White Paper on Jewish Voice for Peace
Researched and written
By Arnie Bernstein
Copyright January 2023
Writer credentials: author of nonfiction book Swastika Nation: Fritz Kuhn and The Rise and Fall of the German-American Bund. Panelist for public educational events regarding hate groups, including events sponsored by former Congresswoman Marie Newman, and The Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust in New York; presentations at numerous universities, libraries, public symposiums. Interviewed for his expertise on hate groups by The New York Times, MSNBC, NPR, PBS, BBC Radio, German public television, and numerous podcasts. Member of International Federation of Journalists, Authors Guild, Society of Midland Authors.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: This white paper was written in January 2023, 10 months before the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. It does not cover the numerous actions of Jewish Voice for Peace since the Hamas attack. However, the author does provide additional research on the post-October 7 actions of JVP in an interview with the Bad Jew Podcast.
To state upfront: this document takes no position pro or con on the Israeli government.
Rather, this white paper is a well-documented investigation of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), an organization which claims to support the Palestinian cause and is against Zionism. However, as this study clearly demonstrates, JVP uses this claim to foment antisemitism.
Zionism is commonly defined as self-determination and statehood for the Jewish people in their ancestral homeland, a movement for Jewish safety, security, and survival after the near-destruction of European Jewry during the Holocaust. It supports the right of those in the Jewish diaspora to return to their ancient homeland of Israel. Zionism is commonly thought to have originated with Jewish leader Theodor Herzl in 1896; however, the movement has its genesis in the early 19th century as an outgrowth of many factors and advocated by those of many faiths and nationalities. (For a comprehensive history of Zionism, please check this link at AISH.)
JVP has a different perspective of Zionism, as is their right. JVP states on their organizational website that:
Through study and action, through deep relationship with Palestinians fighting for their own liberation, and through our own understanding of Jewish safety and self-determination, we have come to see that Zionism was a false and failed answer to the desperately real question many of our ancestors faced of how to protect Jewish lives from murderous anti-Semitism in Europe.
JVP says that they acknowledge the roots of Zionism and the vital need for Jewish safety in the wake of the Holocaust. However, JVP’s well-documented actions regarding Jewish safety are something wholly other. As this white paper demonstrates:
- JVP engages in public harassment of Jewish students, professors, and administrators on college campuses throughout the United States.
- JVP attacks vulnerable people through physical and psychological violence, directing their actions to groups that JVP leadership has deemed “carefully chosen target(s).”
- JVP spreads hatred of Jews in social media by using graphics and memes trafficking in antisemitic tropes dating back to the Middle Ages.
- JVP encourages others to join them in spreading hatred of Jews.
- JVP openly lies about the meanings of Jewish holidays and disseminates information that borders on Holocaust denial.
- JVP uses the same graphics, slogans, and hashtags employed by modern Nazi groups and well-known white supremacist leaders.
JVP’s usual response to any accusation about their tactics is that “anti-Zionism is not antisemitism.” While this can be true in some circumstances, anti-Zionism is often used as a pretext for antisemitism and hatred of Jews. In essence, the JVP defense of “anti-Zionism is not antisemitism” amounts to a rhetorical dodge on their part.
What follows is thorough documentation of actions taken by Jewish Voice for Peace. As demonstrated, JVP is anything but a Jewish voice that promotes peace. This study includes links to documentation, screen grabs of JVP social media, and other resources. Much of it is disturbing, including pictures depicting graphic violence, Jews drinking blood, comparisons of Jews to Nazis, Holocaust denial, and white supremacism.
JVP Harassment and Attacks on College Campuses
The first two incidents are anecdotal accounts. They are followed by links to documented links of JVP harassment. All of these accounts and links are pre-October 7, 2023.
- This was related to the author of this white paper by someone who lives in California. This woman’s son, a college junior, writes for the school literary magazine and plays clarinet for an informal Jewish jazz/klezmer combo on campus every once in a while. One day after rehearsal this student was confronted by other students who identified themselves as JVP members. They demanded to know his views on Palestine. He replied, “none of your business.” The student was consequently followed around on campus by these same JVP members, with the obvious intent to intimidate. He also received many late-night phone calls from JVP members, demanding to know his stance on Israel. The whole situation became increasingly frightening—and there was nothing he could do about it. The harassment went on for months. Both the student and his mother were left badly shaken by the nonstop JVP harassment.
- A friend of this document’s author owns a progressive bookstore in a college town of a large Midwestern state. This store is a labor of love, not a profitable endeavor. Consequently, this man runs an insurance agency so he can keep the bookstore open. When you walk into his store, you know exactly where he stands on the Israeli government’s treatment of Palestinians.
This individual attended a pro-immigrant rally on the nearby university campus. The man said that he put on his kippah and wore his Star of David necklace outside his shirt as a show of Jewish solidarity. There were anti-immigrant “protesters” standing outside the perimeter of the rally bearing guns, so you can understand how tense the situation was. When this man walked past a JVP table, set up as part of the day’s events, JVP members yelled at him “get out of here, you Zionist!” He did nothing to confront them nor stop to speak with them. They just saw him walk by and started unwarranted catcalling. They didn’t know who he was nor his political views nor his life devotion to progressive causes. All they did was yell “get out of here, you Zionist!” at someone identifiably Jewish. This individual was disgusted. He fired back at them, “you don’t get to define me,” and left the rally. The irony is that he and these JVP members are on a similar page when it comes to Palestine and the Israeli government. But rather than have a dialogue, the JVP representatives yelled at him “get out of here, you Zionist!”—all because he was wearing a kippah and Star of David. This is not anti-Zionism. This is outright antisemitism.
Additionally, there have been numerous documented incidents of harassment and intimidation of Jewish college students, professors, and administrators by JVP members and allies at college campuses across the United States. This includes widespread intimidation and vandalism outside campus Hillel buildings, which are supposed to be safe spaces for Jewish students to gather in comradery and celebration. A comprehensive list of these attacks is available at AMCHA Initiative, which documents antisemitic incidents on college campuses from 2015 to present. A list confrontations, harassments, and vandalism instigated by JVP is available at this link: AMCHA Initiative
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) is a vigilant watchdog regarding JVP activities, albeit JVP does not consider the ADL a legitimate organization. Regardless, here is the ADL documentation of JVP actions both online and in person: ADL
Additionally, you can do a Google search for stories about JVP actions, all reported by respected news organizations. You will find numerous accounts of Jewish students being harassed by JVP at such schools as Columbia University, UC Berkeley, CUNY in New York, Arizona State University, and other campuses throughout the country.
JVP attack on Jewish Queer Youth
In June of 2017 JVP members infiltrated the group Jewish Queer Youth (JQY), whose members were marching in New York’s annual Celebrate Israel parade. These LGBTQ kids have every right to march in a Celebrate Israel parade. Many of these young people are ostracized from their families and Jewish communities because of their sexuality, so participating in the parade was a brave act by them to come out in public.
Under the pretense that they wanted to join the LGBTQ contingent at Celebrate Israel, JVP members attended pre-parade meetings held by JQY. These moles pretended to be in favor of JQY's right to march in the June 4 Celebrate Israel parade. On parade day, at an appointed time during the procession, the JVP infiltrators began their coordinated attack. They ripped wires out of JQY loudspeakers, screamed slogans, pushed and shoved JQY parade marchers, and physically stood in the way of these LGBTQ kids who wanted to express in public that Judaism is an important part of their identity.
JQY members were terrified by the surprise JVP actions. They did not know if they were being attacked by an anti-LGBTQ group, a Jew-hating organization, or even terrorists. Police took immediate action. Ultimately, five JVP members were arrested. The kids of Jewish Queer Youth continued to march in the parade, rattled by this assault but with heads held high.
After the parade, Seth Morrison, a member of the JVP Board of Directors, sent the following message to Jewish Queer Youth leadership: “We take pride in targeting the entire LGBTQ contingent that happened to include your organization. We have no intention of apologizing for fulfilling our mission.”
Additionally, as reported by The Jewish Daily Forward: “The LGBT group was ‘a carefully chosen target,’ according to Rebecca Vilkomerson, the Executive Director of Jewish Voice for Peace. ‘We wanted to interrupt the parade and bring the message that apartheid and occupation are nothing to celebrate,’ said Craig Willse, a 42 year-old who was part of the protest. ‘It was a non-violent protest,” he added. Willse said that his protest group was composed of Jewish queer and trans people.”
These statements by Morrison, Vilkomerson, and Willse are a brazen admission by JVP leadership that their goal was to deliberately inspire fear rather than win hearts and minds to the stated JVP cause of “peace.” Though Willse declares that the JVP action “was a non-violent protest,” video evidence proves otherwise. JVP’s actions were a combination of physical and psychological violence. Their intent to terrify LGBTQ kids is not an act of protest. It is rationalization for shutting down free speech through aggressive actions against a group of vulnerable kids. Morrison, Vilkomerson, and Willse use the language of a hate group intent on carrying out a planned assault when they call JQY “a carefully chosen target.”
Here are two stories about the attack from the Jewish Daily Forward, one of the country’s oldest and most respected progressive Jewish newspapers:
This is an article about JVP’s assault, published in Tablet, an online progressive Jewish publication:
Watch JVP ambush and terrify members of JQY on YouTube
Enabling Jew hatred on Twitter (now X)
Here is a tweet posted by JVP on January 4, 2023.
Posting this tweet is certainly within JVP’s right, as outlined by Twitter (X) rules and regulations. What follows are three sample responses, as pulled from the comment thread of this tweet. These posts are ugly, hateful, and use slanderous antisemitic images. It would be easy for JVP to monitor their social media posts, and delete from their Twitter (X) feed any responses from Jew haters. However, JVP makes no attempt to monitor their social media threads for antisemitic posts nor remove any offensive comments, thus condoning the use of their platform to propagate hatred and any consequences engendered by these messages. This is tantamount to JVP endorsement of messages spread by Jew haters.
The first meme engages in the vicious blood libels that goes back for centuries: Jews are criminals who have no legitimacy and are a people awash in blood.
The second equates Zionism with Nazism. This is a disgusting comparison: unlike Nazi Germany the Israeli government is not forcing any ethnic group nor religious faith nor nationality to wear yellow stars on their clothing; they do not round up populations from whole towns across many countries, then shove them en masse into cattle cars bound for concentration camps; they do not tattoo these people with numbers, starve and beat them, commit heinous “medical experiments” that use innocents as human guinea pigs in unspeakable tortures, and finally shove victims into ovens to murder and then incinerate. This is what the Third Reich did to European Jewry in their perverse quest to wipe Judaism from the earth. Bad as the situation is Gaza, this is not what is happening in the region. Equating Zionism with the Nazi assembly-line slaughter of millions of Shoah victims—Jews and non-Jews alike—and such a snarky meme, pulled from an old “Scooby Doo” cartoon, is beyond the pale. Furthermore, the hooked nose and beady eyes of the “Zionist cum Nazi” in this meme is a horrible Jewish caricature similar to those found in age-old antisemitic propaganda.
The final meme also relies on a glib caricature, a Jewish male wearing a kippah, the traditional payot of Orthodox Jews, and an Israeli flag shirt to link Judaism with Israel. He cries out “anti-Semitism!” for no reason. The implication is that any and all Jews calling out antisemitism is unwarranted. This is utter nonsense. The automatic declaration that “anti-Zionism is not antisemitism” is a rhetorical dodge. Declaring oneself an “anti-Zionist” does not negate any genuine Jewish hatred.
JVP Twitter and Blood Libels
This meme was posted on the JVP Twitter feed in fall of 2020.
Here are detailed elements of the meme.
These crude caricatures deal in two of the ugliest tropes that have haunted Jews for centuries. The first is a modern-day version of the ancient “blood libel” accusations that Jews are a monstrous people who drink the blood of innocent victims. The blood libel has resulted in mass violence and murder against world Jewry from the Middle Ages, through the Tzarist pogroms, to the horrors of the Third Reich, and beyond. Uncle Sam showering a Jew with money echoes the antisemitic slanders that Jews are nothing more than money-grubbing manipulators. Though it is obvious that these caricatures are supposed to represent IDF soldiers and the Israeli government, there is no mistaking that these figures drinking blood and basking in money are meant to be seen as Jews.
JVP Twitter and “Israel is a Garbage Country” fundraiser
This is a tweet from the JVP student chapter at Portland State University, in Portland, Oregon.
JVP PSU’s self-proclaimed “anti-zionist propaganda” is appalling on many levels. The shirts and buttons are clearly meant to intimidate. The dismissal of Israel as a “garbage country that’s only loved by garbage people” echoes the Third Reich’s mission to consign world Jewry to “the ash heap of history.” The phrase “It (Israel) was founded on ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and settler-colonialism” is a slanderous diatribe with no factual nor historical truth. Referring to the Israeli flag as “a symbol of white supremacy” implicates the Jewish Star of David at the center of the flag as a symbol of racist oppression. The other shirt, “All Zionists Are Racists. Every Single One” is equally horrendous. A university community is supposed to be a place for exchange of ideas in a spirited but civil manner. This “anti-zionist propaganda,” being sold by a university JVP chapter can only be seen as a threat against other students, and certainly not the words of a “voice for peace.”
JVP Twitter and demeaning of Pesach
This is from another JVP twitter feed
This tweet flies in the face of historical record. “Mythical pattern of Jewish history as recurring cycles of oppression and freedom?” Oppression and the fight for freedom is the history of the Jewish people. The battle for Jewish survival is a reality throughout the generations, from slaves in Egypt, to Maccabees fighting for their temple in Jerusalem against invading Grecian armies, to the expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492, to the state-sponsored terrorism of Russian and Eastern European pogroms, to murderous German Third Reich, to the persecution of Soviet Jewry. JVP’s interpretation of Jewish history, twisting it to fit their agenda, is appalling. It is using hatred of Jews to spread outright lies.
JVP Twitter slandering Shoah commemoration and insinuating Holocaust denial
Yom HaShoah, Israel’s Day of Remembrance of the Holocaust and Heroism is held on the 27th day of the month of Nissan in the Hebrew calendar, one week after Pesach (generally at the end of April or beginning of May). The day is dedicated to the memory of the six million Jews killed by the Nazis and to the heroism of Jewish resistance during the Holocaust. The date was set to mark the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising on the eve of Pesach, April 19, 1943. The timing coincides with the uprising and its date on the Hebrew calendar. This is a fact. It is not scheduled by the Israeli government as some sort of insidious plan to maintain a poorly-hidden agenda of a “false Zionist narrative.” JVPs’ declaration that “The Holocaust justifies the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians” is a grotesque obscenity.
The very suggestion that the Shoah is being used by Jews and Israel for ulterior motives is unconscionable. It is a common tactic of Holocaust deniers: Jews exploit the Shoah in conspiratorial means to achieve devious ends. JVP is engaging in the same rhetorical arguments when they claim that Israel manipulates the Shoah to justify what JVP calls “ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.” JVP’s impugnment of the six million slaughtered Jews using this horrific modus is one step short of Holocaust denial.
JVP and “The Mapping Project”
JVP used their social media feeds to spread a map created by BDS Boston. This so-called “mapping project” pinpoints the locations of Jewish institutions that BDS Boston and JVP believe provides “local support for the colonization of Palestine.” The interactive map includes names, addresses, and contact information for Jewish establishments throughout the greater Boston region, including synagogues, cultural centers, schools where children play, and a center for disabled individuals. This “project” encourages “engagement” with what BDS Boston and JVP see as anti-Palestinian factions. Listing Jewish institutions and their contact information in a handy guide is a terrorist’s dream come true. It provides thorough data in an easily-shared format, which sets the stage for anyone to plan and execute potential attacks. Does BDS Boston and JVP have precise knowledge of how every single individual at each of these Jewish spaces thinks about Gaza? No. Regardless, BDS Boston and JVP are widely disseminating this map to encourage confrontation—including the stalking of children and disabled individuals.
JVP similarities to the hate website Stormfront
Stormfront is perhaps the worst of all modern Nazi websites, promoting virulent hatred of Jews and other minorities. The author of this report has seen his distinctive ethnic name highlighted in big red letters on Stormfront in discussions related to his anti-Nazi book, as well as his other writings. The tactic works: over the years he has received periodic threatening emails and phone calls, as you can imagine.
Stormfront is filled with anti-Israel memes, which the author has seen over the course of his many years researching American Nazism. This example from a Stormfront post has also been used by JVP social media. That each of these organizations rely on the same meme to spread their message—unintentionally or not—results in the same propaganda disseminated by both JVP and Stormfront.
JVP and “Jewish Supremacy”
This is a screenshot taken in January 2023 from the JVP website..
Here is a JVP Twitter post from December 29, 2022:
“Jewish Supremacy” and “Jewish Supremacism” are loaded terms. We all know that Twitter has become a bullhorn for Jew hatred, race hatred, Muslim hatred, LGBTQ hatred, and other vile forms of bigotry. The hashtags #JewishSupremacy and #JewishSupremacism thrive on Twitter and other social media platforms, connecting Jew haters around the world with one another. The messages spread via the #JewishSupremacy and #JewishSupremacism hashtags are ugly and frightening. Through Twitter posts like this example, JVP nurtures this hatred against Jews everywhere.
“Jewish Supremacism” is another trope that goes back through the centuries, one that has been used to foment murdering Jews from the Middle Ages, through Tzarist Russia, to the Third Reich, and beyond.
There is another modern case of the term “Jewish Supremacism.” It is the title of a 2002 book by KKK leader David Duke:
Here is a quote from page 12 of the book’s preface:
The excerpt—again, unintentionally or not—is nearly word for word of the same tenor and tone as that of Jewish Voice for Peace messaging.
Conclusion
Standing up to hate groups is a collective human duty—and make no mistake about it: as laid out in this white paper, Jewish Voice for Peace uses the same tools as hate groups. JVP encourages antisemitism, engages in physical and psychological violence, uses social media to spread ancient antisemitic tropes, and employs the same words and language as white supremacists.
Ultimately, Jewish Voice for Peace is not what they claim to be. Collectively, they are not a voice for peace but rather a voice for fomenting antisemitism including hatred of Jews, Israel, and Zionism.
White Paper on Jewish Voice for Peace