Jewish Voice for Peace said it will intensify lobbying for an immediate, full U.S. arms embargo on Israel and press for divestment from companies doing business there.

By Vered Weiss, World Israel News

Several U.S.-based activist groups denounced the Trump-brokered Israel–Hamas ceasefire plan on Thursday, saying that it didn’t go far enough in addressing Palestinian grievances and, in some cases, praising armed resistance.

The Bronx Anti-War Coalition called the deal inadequate and declared, “True peace will only be achieved when the zionist entity crumbles and ceases to exist.”

The group also expressed support for “the bravery” of the al-Qassam Brigades, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other factions, adding, “We believe Palestine’s liberation will be achieved through armed resistance, and we honor those who fight for it.”

Jewish Voice for Peace said the agreement does little to remedy what it termed “Israel’s brutal military rule and oppression of Palestinians,” and warned the pact could allow Israel to continue actions JVP described as genocidal without accountability.

The organization said it will intensify lobbying for an immediate, full U.S. arms embargo on Israel and press for divestment from companies doing business there.

American Muslims for Palestine criticized the deal as well, accusing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of tactics that prioritize the return of Israeli prisoners while preparing for further military action in Gaza.

Dr. Osama Abu Irshaid, AMP’s executive director, framed the ceasefire as a narrow fix in a long history of Palestinian dispossession: “History did not begin on October 7, 2023, and it certainly did not end there,” he said, listing what AMP characterized as a century of injustice, displacement and repression.

Samidoun’s international coordinator Charlotte Kates urged supporters to escalate efforts, calling for increased backing for “the Resistance in the next stage.”

She reposted a message describing Hamas as woven into Palestinian institutions — universities, unions and social structures — and urged broader solidarity.

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Nearly 100 protesters were arrested for trespassing, obstructing governmental administration and resisting arrest.

By Vered Weiss, World Israel News

A protest organized by Jewish Voice for Peace occupied the lobby of Trump Tower in Manhattan on Thursday, resulting in the arrest of close to 100 demonstrators.

Those who occupied the lobby wore red shirts and protested on behalf of Mahmoud Khalil, who was arrested Saturday because he “led activities aligned with Hamas, a designated terrorist organization,” said Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin.

Khalil also organized the takeover of campus buildings at Columbia University last year.

The protesters held signs that said “Free Mahmoud, Free Palestine” and “Fight Nazis Not Students.” They also chanted a “Free, free Palestine” slogan.

Some of the demonstrators were hauled away by the police in zip ties and others were herded onto an MTA bus.

NYPD Chief of Department John Chell reported that 98 people were arrested with no vandalism or acts of violence committed.

The protesters who were arrested were charged with trespassing, obstructing governmental administration and resisting arrest.

On X, Jewish Voice for Peace said it organized the protest and stated its goal was to encourage Jews “toward Palestinian liberation and Judaism beyond Zionism.”

“As Jews, we are taking over the Trump Tower to register our mass refusal,” the group wrote.

“We will not stand by as this fascist regime attempts to criminalize Palestinians and all those calling for an end to the Israeli government’s US-funded genocide of the Palestinian people. And we will never stop fighting for a free Palestine. If you come for one, you face us all. Free Mahmoud, free Palestine!”

Khalil’s lawyers reported that ICE agents arrested him on Saturday and said they were taking away his green card and student visa.

Following the arrest, protests in Manhattan have been ongoing while Khalil remains in Louisiana following a federal judge’s ruling to block his deportation until his case is heard.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that Khalil had taken advantage of “the privilege” of coming to study in “one of our nation’s finest universities to “side with terrorists — Hamas terrorists who have killed innocent men, women, and children.”

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‘You can’t be more evil than this’ – Hollywood veteran Wallace Shawn launches into anti-Israel tirade during podcast, claiming ‘the Israelis’ are ‘worse’ than Nazis.

By David Rosenberg, World Israel News

A prominent Hollywood actor with major film and television credits under his belt castigated the Jewish state over the weekend, arguing that because of its wars against the Hamas terror organization in Gaza and terror groups in Judea and Samaria, Israel is worse than Nazi Germany.

Wallace Shawn, 81, appeared Saturday on the podcast of comedian and far-left activist Katie Halper, discussing Israel’s response to the Hamas invasion of October 7th and the ongoing counter-terror operation in Judea and Samaria, accusing Israel of “doing things just as evil” as Nazi Germany.

Shawn, himself a far-left activist and long-time critic of Israel, is a member of the Jewish Voice For Peace, an anti-Zionist advocacy group which has endorsed the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement.

During the 80-minute-long interview, Shawn accused Israel of systematic abuse of Palestinians in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, calling the Jewish state’s behavior “worse” than that of Nazi Germany.

“I mean the Israelis invaded somebody else’s territory, they took people’s homes, and they did many of the things that the Nazis did to the Jews, and they are now really doing it,” said Shawn.

“You can’t be more evil than what they are doing. They are doing evil that is just as great as what the Nazis did. And in some ways, it is worse because they kind of boast about it. Hitler had the decency to try to keep it secret.”

“For some reason, Hitler didn’t want people to know he was doing these things to the Jews. It was a secret. The Israelis are almost proud of it and don’t keep it a secret. And it is demonically evil. You can’t be more evil.”

“Anybody who doesn’t recognize that it is evil, I can’t probably communicate with that person. That might be temporary insanity. I can imagine that some Israelis who are today in support of what their country is doing in Gaza or in the West Bank even, some of them might in 10 years wake up and say ‘Why did I justify that? I shouldn’t have.'”

“If you don’t see that it is evil to do those things to other human beings, you are in a different universe from me, and I don’t know how to communicate with you.”

Shawn and Halper both went on to justify Palestinian antisemitism.

“Every single day, they [Israelis] are making the hatred increase. And the hatred level is something we can’t imagine, probably. What a Palestinian feels is something you and I can barely imagine,” said Shawn.

“And then they pretend it’s because of antisemitism, as opposed to what they’re doing to Palestinians,” Halper responded.

“That myth is going to fade away,” Shawn continued, “because the whole world knows that this is evil. The whole world knows that they are starving people, preventing children from getting medicine on purpose and bombing hospitals. You can’t do worse.”

Shawn even went so far as to appear to justify the October 7th invasion of Israel.

“I mean, it is a little absurd to pretend that that came out of nowhere.”

“The Palestinians have been horribly, horribly treated since 1948…through no fault of their own, really.”

This is not the first time Shawn has publicly denounced Israel.

In October, 2023, he spoke out at an anti-Israel rally in Washington D.C., accusing Israel of seeking “revenge” following the October 7th invasion.

Shawn has appeared in dozens of films in his career spanning six decades, but is perhaps best known for his roles in the films The Princess Bride, Toy Story, Clueless, and television shows including Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and more recently, Young Sheldon.

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JVP, according to federal prosecutors, applied for and received a second-draw loan and loan forgiveness under the Paycheck Protection Program, which was not open to groups primarily engaged in political advocacy.

By Alana Goodman, The Washington Free Beacon

Jewish Voice for Peace, the prominent anti-Israel group that’s organized illegal protests attacking the Jewish state, committed federal loan fraud to obtain a six-figure COVID relief check, the Department of Justice announced.

JVP falsely portrayed itself as a non-political group to obtain over $300,000 in federal paycheck protection funding, federal prosecutors said in a press release.

It was forced to pay $677,634 to the federal government to settle the allegations under the False Claims Act.

The news comes as JVP faces suspensions on college campuses for organizing pro-Hamas rallies. Lawmakers have also called on the IRS to revoke JVP’s tax-exempt status, arguing that the group has supported illegal encampments at universities and “has a history of sharing antisemitic tropes, expressing support for violence and terrorism, and vilifying Zionism and Zionists.”

Just days after Hamas’s Oct. 7 terror attack, meanwhile, JVP organized an illegal protest in which activists infiltrated the Capitol and accused Israel of “genocide.”

JVP, according to federal prosecutors, applied for and received a second-draw loan and loan forgiveness under the Paycheck Protection Program, which was not open to groups primarily engaged in political advocacy.

As part of the application process, JVP claimed it was “not a business concern or entity primarily engaged in political or lobbying activities.”

However, an “investigation revealed that [JVP] was primarily engaged in political activities,” according to the DOJ.

In response to the allegations, the group told authorities its false claims were “inadvertent” and agreed to repay double the loan amount to avoid civil charges and additional financial penalties.

George Soros’s Open Society Foundations has given JVP at least $650,000 since 2017 to fund “human rights” work in the Middle East.

JVP did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“The Paycheck Protection Act Program existed to help businesses survive a devastating global pandemic,” said U.S. Attorney Matthew M. Graves.

“When business owners unfairly drain those funds—either by not reading the eligibility requirements or disregarding them—they put the entire program at risk.”

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Some of these commenters on social media directly compared Israeli Jews to Nazis — an antisemitic trope known as Holocaust inversion.

By Corey Walker, The Algemeiner

Anti-Israel activists are slamming a prominent anti-Israel group for mentioning the death of Israelis in a statement marking the one-year anniversary of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel.

In a lengthy statement which condemned Israel for causing “genocide, death, and destruction” in Gaza, Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) also mourned “every life taken in the past year — Palestinian, Israeli, Lebanese.”

The group also said that “our commitment to Palestinian liberation is grounded in our belief that every human must have the right to live in safety and freedom.”

JVP, a so-called “anti-Zionist Jewish advocacy organization,” was emphatically condemned by pro-Palestinian activists for showing sympathy to the Israeli people in its official statement.

Some of these commenters on social media directly compared Israeli Jews to Nazis — an antisemitic trope known as Holocaust inversion.

“‘Every German life taken during the Auschwitz Uprising was valuable and a loss’” one commenter sarcastically posted on X/Twitter.

“You are the Jewish voice for fascism not for peace. caring for the Nazis makes you a Nazi,” another commenter wrote on the social media platform.

“This is a poorly crafted statement, perhaps not with [malice] but all the same,” an X user said.

“We really should really only be centering Palestinians here and not Israelis! This lessens the impact of any activism, and while I don’t think this is an intentional misstep or attempt at counterinsurgency we still have to take responsibility for our own habits!” another commenter posted.

“Your leadership is going to be hauled in front of a military tribunal when all your fellow Zionists are made to answer for their crimes,” one individual wrote.

JVP, an organization that purports to fight for “Palestinian liberation,” has positioned itself as a staunch adversary of the Jewish state. The organization’s explicit anti-Zionist stance places it among an extreme fringe within the Jewish community.

The group argued in a recently resurfaced 2021 booklet that Jews should not write Hebrew liturgy because hearing the language would be “deeply traumatizing”” to Palestinians.

JVP has repeatedly defended the Oct. 7 massacre of roughly 1,200 people in southern Israel by Hamas as a justified “resistance.”

Chapters of the organization have urged other self-described “progressives” to throw their support behind Hamas and other terrorist groups against Israel while expressing praise for terrorists such as Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.

JVP has also argued that the Israeli state should be dissolved, asserting that its existence actually makes Jews less safe.

Critics of the organization often point out that many JVP chapters do not possess a single person of Jewish faith. The organization does not require a Jewish person to found a chapter and has even helped orchestrate anti-Israel demonstrations in front of synagogues.

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Critics quickly noted that Nakba Day was inaugurated about 35 years after Independence Day and the other major Israeli national holidays near it, making intentionally obscuring it impossible.

By Jack Elbaum, The Algemeiner

A prominent anti-Israel group that has helped organize widespread demonstrations against the Jewish state during the war in Gaza falsely claimed that Israel’s Independence Day was intentionally placed to “obscure” a Palestinian day of remembrance, sparking outrage and criticism.

Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), which wrote the statement, is a fringe anti-Israel organization that did not condemn Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel and has long celebrated terrorism against Israelis.

“Yesterday [Monday], the Israeli government ended its yearly cycle of state holidays that sequentially commemorates the Holocaust, Israeli militarism, and the creation of the state of Israel,” the statement read.

“The sequencing of these holidays,” it argued, “was intentionally designed to conclude and obscure May 15, the day Palestinians mark the ongoing Nakba.” The tweet has garnered more than 7,700 likes.

However, critics quickly noted that Nakba Day — meant to commemorate the Palestinian “Nakba,” or “catastrophe,” of the establishment of the modern state of Israel in 1948 — was inaugurated about 35 years after Independence Day and the other major Israeli national holidays near it, making it impossible for the latter to be intentionally established to desecrate the former.

Yom Haatzmaut and Yom Hazikaron — Israel’s Independence Day and Memorial Day, respectively — were each established by law in 1963. Meanwhile, Yom Hashoah, Israel’s Holocaust Memorial Day, was established in 1959.

In contrast, Nakba Day was officially established by Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in 1998. However, local commemorations and protests were held for years before that.

The term “Nakba” was initially coined by Arab intellectual Constantin Zureiq in his 1948 book, The Meaning of the Nakba. He used the term to refer to the humiliation caused by many Arab armies losing to a small Jewish one in the 1948 war for Israel’s independence.

Over time, however, it has come to refer to the fact that about 750,000 Palestinians became refugees as a result of the war, fleeing amid the Arab invasion.

At the same time, a similar number of Jews became refugees as they were expelled from countries in the Middle East and North Africa.

David May, research manager at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, rebuked JVP’s tweet, arguing, “Nakba Day was placed there specifically as a rejection of Jewish independence in their ancestral land. Its timing marks a continued rejection of the Jewish right to independence and self-rule that the Palestinians desire for themselves. So, the Palestinians placed their holiday around the Israeli ones, not the other way around.”

“A basic knowledge of the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or the thought process of Israelis,” he continued, “would have prevented a tweet assuming that everything Israel does is a callous attempt to erase Palestinians rather than an internal decision based on collective memory.”

“But JVP and their ilk see Israel as an irredeemable evil in a binary world composed of victims and oppressors,” he explained. “Everything they do stems from this basic perception.

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Students for Justice in Palestine leads call to ‘seize campuses’ until universities divest from Israel.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

Anti-Israel groups began coordinating a campaign across numerous colleges over the weekend, calling on student supporters to “seize the campuses” until their institutions divest from the Jewish state.

The national headquarters of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) wrote on social media, “”In the footsteps of our comrades at Rutgers-New Brunswick SJP, Tufts SJP, and Columbia SJP, we will seize our universities and force the administration to divest for the people of Gaza! Join the Popular University, take back our institutions!”

“Our universities have chosen profit and reputation over the lives of the people of Palestine and our will as students,“ the group wrote. However, “The supposed power of our administrators is nothing compared to the strength of the united students, staff, and faculty committed to realizing justice and upholding Palestinian liberation on campus.”

Within minutes of the SJP notice, at least five pro-Palestinian organizations backed their call to action, including Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), Democratic Socialists of America and Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, which is allegedly connected to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a U.S.-designated terrorist group,

Hundreds of students have been occupying the Beinecke Plaza In Yale University since Friday demanding that the Ivy League school support the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel due to the alleged crimes the IDF is committing in the Gaza Strip.

The school’s reaction was “weak,” according to critics.

Dean Hannah Peck sent them a message Saturday night saying they had to leave and take all their belongings and tents with them by 11:30 PM or they “may” face disciplinary measures. They could also come back in the morning, sans tents, she said, to continue their protest. Yet when they didn’t leave by the deadline, it was announced that there would be no arrests, and the crowd was encouraged to come back the next day with “five more friends” each.

This contrasted with the actions of Columbia University last week, which called the police to arrest demonstrators because those who “established the encampment violated a long list of rules and policies” said President Minouche Shafik, and refused to obey “multiple notices” of those violations.

More than a hundred protestors were removed from the campus by the authorities, and dozens of students were suspended, including Rep. Ilhan Omar’s daughter.

Their activity was not completely shut down, however. A man wearing a “F*** Hamas” t-shirt walked silently around a Columbia plaza Saturday with dozens of students calling out “Free, free Palestine,” recording everything with his camera. A student confronted him, saying in part that the group “wants peace and love for everyone in the world” and that “it’s really sad that you don’t seem to agree with that.”

SJP is well-known for its violent rhetoric against Israel and its physical and verbal intimidation of Jewish students and campus groups such as Hillel at many universities throughout the United States.

The group’s activities have exploded since the Hamas invasion of Israel on October 7, taking the lead in anti-Israel and pro-Hamas demonstrations on campus that have left Jewish students wondering about their physical safety and fearful of showing any outward signs of their faith.

The Anti-Defamation League and the Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law sent a letter just three weeks after the war began to almost 200 university presidents in response to the surge of antisemitism on campus, demanding an investigation of SJP for “materially supporting a foreign terrorist organization.”

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Anti-Israel protesters tried to take over building while President Biden was inside.

By World Israel News Staff

Anti-Israel activists were arrested by New York City police Tuesday, after they attempted to take over a building while President Joe Biden was inside.

The incident occurred at Manhattan’s 30 Rockefeller Plaza building in Rockefeller Center, when dozens of members of the anti-Israel Jewish Voice for Peace and other pro-Palestinian demonstrators attempted to seize control of the building’s lobby.

The protest was held as Biden was filming a segment for “Late Night with Seth Meyers” at NBC‘s studios, located inside the building.

Demonstrators managed to take control of the lobby for several minutes, before New York police intervened, arresting dozens of protesters.

According to a statement by the Jewish Voice for Peace, approximately 50 people were arrested during the protest, including Hunter Schafer, a transgender actress best known for her portrayal of a transgender high school student in Euphoria.

The HBO teen drama series is based on an Israeli series of the same name.

“50 Jewish New Yorkers were just arrested disrupting POTUS appearance on Late Night with Seth Meyers at NBC’s Famed 30 Rockefeller Center calling on President Biden to stop supporting the Israeli government’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza,” the Jewish Voice for Peace tweeted.

A spokesperson for the New York Police Department told USA Today that 30 protesters were arrested for trespassing.

Born the son of a Presbyterian minister, Schafer began identifying as a girl during high school, and later became a vocal trans activist beginning a career in modeling and acting.

Video circulating from Tuesday’s protest, Schafer can be seen wearing a black shirt bearing the words “Cease-fire Now,” as she and other demonstrators chanted “No more weapons, no more war, cease-fire is what we’re fighting for.” Schafer held up a sign reading “The whole world is watching” during the protest.

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Suspended groups were instrumental in organizing anti-Israel protests on Columbia’s campus since Hamas invaded Israel last month and killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians.

By The Algemeiner Staff

Columbia University in New York City has suspended Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) as official student groups on campus through the end of the fall semester.

Gerald Rosberg, senior executive vice president of the university, made the bombshell announcement in a statement on Friday afternoon.

“This decision was made after the two groups repeatedly violated university policies related to holding campus events, culminating in an unauthorized event Thursday afternoon that proceeded despite warnings and included threatening rhetoric and intimidation,” said Rosberg, who also serves as chair of Columbia’s Special Committee on Campus Safety.

Hundreds of students walked out of class at Columbia on Thursday, demanding an immediate ceasefire to the fighting in Gaza, for school officials to falsely call Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians a “genocide,” and for the university to boycott and divest from Israeli institutions. The protesters did not mention Hamas or demand the release of the more than 240 hostages still being held in Gaza who the Palestinian terrorist group kidnapped during its Oct. 7 massacre of Israeli communities.

The prior day, dozens of students from Columbia’s School of Social Work staged an over nine-hour sit-in, claiming they were expressing solidarity with local and national Palestinian resistance movements.

Rosberg called in university officials to tell students that they were in violation of a rule in the university code of conduct which prohibits actions that “interrupt, shout down, or otherwise disrupt an event or to obstruct the view of the speaker.”

Both SJP and JVP have been instrumental in organizing anti-Israel protests on Columbia’s campus since Hamas invaded Israel last month and killed 1,400 people, mostly civilians.

“Like all student groups, SJP and JVP are required to abide by university policies and procedures,” Rosberg said in his statement on Friday. “This ensures both the safety of our community and that core university activities can be conducted without disruption.”

He noted that suspension means the two groups will not be eligible to hold events on campus or receive university funding. “Lifting the suspension will be contingent on the two groups demonstrating a commitment to compliance with university policies and engaging in consultations at a group leadership level with university officials.”

Columbia has come under intense scrutiny for its response to Hamas’ Oct. 7 pogrom and the resultant war between Israel and the terror group. Several students and professors have released multiple letters seemingly blaming Israel for the current conflict and rationalizing the Hamas atrocities.

One professor, however, went viral on social media for calling the school’s president a “coward” for refusing to condemn Hamas apologists and anti-Israel demonstrations on campus.

Henry Swiec, a Jewish billionaire and philanthropist, recently resigned from the Board of Columbia Business School, claiming the Ivy League university has shown a “moral cowardice” that has left Jews feeling unsafe on campus.

“During this especially charged time on our campus, we are strongly committed to giving space to student groups to participate in debate, advocacy, and protest,” Rosberg said in his statement. “This relies on community members abiding by the rules and cooperating with university administrators who have a duty to ensure the safety of everyone in our community.”

Columbia’s decision to suspend SJP and JVP came just days after Brandeis University in Massachusetts revoked recognition of its chapter of SJP over its support for Hamas.

Following Oct. 7, several SJP chapters and other pro-Palestinian student organizations declared solidarity with Hamas and circulated propaganda that rationalized its violence.

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Jewish critics have suggested that Hatem Bazian has access to the JVP Twitter account and writes some of its hateful messages.

By Daniel Greenfield, FrontPage Magazine

The DNA of campus antisemitism goes back to Hatem ‘Hate’em’ Bazian. Bazian is the co-founder of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and the one figure who did the most to kickstart the culture of campus hate.

Back in the ’90s, when Bazian was at San Francisco State University, he participated in an assault on the offices of the Golden Gate Xpress student newspaper, accusing it of being full of Jewish spies. Jewish students had complained about anti-Semitic behavior by Bazian in his role as student body president and his campaign against Hillel, the leading Jewish campus organization, which they said was a direct attempt to disenfranchise Jewish students.

The SJP organization allowed Hatem an even larger platform for his violent bigotry. In April 2002, 79 members attempted to disrupt a Holocaust Remembrance Day event and were arrested. At a rally to protest their arrests, Bazian said, “take a look at the type of names on the building around campus – Haas, Zellerbach – and decide who controls this university.”

SJP’s conference in 2001 was sponsored by a Hamas front group with the American head of Islamic Jihad as its keynote speaker. Bazian would later serve as the representative for KindHearts, another Hamas front group. And true to its MSA roots, the SJP Berkeley site describes Hamas as “a vast social organization” which “also has a militia established to fight Israeli troops in the occupied territories.”

So it was a little surprising to see Hatem Bazian tweeting “As a Jew” critiques to CNN over Rep. Rashida Tlaib.

“As a Jew” has a long and low dishonest history in which leftists, who happen to be of Jewish ancestry or pretending to be, denounce Israel… “as a Jew”.

It’s hard to think of anyone less Jewish than Hatem Bazian, but there he was.

So it turns out the anti-Zionist Jewish Voice For Peace org is actually run by NON-JEWISH Hamas affiliated Hatem Bazian…!?

He thought he was logged into the JVP Twitter account when he replied to @jaketapper pretending to be a Jew… pic.twitter.com/pryzcOsx0w

— A Jewish Resistance (@AJwshResistance) May 13, 2023

Bazian deleted his original tweet and claimed that he was just broadcasting a message from leftist anti-Israel hate group calling itself Jewish Voice for Peace. Jewish critics have suggested that Bazian has access to the JVP Twitter account and writes some of its hateful messages.

Either way, “as a Jew” now has the Islamist godfather of campus antisemitism playing the same phony game. It’s hard to think of any campus academic with a more sustained ugly history of antisemitism than Bazian. If he can play “as a Jew,” who can’t?

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Jewish Voice for Peace posted a vile antisemitic illustration on Instagram, depicting IDF soldiers as blood-thirsty sadists.

By World Israel News Staff

Jewish Voice for Peace went above and beyond its usual anti-Israel propaganda with the posting of a blatantly antisemitic illustration on the popular Instagram social media platform.

The illustration, titled “Independence Day,” shows IDF soldiers drinking the blood of Palestinians they had allegedly murdered, The Jerusalem Post reported.

As described by the Post, “the appendage of a construction vehicle holds up a string of blue and white decorations, which is being cut by a Palestinian boy with scissors. The ground is soaked in blood and strewn with the bodies of Palestinians and uprooted trees.”

The IDF soldiers are shown raising a toast with their blood-filled glasses.

“Truly disgusting. Jewish Voice for Peace posted a cartoon of two Jews drinking blood. In addition to being extremist and anti-Israel, JVP can add antisemitic to its resume,” commented Aviva Klompas, former head of speechwriting at Israel’s mission to the UN.

“Israeli soldiers drinking blood? That is taken directly from antisemitic blood libel stereotypes,” read another comment.

JVP slammed Israel on several issues, the Post noted. They included, for example, the shooting death of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, for which JVP joins the Palestinians is blaming Israel although there has been no evidence to support that claim.

Another image, titled “Ukraine Israel,” shows IDF soldiers stealing the homes of Palestinians and giving them to Ukrainian refugees.

The term ‘blood libel’ refers to the false claim that Jews used the blood of Christian children for ritual purposes, like baking matzoh for Passover. As explained by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, “The Nazis made effective use of the blood libel to demonize Jews, with Julius Steicher’s newspaper Der Stürmer making frequent use of ritual murder imagery in its antisemitic propaganda.”

The earliest references to blood libel charges against the Jews can be found in the Hellenistic writings of Apion in the 2nd century BCE, the Holocaust Encyclopedia notes.

The first case of the blood libel in Europe in the Middle Ages occurred in 1144, when the Jews of Norwich, England, were accused of ritual murder after the stabbed body of a young boy was found in the woods

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ADL and NGO Monitor, among others, condemned the radical anti-Zionist group for its distortion of history.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

A virulently anti-Zionist group claimed Thursday that Israel’s three “secular holidays” were all created as “harmful narratives” to create a myth of Jewish victimization and justify ethnic cleansing.

While Israel was still celebrating its 74th birthday on Thursday, Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) came out with a series of social media posts that condemn Israel’s Independence Day as well as Memorial Day for Israel’s fallen IDF soldiers and victims of terror and Israel’s Remembrance Day for victims of the Holocaust.

The radical, American-based organization claimed that these three days were intentionally and falsely established right after Passover, which celebrates Jewish freedom from Egyptian slavery, “to establish a mythical pattern of Jewish history as recurring cycles of oppression and freedom.”

Holocaust Remembrance Day was set on the Hebrew date that the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising erupted, the most famous Jewish revolt against the Nazis during World War II. Israeli Independence Day is celebrated on its Hebrew date rather than on the secular date of May 14 because Israel officially follows the Jewish calendar. Memorial Day is commemorated immediately prior to Independence Day in order to clearly link the ultimate sacrifice that individual Jews have made so that the Jewish state could come into being and continue to exist.

JVP says these days are “promoting false Zionist narratives that the Holocaust justifies the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians [and that] Jews need a militarized, colonial, apartheid state to keep us safe.”

As a result, the group wrote, “We reject the Israeli state’s distortion of our religion’s liberation story into an ahistorical myth of endless Jewish persecution. We refuse the idea that we are doomed to victimhood unless we accept militarism and nationalism. We don’t want the memories of ancestors murdered in the Holocaust to be instrumentalized to justify the murder and expulsion of Palestinians.”

“Attempts like those by JVP to distort history and reality don’t stay just within their followers online. It legitimizes all actors of hate,” The Jerusalem Post reported Saskia Pantell of the Sweden Israel Alliance & Zionist Federation of Sweden as saying in reaction. “I’ve witnessed firsthand how this kind of propaganda harms the daily lives of Jews globally resulting in death threats and attacks against Jews myself included.”

According to NGO Monitor, JVP was founded in 1996 as the “Jewish wing” of the Palestinian solidarity movement. As such, it advocates for a Palestinian state on all of Judea, Samaria and Gaza, with eastern Jerusalem as its capital, and is a prime leader of the BDS movement. It also works to eliminate all U.S. economic, military, and political aid to Israel.

Regularly calling Israel a racist, apartheid state, JVP continually justifies Palestinian terrorism against Israelis and engages in antisemitic rhetoric, the watchdog group reports.

The Anti-Defamation League believes that the purported human rights group promotes antisemitism and harms any chance for dialogue or peace.

“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 the classic anti-Jewish stereotype of Jews as self-centered elitists, disdainful of non-Jews, who are focused on their own interests,” the group states in its report on antisemitism.

“JVP leaders believe that expressing support for Israel…must also be viewed as an implicit attack on people of color and all marginalized groups in the United States. JVP’s energetic proselytizing of this view – especially among other social justice groups – has created a hostile environment for many progressive Jews.”

“Their fixation on what they consider Israel’s uniquely evil role in the contemporary world…their ideologically inflexible view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, leaves them unable to recognize the legitimate concerns of both parties, which can only make peace harder to attain,” the veteran watchdog group added.

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PFLP secretary-general Ahmad Sa’adat was sentenced to 30 years in prison for masterminding the assassination of Israeli minister Rehavam Ze’evi.

By Zevi Pilzer, World Israel News

A rally calling for the release of Popular Front for Palestine (PFLP) secretary-general Ahmad Sa’adat from an Israeli prison is set to be held in New York City on Saturday.

The rally is being organized by Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and Samidoun, a Palestinian NGO designated by Israel as a PFLP affiliate.

“Join our collective call for the freedom of Ahmad Sa’adat and all Palestinian prisoners. Take action to escalate the boycott of Israel, end aid and support to Israel, organize for justice in Palestine and resist imperialism and colonialism,” Samidoun wrote on its website.

Israel has designated the PFLP a terrorist organization since its establishment in 1967, and the U.S. Department of State did so 30 later, in 1997.

Sa’adat, who has been leading the organization since October 3, 2001, was arrested by the IDF on March 14, 2006, and sentenced to 30 years in prison.

In addition to leading a terrorist organization, Sa’adat — two weeks after his appointment as PFLP secretary-general — was the mastermind behind the assassination of Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam Ze’evi on October 17, 2001.

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Network of long-time activists behind campaign by Google and Amazon employees calling on their companies to cut ties with Israel.

By Alana Goodman, Washington Free Beacon

A coalition of longtime anti-Israel activists and groups is spearheading a “grassroots” campaign by Google and Amazon employees calling on the companies to cut business ties with Israel, drawing accusations that it’s an astroturf operation.

On Oct. 12, a group of “anonymous Google and Amazon employees” published an open letter in the Guardian calling on their employers to pull out of a project with the Israeli government to develop a cloud data system—called Project Nimbus—and “cut all ties with the Israeli military.” The authors said they were withholding their identities “because we fear retaliation” and claimed “more than 90 workers at Google and more than 300 at Amazon” had signed on to the letter.

The next day, a group calling itself No Tech for Apartheid launched a website. The group claimed it was created in response to the employee letter, saying it was “heeding the call from hundreds of Google and Amazon workers to rise up against” Project Nimbus, and linking to the Guardian article.

The group registered the website—NoTechForApartheid.com—nearly two months prior to the Google and Amazon letter’s publication, and it sat dormant until the day after the “anonymous” letter was published, according to domain respiration data. The fine print at the bottom of the website notes that it is a “joint project” of Jewish Voice for Peace and MPower Change, two prominent anti-Israel groups that are active in the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement.

While the No Tech for Apartheid campaign bills itself as an organic effort, the two anti-Israel groups leading the project—Jewish Voice for Peace and MPower—have no significant ties to the tech industry but lengthy backgrounds supporting boycotts, divestment, and sanctions against Israel.

MPower’s leadership role in particular could become a credibility problem for the campaign due to its controversial executive director. The group is run by Linda Sarsour, a prominent BDS activist who was kicked off the Women’s March board and denounced by President Joe Biden due to her affiliation with anti-Semitic preacher Louis Farrakhan. Sarsour, who has claimed that Israel is “built on the idea that Jews are supreme to everyone else,” spoke at a 2015 rally organized by Farrakhan, who has called Jews “termites” and “satanic.” Last year, Biden issued a statement saying he “condemns [Sarsour’s] views and opposes BDS” after Sarsour participated in a conference call for his supporters.

“MPower Change has been caught up in numerous controversies, including advertising events under the slogan, ‘Open to all, minus cops and Zionists,'” said Joseph Cohen, executive director of the Israel Advocacy Movement.

“It is particularly concerning that this organization was co-founded by Linda Sarsour,” Cohen said. “An activist with a history of anti-Semitism and extremist views, including repeatedly expressing support for convicted terrorist, Rasmea Odeh.”

No Tech for Apartheid did not respond to a request for comment.

Israel advocates said the timeline of the campaign and the group’s formation as well as the involvement of the two anti-Israel groups raise questions about the grassroots origins of the campaign.

“I don’t believe for a second this is a grassroots effort,” said Emily Schrader, a columnist for the Jerusalem Post who has examined the campaign. “JVP and MPower intentionally misled the public on this campaign to appear as if there’s a great deal of debate over Israel. There isn’t.”

“Generally, it’s not a problem that these organizations worked together for a common cause or that they collaborated on a petition, but to purposely obfuscate who is behind the campaign, and to intentionally misrepresent it as grassroots is reprehensible and goes to show how dishonest they are in the first place,” said Schrader.

The three public faces of the campaign—Google employees Gabriel Schubiner and Ariel Koren, and Amazon employee Bathool Syed—also have long histories of anti-Israel activism. Koren and Schubiner are organizers with Jewish Diaspora in Tech, a group that has a history of calling for Google to boycott Israel. Jewish Diaspora in Tech is a partner on the No Tech for Apartheid project, according to the website.

Bathool Syed has also been involved in BDS activism for years, according to her Twitter feed, which she made private earlier this week. “I don’t get why Zionists always plead for dialogue but literally walk out on dialogue. Typical hypocrisy #UCDavisDivest,” she wrote in a Jan. 29, 2015, post advocating for the University of California Davis to divest from Israel.

“The letter claims to represent hundreds of workers, yet only three people can be verified,” said Cohen. “Everyone else is anonymous, making it impossible to verify if they even exist.”

“This obviously raises serious questions about the genesis of this campaign and the involvement of these BDS groups,” he added.

Google did not respond to a request for comment. Amazon did not respond to a request for comment.

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After JVP’s anti-Semitic “Deadly Exchange” campaign was exposed last fall, the group is now fighting steps to remove Jew-hatred from Facebook.

By Ariel Behar, The Algemeiner

The group Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) claims to oppose bigotry, and to support security and self-determination for both Israelis and Palestinians. But a new campaign JVP has joined aims to block rumored plans by Facebook to add the term “Zionism” to its hate speech policies. Zionism is the belief in Jewish self-determination in their ancestral homeland — in other words, supporting Israel’s right to exist.

“Facebook is considering whether to treat ‘Zionist’ as proxy for ‘Jew’ in its hate speech policy,” JVP tweeted last week during a Twitter town hall. “This would make ‘Zionist’ a de facto protected category, letting FB shut down critical conversations about Zionists under the guise of fighting anti-Semitism.”

“If Facebook restricts use of the word ‘Zionist’ on its platforms, already severe censorship will grow,” an account for the antisemitic BDS movement also wrote during the Twitter town hall. “Palestinians will be blocked from describing our daily lives under Israeli apartheid, and our family histories of dispossession and military occupation.”

An anonymous Facebook employee sent out an email detailing how the social media company was considering monitoring anti-Semitism on its platform, technology news website The Verge reported in November. “We are looking at the question of how we should interpret attacks on ‘Zionists’ to determine whether the term is used as a proxy for attacking Jewish or Israeli people,” the Facebook employee wrote. “The term brings with it much history and various meanings, and we are looking to increase our understanding of how it is used by people on our platform.”

There are plenty of examples in which the term Zionist has been used as a slur against pro-Israel Jews. In December, the Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, posted a meme on Facebook-owned Instagram instructing students to “start Zionist shaming.” The image showed a young man burying his face in his arms, surrounded by terms including, “racist!”, “colonizer!”, and “go back to Brooklyn.”

Similarly, the University of Southern California (USC) student government vice president resigned last August after she was pressured and harassed by fellow students who disagreed with her support for Israel. “But because I openly identify as a Jew who supports Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state — i.e., a Zionist — I was accused by a group of students of being unsuitable as a student governor leader,” Rose Ritch wrote in a Newsweek op-ed. “I was told my support for Israel made me complicit in racism, and that by association, I am a racist. Students launched an aggressive social media campaign to ‘impeach [my] Zionist a**.’”

Facebook announced an updated hate speech policy last August. “We’re also updating our policies to more specifically account for certain kinds of implicit hate speech, such as content depicting blackface, or stereotypes about Jewish people controlling the world,” Facebook said.

A coalition of 130 Jewish and pro-Israel groups had called on Facebook to better moderate anti-Semitism after Facebook received harsh backlash over its previous hate speech policy, allowing cases of Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism to remain on its platform. The August policy update, which embraced elements of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism, significantly moved the platform in that direction.

JVP, meanwhile, has proven to be an unreliable voice when it comes to confronting anti-Semitism.

A JVP anti-Semitism webinar in December included US Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Temple University professor Marc Lamont Hill, as well as journalist Peter Beinart and activist Barbara Ransby. Both Tlaib and Ransby have supported convicted terrorist Rasmieh Odeh, who is responsible for the murder of two Israelis in a grocery store bombing. Hill has repeatedly called for a “free Palestine” stretching “from the river to the sea,” a dream that requires Israel’s elimination. Tlaib, Hill, and Ransby have also espoused antisemitic views publicly, on multiple occasions, without ever expressing any remorse.

This is also not JVP’s first campaign delegitimizing Israel.

Last fall, the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) exposed JVP’s anti-Semitic rhetoric — which it tried to hide — in promoting its “Deadly Exchange” campaign (a baseless antisemitic smear blaming programs that take American police leaders to Israel for police brutality against Black people in the United States).

“Suggesting that Israel is the start or source of American police violence or racism shifts the blame from the United States to Israel,” JVP wrote last June, trying to walk back its previous statements. “It also furthers an anti-Semitic ideology. White supremacists look for any opportunity to glorify and advance American anti-Black racism, and any chance to frame Jews as secretly controlling and manipulating the world.”

But that’s exactly what Deadly Exchange did for nearly three years before issuing that update. The IPT spoke with US-Israeli exchange organizers and participants, who all agreed their experiences bore no resemblance to JVP’s false and hateful smear.

And others who have signed on with JVP’s new Facebook campaign about Zionism have their own anti-Israel and anti-Semitic histories. Linda Sarsour’s MPower Change signed on — yet last summer, her organization backed a “No Zionist” Juneteenth rally in New York City that claimed to be “open to all, minus cops & zionists [sic].” Sarsour has also pushed the Deadly Exchange blood libel, falsely claiming that American police traveling to Israel leads to “killing unarmed black people across the country.”

She also argues that Zionists cannot be “allies” or feminists.

BDS leader Omar Barghouti admits to opposing “a Jewish state in any part of Palestine. No Palestinian, rational Palestinian, not a sellout Palestinian, would ever accept a Jewish state in Palestine.” He and BDS are leading advocates of the Facebook effort.

JVP’s campaign to push Facebook away from making anti-Zionist rhetoric a part of its hate speech policy is yet another effort to excuse anti-Semitism. It’s also an attempt to mislead the public into believing that JVP represents contemporary Jewish thought. But more than 90 percent of Jews worldwide consider themselves Zionists and support Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state.

JVP instead keeps finding itself aligned with anti-Semites and pushing anti-Semitic messaging.

A version of this article was originally published by The Investigative Project on Terrorism, where the author is a contributor.

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Anti-Israel groups petition Facebook to not touch any posts on ‘Zionism’ even as social media giant tries to stop attacks on Jews.

By Paul Shindman, World Israel News

Anti-Israel groups are petitioning Facebook to leave the word “Zionism” out of its hate speech policy as the social media giant struggles to get anti-Semitic posts on its platform under control, Calcalist reported Tuesday.

As part of its efforts to moderate against anti-Semitic posts, Facebook is also reviewing use of the term ‘Zionist’ and is reaching out to unnamed outside groups in its discussion on what policy steps it should take, the report said.

The online news website The Verge reported Sunday that Facebook had reached out in an email last November seeking input on how to deal with the issue.

“We are looking at the question of how we should interpret attacks on ‘Zionists’ to determine whether the term is a proxy for attacking Jewish or Israeli people,” the email said.

That email prompted the leftist group Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) to launch an online petition calling on Facebook to not moderate when the word “Zionist” is used, saying that anti-Zionism is part of legitimate dialog.

“We are deeply concerned about Facebook’s proposed revision of its hate speech policy to consider ‘Zionist’ as a proxy for ‘Jew’ or ‘Jewish,’” the petition states. “The proposed policy would too easily mischaracterize conversations about Zionists – and by extension, Zionism – as inherently antisemitic, harming Facebook users and undermining efforts to dismantle real anti-Semitism.”

Facebook told The Verge that the term ‘Zionist’ was indeed under review, but that no decision has yet been made.

“Under our current policies, we allow the term ‘Zionist’ in political discourse, but remove it when it’s used as a proxy for Jews or Israelis in a dehumanizing or violent way,” a Facebook spokesperson told The Verge. “Just as we do with all of our policies regularly, we are independently engaging with experts and stakeholders to ensure that this policy is in the right place, but this does not mean we will change our policy.“

After years of ignoring postings that ranged from Holocaust denial to blatant hate speech against Jews, Facebook appeared to have finally taken some small steps last year to change its policies to counter anti-Semitic postings and disinformation campaigns against Jews.

In August, the company banned anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, but only in October did Facebook finally respond to years of complaints and institute a ban on postings that deny the Holocaust.

However, those moves appear to have only come after Facebook shares took a pounding on Wall Street last June when major advertisers canceled contracts over the company’s failure to adequately monitor hate speech and fake news.

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