Washington University suspended its JVP chapter in August 2024. In October 2024, Cornell University banned four anti-Israel activists from campus for three years, including the vice president of the university’s JVP chapter.

JVP chapters were also prominent on campuses during the 2024 spring encampments, demanding universities divest from Israeli institutions and businesses. Some of these encampments restricted access to Jewish students, and their messaging featured terror figures or symbols.

An Instagram post by JVP New Haven shows protest signs set up at Yale University, including an illustration of PFLP terrorist Leila Khaled. (Source: Instagram/Screenshot)

In a call to action regarding the UCLA encampment, JVP Los Angeles acknowledged in August 2024 that “as a matter of safety, the encampment instituted a ‘no Zionists’ policy.”

Off campus, various JVP chapters were also involved in actions that vilified Zionists or dismissed antisemitism.

In February 2024, JVP Bay Area advocated against California State Bill 1277 (which codifies the Holocaust and Genocide Education Collaborative so that it becomes a permanent collaborative and doesn't need to seek funding every year), stating, “Keep Zionist Propaganda Out of California Education!”

On a few occasions in 2024, JVP co-sponsored protests outside U.S synagogues that hosted events on real estate properties in Israel and which featured extreme anti-Zionist rhetoric and intimidation.

At the protest in front of a synagogue in Teaneck co-organized by JVP in New Jersey in March 2024, attendees displayed signs with messages such as “Zionism = terrorism” and “Zionist greed,” and chanted, “Say it loud, say it clear; we don’t want no Zionists here.”

A participant was seen carrying a sign of notorious PFLP terrorist Leila Khaled with a rifle. Later that month, again in Teaneck, a participant at a JVP co-sponsored protest was seen wearing a hoodie emblazoned with the image of Abu Obeida, the spokesperson for Hamas’s military wing.

In July 2024, anti-Israel demonstrators organized by JVP in Michigan protested in front of a Holocaust Museum demanding it “take a stand against genocide and oppression, make a statement supporting a ceasefire, and divest from companies funding Israel’s human rights violations.”

Rene Lichtman, a speaker at the JVP-sponsored event said: “An institution like this pretends that they’re very objective and scholarly and academic. … And we’re saying no ...You’re part of the whole Israel lobby that indoctrinates people day after day that come here...And I know that because I’ve been working at this Holocaust Museum for 10-15 years...”

In September 2024, Abby Stein, a member of JVP’s Rabbinical Council, attended a meeting in New York City of religious and academic leaders convened by the Islamic Republic of Iran, which the Iranian president attended. Iran’s regime, which has for years called for the destruction of Israel, has been a key backer of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, as well as Lebanon’s Hezbollah and the Yemen-based Houthis, all of whom have continued to attack Israel since October 7, 2023. Iran has attacked Israel directly twice in 2024, first in April and again in October.

Previous Notable Expressions of Support for Violence/Terrorism

Some JVP activists and event participants have justified or promoted violence and/or terror organizations like Hamas, as well as terrorist figures, including PFLP terrorists Leila Khaled and Rasmea Odeh. Others have minimized or justified terrorism, including by alleging that the idea of “civilian Israelis” is a “myth.

• In April 2022, JVP Detroit reposted a carousel on Instagram that claimed that there are no Israeli civilians, and all Israelis may be treated as soldiers on the battlefield. The caption read: "Zionist settlers are either current or future soldiers in the IOF’s reserves or veterans."
• In August 2017, JVP hosted and honored PFLP member Rasmea Odeh at its 2017 conference, calling her “a feminist leader… [who has] survived decades of Israeli and U.S. government persecution and oppression.” Odeh was convicted in an Israeli court in 1970 for being involved in a 1969 bombing that killed two Hebrew University students. She pled guilty to knowingly making false statements about that history in her U.S. immigration and naturalization applications in April 2017 and was deported.
• In June 2017, JVP ran a paid advertisement in the Jewish newspaper The Forward featuring an extended quote from Marwan Barghouti alleging that Israel has purposely inflicted suffering on Palestinians who are incarcerated in Israeli prisons. The ad tellingly omitted the fact that he is a terrorist convicted of murdering five Israelis.

JVP on Antisemitism

Despite numerous polls showing that the vast majority of Jews around the world have an affinity with Zionism (the existence of Israel) JVP claims it opposes the “conflation of Zionism with Judaism,” insists that Zionism is nothing more than “a political ideology,” and states that “anti-Zionism is not antisemitism.”

JVP’s ongoing insistence that virtually all criticism of Israel should be shielded from accusations of antisemitism gives cover to antisemites who couch their malice toward Jews as mere anti-Zionism.

JVP’s staunch anti-Zionist positions place it squarely in opposition to mainstream American Jews and Jews worldwide, most of whom view a connection with Israel as an integral part of their social, cultural or religious Jewish identities. In an April 2021 interview, former executive director Rebecca Vilkomerson said, “We orient ourselves to being good partners to our partners rather than [having] good standing in the Jewish community.”

JVP leaders believe that expressing support for Israel’s existence as a Jewish state, or not challenging mainstream Jewish organizations that support Israel, must also be viewed as an implicit attack on people of color and all marginalized groups in the U.S. The organization’s energetic proselytizing of this view – especially among other social justice groups -- has created a hostile environment for many progressive Jews.

Many left-wing groups have uncritically accepted JVP’s anti-Zionist positions, elevating their harsh rhetoric related to Israel and Zionism and furthering the widespread antisemitic vilification and ostracization of many American Jews who identify as Zionists.

At a February 2024 rally in Austin, Texas, a JVP participant said, “It's really critical that we be visible in this struggle because there's so much Zionist propaganda that is maintained by a large majority of the Jewish community in the United States so it's very important that we show up and speak up for human rights for all people and to show the world that not all Jews are Zionists.”

More troubling, JVP’s dissemination of the view that Israel and its U.S. supporters are fundamentally racist oppressors of non-Jews has the effect of perpetuating antisemitic tropes like the blood libel.

For example:

• In May 2022, the national JVP organization posted a cartoon on Instagram depicting Israeli soldiers joyously drinking the blood of dead Palestinians.
• In a May 2021 rally in Los Angeles co-hosted by JVP-LA, American Muslims for Palestine, Palestinian Youth Movement and others featured a doctored photo of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with a Star of David drawn on his forehead and blood dripping out of his open mouth, standing over the body of a bloodied Palestinian child. Text on the poster read “Can’t Get Enough Save Palestinian Kids.” A separate section of the same banner depicted deceased Palestinian children with accompanying text, “The Zionists=Palestinian Children Killers.”

A screenshot from a 2022 post by JVP with a cartoon depicted Israeli soldiers joyously drinking the blood of dead Palestinians. (Screenshot/Instagram)

At a March 2024 New Orleans rally in which JVP was a participant, a banner was seen that read “you have blood on your hands” alongside red handprints and a Star of David, suggesting that Judaism itself is responsible for bloodshed.

Statements That Vilify Zionism and Zionists

JVP has often espoused language that attempts to sever Zionism and Zionists from any left-wing movements for social justice. JVP activists and rally-goers have compared Zionists to Nazis; equated Zionists with terrorists; and alleged that one cannot be Zionist and anti-racist.

In October 2024, JVP’s Rabbinical Council released statement comparing the situation in Gaza to the Holocaust and specifically the Warsaw Ghetto, saying “"We must ask ourselves who we are: will we be like the courageous ‘righteous gentiles’ who risked their personal safety to protect and save Jewish lives during the Nazi holocaust? Or will we behave like those who ‘didn’t want to get involved’ or joined the Nazi party enthusiastically? There is no middle ground.”

At a JVP co-organized gathering during a July 2024 Cleveland City Council meeting, a speaker said, "I don't see Zionists, I see Nazis."

This type of rhetoric goes back years.

A speaker at a May 18, 2022, rally in Washington D.C. co-sponsored by JVP-DC, SJP and the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee told the crowd that just like “as Muslims, as Arabs, we condemn ISIS because they operate under the guise of Islam…Zionists are likewise fucking terrorists because they operate under the guise of Judaism. They’re not Jewish.” The crowd responded by chanting “Zionists are terrorists.”

At a May 2021 rally in New York City hosted by JVP, AMP, PYM, Palestine Solidarity Alliance of Hunter College, NY4Palestine (a collection of groups in which John Jay College SJP is a member) and others, a protestor held a sign reading: “The Nazis are still around, they just call themselves Zionists now.”

In April 2019, JVP at Portland State University sold t-shirts with inflammatory messages to promote an event with anti-Israel academic Norman Finkelstein. One shirt read: “Israel is a garbage country that’s only loved by garbage people. It was founded on ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and settler-colonialism. Its flag is a symbol of white supremacy.” 

Another t-shirt proclaimed, “All Zionists are racists. Every single one.”

JVP has also played a key role in organizing protests and messaging that target Hillel, the premier Jewish on-campus organization that supports Jewish life at hundreds of colleges across the United States and abroad, calling for Hillel to be “boycotted and isolated” due to its embrace of Zionism.

In April 2022, Rabbi David Mivasair, a member of JVP’s Rabbinical Council, claimed on X that “Hillel has been occupied by Zionism” and “should be boycotted and isolated.”

This messaging has picked up pace since the October 7, 2023 attack.

In February 2024, in announcing a protest at Hunter College to declare “Zionist donors and financiers out of Jewish campus life” organizers including JVP Barnard/Columbia wrote: “Hillel International has played a critical role in indoctrinating Jewish youths into Zionism and distorting values of Jewish community…We call upon New York City Jewish students, alumni, staff, and faculty, to join us in raising our voices against this insidious multi-billion-dollar project and to join the call in divesting from Zionism, standing in solidarity with Palestine, and building new Jewish campus spaces free from racist violence.”

JVP also often links Israel to prominent social justice issues in the U.S. -- like police brutality – in an attempt to implicate Israel or Zionism in violations or offenses committed here.  For example, after the alt-right rally in Charlottesville in August 2017, JVP called Zionism akin to white supremacism and compared Richard Spencer’s white nationalism to Jewish nationalism.   

JVP’s so-called “Deadly Exchange” campaign in 2017 sought to blame Israel for police brutality on American streets. This strategy has allowed JVP to establish common ground with activist groups dealing with American social justice issues, while also demonizing Israel among new constituencies. It has also distracted from advancing progress on underlying and important civil rights issues, such as police-community relations in the U.S.

Disparagement of Jewish Rituals and Celebrations And Exploitation of Jewish Tradition

In its written materials, events and presentations, JVP takes care to reinforce that its anti-Israel efforts are driven by Jewish values. In this vein, JVP often circulates anti-Israel materials that have specific Jewish themes and recall Jewish holidays or traditions.

JVP activists have consistently misrepresented and disparaged Judaism, Jewish rituals, celebrations and holidays by directly tying them to oppression and mistreatment of Palestinians. In the process, they have ignored or questioned the rights of Jews to observe, commemorate and celebrate their religion and history.

In a zine for Tisha b'Av (a fast day that commemorates the destruction of the two ancient Jewish temples in Jerusalem and the Jewish people’s exile from the land of Israel) that resurfaced in August 2024, Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb, a member of the JVP Rabbinical Council, wrote that prayers, which are typically said in Hebrew, would be in English or Arabic. “Hearing Hebrew language can be deeply traumatizing for Palestinians... It is not our place to redeem our tradition on the backs of Palestinians,” she claimed.

In October 2024, campus JVP chapters attempted to set up sukkahs, with "Gaza Solidarity"  messaging on the walls, around their campuses, with varying degrees of success, calling administration’s efforts to take them down suppression of their speech.

That same month, ahead of Yom Kippur, JVP Bay Area performed a public “tashlich” in front of the San Francisco JCRC, throwing bread at the building, to “to cast off zionism [sic]” and to “expose the sins of the JCRC and the Jewish Federation,” mainstream Jewish organizations that serve the community.

In April 2024 for Passover, JVP activists at the University of California, Los Angeles, drew ridicule after releasing an image of a tablecloth that would function as their seder plate, with all the Hebrew on all the wording written backwards.

A screenshot of a JVP LA post showing the ‘Seder’ plate with backward Hebrew. (Source: Screenshot/Instagram)

The 2024 JVP Haggadah, “Exodus from Zionism” is an inversion of most Haggadahs used by Jewish communities around the world for Passover and antithetical to mainstream Jewish observation of Passover. It contains implicit antisemitism, explicit anti-Zionism and other problematic elements.

• Implicit antisemitism is present in a section titled "10 Spiritual Plagues of Genocidal Zionism," which alleges that American Jews "sacrifice [their] own divinity" by supporting Israel in 10 ways, including "loss of humanity" and "soul loss."
• In another section, the Haggadah explicitly asserts that Passover should be seen as one of the Jewish “celebrations of genocide” that should be replaced.
• There are several calls to support Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) to isolate Israel.

JVP BDS Campaigns

This is a condensed timeline of JVP’s BDS activities since its establishment:

• 2001: JVP called for the suspension of U.S. military aid to Israel, and a recalibration of economic aid “based on actual need and subjected to normal congressional supervision.” -
• 2005: JVP issued a “Statement on Selective Divestment” stating that while Israel “deserves sanctions” for its continued occupation of Palestinian land, though it said it was not ready to call for general divestment from Israel or a broader boycott of all Israeli companies.
• 2010 through 2013: JVP supported and participated in various campaigns that pushed BDS including against financial services giant TIAA-CREF, SodaStream.
• 2014: JVP successfully lobbied the Presbyterian Church to divest from companies that did business in Israel.
• 2016: JVP pressured Airbnb to not allow homes located in the West Bank to be included in the service’s listings. In keeping with its practice of linking anti-Israel activism with progressive political causes in the U. S., JVP used the slogan “Gentrification in the US. Apartheid In Palestine. #stolenhomes.”
• 2017: “Return the Birthright” -- JVP launched a campaign to convince young American Jews to reject a program called “Birthright,” which offers free, ten-day trips to Israel. In a manifesto, JVP argued that “the modern state of Israel is predicated on the ongoing erasure of Palestinians,” and that the Birthright trips are “paid for by the dispossession of Palestinians.” JVP even rejected the notion that young Jews could take the trip but “maintain a critical perspective.”
• 2021: In recent years, the organization has adopted several campaigns, notably the No Tech for Apartheid campaign. In May 2021, Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud executives signed a $1.22 billion contract to provide cloud technology to the Israeli government. JVP, as a part of a broader coalition, organized employees and supporters to encourage the companies to drop the contract. They have helped submit several shareholder proposals to the companies to encourage demands of  “accountability” as well.
• 2023: Boycott Duty Free Americas: As a part of the South Florida for Palestine Coalition, JVP South Florida campaigned in 2021 to encourage a boycott of Duty Free Americas, and other companies owned by the Falic family due to their financial support of Israel settlements. In 2023, JVP launched a national campaign against the organization.
• 2024: JVP Sacramento shared a teach-in in July 2024 about the Boycott Sadaf campaign, spearheaded by USPCN, a prominent and radical anti-Israel activist group founded in 2006 that has on numerous occasions expressed support for terror and promoted antisemitic sentiment. The boycott against the Jewish-owned food company is notable for its anti-Mizrahi tropes and antisemitism.
• 2024: Launched in May 2024, the Break the Bonds campaign seeks to persuade “local governments, state governments, unions, pension funds, religious institutions, and other institutions” to divest their investments in Israel Bonds.

Funding

Jewish Voice for Peace receives money from various sources, though it claims to be primarily funded by small-dollar donors, with an average donation of $60.

If its membership information is accurate, JVP brings in close to $600,000 annually in national dues. Local chapters can also set their own dues.

JVP is a long-time grantee of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund (RBF), and its funding constitutes some of the most significant institutional giving to the group. RBF has given JVP almost half a million dollars in recent years: $150,000 over 36 months in 2023, $165,000 over 24 months in 2021, and $175,000 over 24 months in 2019.

In 2023, JVP also received a $500,000 grant from the Lannan Foundation and a one-time donation of $50,000 from the Kataly Foundation.

In 2022, the Tides Foundation gave JVP $61,000, the Proteus Fund donated $12,500, and $225,000 was granted from the Foundation to Promote Open Society.