‘Jewish Voice for Peace’ is Neither

OPINION

What’s in a name?

The group calling itself “Jewish Voice for Peace” is neither Jewish nor for peace.

It is, rather, a front for promotion of Jew-hatred and antisemitic propaganda.

The name of the group is a sick joke and a childish though deadly and evil ploy to attempt to convey and promote division within the Jewish community, to create the false impression that there are large numbers of Jews who believe the State of Israel has no right to exist, and to promote the insanity that the October 7 war crimes of Hamas were somehow “justified” by the history of the region.

The Judean published a since-deleted “tweet” from an individual who appears to have forgotten to switch to the “Jewish Voice for Peace” account before publishing this comment:

Roots Metals has published a compelling piece, “stop sharing JVP,” that offers documentation about “Jewish Voice for Peace” being a deceptive front for promotion of Jew-hatred.

The author writes, in part:

Over the years, the wider Jewish community has questioned JVP’s alleged Jewishness. Its views are, statistically, not representative of the Jewish community as a whole. Many of its chapters were started by non-Jews. In 2019, Facebook’s transparency feature revealed that the JVP page administrator was based in Lebanon, a fact that JVP later tried to hide. There are around 20 Jews living in Lebanon today, all of them elderly, which makes it unlikely that any of them have managed the page. JVP has also hosted panels on “antisemitism” ran by people who are not only not Jewish, but have also been accused of antisemitism in the past.

The Anti-Defamation League has published a relevant and similar piece, Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP): What You Need to Know.

The ADL writes, in part:

On October 7, 2023, the day Hamas terrorists invaded Israel and killed 1,400 Israelis, and kidnapped at least 203 people (including Americans), most of whom were civilians, JVP released a statement claiming that “the source of all this violence” was “Israeli apartheid and occupation — and United States complicity in that oppression.” In interviews, JVP Executive Director Stefanie Fox and JVP Action Political Director Beth Miller both said that Israel 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.”

In the weeks following the invasion and brutal attacks on Israelis, JVP chapters have been active on social media and have sponsored or co-sponsored dozens of anti-Israel rallies across the United States. In several instances, JVP or attendees/speakers at its rallies have expressed explicit support for terror against Israel or even overt antisemitism…

*****

Anyone can create an entity with any name, such as, “Gazans Against Hamas”, “Palestinian Arabs for Israel”, or “White Christian Professors Against Students for Justice in Palestine.”

Often the more “persuasive” a name is trying to be, the more an organization’s motives and values are the opposite of what the name would imply.

For example, the Massachusetts branch of “Peace Action” expressed support for The Mapping Project, a de facto hit list of Jewish organizations and people in the Greater Boston Area:

*****

“Peace Action” is a brazenly Orwellian name, reminiscent of The Ministry of Truth, The Ministry of Peace, and the Ministry of Love in the novel, 1984.

Having corresponded at length with executives at the national and Massachusetts branches of Peace Action, I believe they promote hatred of Jews, and have little or no genuine interest in taking any kind of “action” toward “peace”, but indulge spinelessly in “virtue-signaling” and egregious double standards, declaring out of one side of their mouth that sanctions against Iran would be bad because they would hurt innocent people, while from the other side of their mouth supporting sanctions against Israel.

The Anti-Defamation League wrote about The Mapping Project, which MA Peace Action supported:

• • The Mapping Project is an interactive map that pinpoints the locations of Jewish communal and other community organizations in Massachusetts, including ADL. The map’s lines extend outwards to any group, organization, educational institution or government official those communal organizations  may have interacted with, in an attempt to expose and isolate those who they assert are responsible for “the colonization of Palestine” and other perceived “harms that we see linked, such as policing, US Imperialism and displacement.” In all, approximately 500 organizations are named.  This BDS Boston-endorsed Project includes a disturbing and antisemitic call to “dismantle” and “disrupt”most of Boston’s Jewish community and concludes with a thinly veiled threat that “every entity has an address, every network can be disrupted.” 

Perhaps “Peace Action” and “Jewish Voice for Peace” could together create an umbrella entity, “Organizations Using Virtue-Signaling Names to Deflect from Our Jew-Hatred.”

At least that would be genuine.