#anti zionist organizations

[mental-mona]

The problems with JVP, Part 1

By Elizabeth Wolf on Facebook

Since I’m already pissing people off, I guess it’s a good time to post about Jewish Voice for Peace. I’ll put links in the comments.

Part 1

Like a very different organization, Moms for Liberty, the name is deceptive. You do not have to be a mom to start a chapter of Moms for Liberty, and you don’t have to be Jewish to start a chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace. Moms for Liberty is about a very specific interpretation of liberty that many would disagree with, and Jewish Voice for Peace promotes a very specific type of peace that you could easily mistake for its opposite.

This is why you see JVFP having Hanukkah events that are not actually during Hanukkah, lighting the candles incorrectly, fundraising on Shabbat (when many Jews do not handle money), and saying things that are theologically inaccurate about Judaism. People who know very little about Judaism can start a chapter, join a chapter, or run social media for a chapter, and then say they speak for Jews. This is how you end up with a Lebanese gentile being admin for their Facebook page. This is how you end up with an openly antisemitic Muslim making social media posts under their account, starting with the phrase, “As a Jew.” This is how you end up with temple denial and misrepresentations of the Torah floating around, apparently given the stamp of approval by a group of Jews.

“But JVFP has a rabbinic oversight board,” you might say. “Surely they are making sure the individual chapters are not out of line.” Well, I have no idea what that board is doing, but it’s not providing oversight to individual chapters. For example, it is easy to find people from JVFP saying that Israel is a white European colonial project, and for this reason, the Mizrahi community and Ethiopian Jews have explicitly spoken against them. The JVFP web site, however, clearly acknowledges that over half of the Israeli population is not white. JVFP social media accounts tolerate the verbal abuse of Jews and even targets members of mainstream Judaism with harassment, so that you’ll have a Black Jew being called a bloodthirsty white colonizer by non-Jews, ostensibly in the name of both Judaism and peace. I’ve seen Black Jews call this out and tag rabbis from the oversight board on this kind of activity and get no reply.

I’ll add to this that almost all the rabbis on this board are Reconstructionist rabbis, with a couple of Reform rabbis. If that doesn’t mean anything to you, I guess a good comparison would be a group claiming to speak for Christians but only having Seventh Day Adventists on its board, plus a couple of Congregationalists. I am absolutely not criticizing these denominations (I belong to one!) but rather saying that it’s disingenuous to claim you represent Jews in general when you’ve excluded most major branches of Judaism and only barely included another, preferring to have numerous student rabbis from one denomination instead of somebody with ordination from any of the others. This is especially so since a prized value in Judaism is the ability to hold space for multiple opinions or perspectives on a topic (“two Jews, three opinions”) and using these disagreements as learning opportunities.

There is definitely not oversight happening around things pretty much all Jews do agree on, though. For example, JVFP chapters stating that there never was a temple in Jerusalem, or that Passover is only about metaphorical liberation, or that tisha b’av should stop being observed. You can look up where the student rabbis are currently enrolled and see the official positions of these institutions and observe for yourself that what JVFP is saying does not line up. What is the oversight board actually doing? I’m not sure.

The official Recon position is that there was a temple and its destruction is still noted.

https://www.reconstructingjudaism.org/jewish.../tisha-bav/

JVFP officially acknowledging the demographic makeup of Israel.

https://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/.../JVP-Jews-of-the...

A statement from JIMENA:

A whoops:

[tamamita]

Founding father of the settler colonial state seemed like a nice guy

[eretzyisrael]

Source

[infiniteglitterfall]

pretty please, my fellow progressives

Could we please all keep in mind that the concept of "The Jews In General, or A Specific Type Of Jew, Controls Education, Government, Media, and/or Banking", is a longstanding antisemitic trope?

And most of all, that it is false??

No, a marginalized group does not also control education, the government, the media, and/or banking?

No, Jews do not secretly control these things and just pretend to be marginalized? No, Jews have not secretly been accumulating power since the Holocaust, granted by too-generous gentiles, out of pity?

No, it isn't better if you just mean a specific subgroup or kind of Jews. It's still specifically Jews.

It's like when people who hate trans/queer people are fine with rich white cis gay men. So they think it's not bigoted to blame "people with blue hair and pronouns" for the downfall of society.

We all know this means, "I only see some of you as human like me. You have to speak and act a certain way to count. Everyone in your group has to pass a test to get into the Good group."

Doesn't work.

Sure, it gives them plausible deniability to the people who matter to them. But everyone else can see exactly how they feel.

We've all known for years that it's bad to think of a marginalized group as having some "good ones." Rein it the heck in, please.

Because YES, all of those examples are ones I've seen implied, or stated outright, over and over, within the progressive community. This month alone.

[pettytiredandjewish]

So when are y’all gonna admit that antisemitism is a huge and concerning problem?

Or are y’all just gonna keep saying “ it’s not antisemitic it’s anti Zionist” or “we don’t hate Jews we just hate Israelis” or “ stop deflecting” or “stop overreacting”…

(Sorry most of my rant is in the tags but I said what I said)

[trans-axolotl]

Hi - I am planning to move to a large city soon and I desperately want to get involved with community organizing, mutual aid, protests, etc but I have 0 experience beyond attending a few small protests over the years. I've only ever lived in a small suburb and none of the people currently in my life are involved in anything. Do you have any advice for how to get materially involved for someone who doesn't know what that looks like? Is it a matter of networking via attending events, that kind of thing? Apologies if this is a silly question, I'm going to try my best to figure it out on my own but I feel extremely inexperienced and uninformed.

Not a silly question at all! So many times I see people telling other people "go out and get involved" like that's something that's really simple but there can be a lot more steps to making that happen! I'll share some general tips that have worked for me in the cities I've worked with, and other followers feel free to add on with relevant advice in your city.

One thing that was really hard for me when I first moved to a new city is that I didn't know anyone, so it was hard to find out what groups even existed. Because I didn't know anyone, I also didn't have anyone to vouch for me, and there are a lot of groups that (understandably) need people to vouch for you because of police infiltrators and other bad actors.

I think my biggest advice is to try to find a group with open membership, even if it isn't the thing you're the most passionate about, and start showing up regularly in order to get connected with other people. In my area, the groups that are most easy to get involved with are mutual aid groups and outreach groups. Particularly, if Food Not Bombs has a chapter in your area, in my experience they've been a lot easier to get involved with than some other groups. A lot of harm reduction groups in my area have things like supply kit packing nights, which are SUCH a great way for new people to get involved and meet people without having to make a huge commitment. Keeping an eye out for one time events like that, or other events like teach-ins about specific topics, can be a great way to get your foot in the door and start meeting more people who can connect you with organizing in the city. You can also go and access the services from a mutual aid group or Food Not Bombs group if those are relevant for you! A lot of groups will have days they do outreach that they'll post on social media, or other ways to get in contact. A lot of the ways I've gotten involved in harm reduction organizing is because I'll go to syringe exchange drop-in hours to get needles for myself, and then ask the people working how I can volunteer with them. From there, you might be able to get connected with groups that might have more intensive onboarding processes.

I also think it's really helpful to start showing up to protests and trying to get familiar with what groups are active in your city, but I think that's a hard way to meet new people, since a lot of people understandably have a lot of additional security concerns at protests and might not want to give out their name or contact info in that environment. But it can be a great way to get more familiar with the patterns of action in your new city and figure out what orgs to trust and what orgs to avoid. And once you're more involved in other orgs, it can be easier to find a crew of people to go to protests with.

In order to find out what all these groups are and when protests are happening, I usually go to instagram and start trying to follow as many organizations as I can. I usually start by searching for groups that I think I know are going to exist, like food not bombs, the local chapter of Black Lives Matter, local chapter of Palestinian Youth Movement, and then start looking for city specific mutual aid orgs, harm reduction orgs, sex work advocacy orgs, books to prisons or letters to prisons project, mask blocs, street medic collectives, anarchist and prison abolitionist collectives, tenants unions, sexual violence advocacy orgs, disability orgs, LGBTQ orgs, etc.And then, I go into the followers tab for each of these orgs and find out what organizations they're following--that has really, really helped me start to be able to map who's active, who knows who, and usually at least some of those orgs will be active on Instagram and publicizing events, protests, outreach, donation drives, etc. Also, if there's a leftist bookstore or infoshop in your city, they might have a pretty good calendar of events and be a good way to get looped in. (most of the cities I've lived in haven't had that though lmfao).

I think my biggest advice is to not get discouraged if it takes some research to find groups with open memberships or if there are groups that you're interested in but can't join right away. I'd also say it's definitely helpful to think through what your interests are and what your skills are. Are you particularly passionate about a certain cause? Do you enjoy cooking and want to help prepare food for mutual aid? Do you like doing social media graphics? What resources do you have that you can bring to groups--access to craft supplies, free printing, a space to host events, medic skills, good at building things, etc? There's so many different types of groups to get involved in that are doing direct organizing work for so many different specific causes, and I'm sure you could bring a lot to whatever group you're passionate about.

One random thing that I do want to mention is that a lot of times when I see people answering this question, the advice they give is to get involved in orgs like DSA, PSL (Party for socialism and liberation/ANSWER coalition), or other branches of national orgs like that. I disagree with that advice and I don't actually think it's the most helpful way to meet people or get involved. Although I think DSA is better than PSL, I have my own political issues with DSA and REALLY really do not trust PSL at all because I think that PSL is a really bad actor who actively endangers people in every city I've organized where they're in. (Here's links to articles that describe some of the issues--trigger warning for sexual violence. Article 1. Article 2. I can go more in depth into my personal experiences in another post if needed) But beyond that, I don't always think that's the most helpful way to get looped into other things happening in your city or direct mutual aid or direct action work--I think groups like DSA and PSL often have a lot of other priorities like intra party dynamics, electoral politics, etc, and that other things like protesting or mutual aid work is often a secondary priority for those groups. The only reason I wanted to mention this is because I think that these groups do a lot of recruiting, and that oftentimes these groups are the most visible organizations with open membership for new people in a city to find. PSL in particular does a lot of predatory recruiting, in my experience. And I've had a lot of friends who originally joined groups like these to try to get connected and involved and ended up just sort of sucked into a lot of unrelated drama, so I just wanted to briefly mention that!

Overall, I think the biggest things that have helped me get really involved is just consistently showing up places and also doing research when I first move to a city. Once I was able to meet more people, I was able to get looped into more types of organizing, including more secure or involved organizing that I wasn't able to join when I first got to a new city.

I hope that helped, and please feel free to reach out with any other questions! If any other followers have tips, please add on!

[blinkiesreal]

blinkie mix!!!!!! <3333

[tigersorange]

i grew up going to synagogue. i had a b’nai mitzvah, i was even confirmed. but i was also brainwashed also into believing israel was good. the atrocities were glossed over almost as if no one lived there at all. as if palestine was simply unoccupied, as if israel was not a state born of colonial settler violence. this propaganda is something that many zionist jewish organizations have utilized to brainwash their congregations. when I was a child I idolized IDF soldiers, I thought Israel was a shining Jewish state not born of violence but of the Jewish will to survive, I was wrong. I was brainwashed. I was not immune to propaganda. but i realized as a teenager that what i was taught is simply not true and other people also have the ability to learn this as well. israel is a colonialist apartheid state. hamas doesn’t represent gaza or palestinians, innocent people are dying on both sides as a result of Israel’s settler violence. hamas would not exist if it were not for Israeli settler violence. Israel has dropped 6000 bombs on Gaza, as much as was dropped on Afghanistan in a single year by the US. The United States is willfully pushing propaganda to support the colonist state of Israel. You are not immune to propaganda. lets dismantle the zionist jewish propaganda machine together. I want to find a jewish community that I don’t feel like I can’t be a part of because I don’t agree with or support zionism and it’s cruel, hypocritical rhetoric. why do we as jews have any more right to colonize, occupy and commit atrocities than the people who have so many times done the same to us, what makes us different that we can enact that on others without consequence? There is a clear power imbalance at play here and the zionist state of israel is not the victim. ignoring a humanitarian crisis doesn’t wipe the blood from your hands. supporting palestine’s freedom is not antisemitic, and israel is using antisemitism as a shield to continue their genocide against the palestinian people

[loveguts]

i love seeing those advocacy groups that say they’re fighting to protect free speech on campus and i think that they mean advocating for the (peaceful btw) pro-palestinian protestors that have been brutalized by police and arrested and expelled en masse, but then i go to their website and they’re just advocating for conservatives to be able to say hate speech with no repercussions

[paradigm-failure]

I feel immense guilt, that i do not have the means to help those in Rafah. I feel anger, that my government does not reflect the wishes of the people it claims to represent. I feel fear that this will never end. I feel disgust that money seems to be the only thing our representatives care about, not their constituents. I feel tired. I feel hopeless. I feel angry. ... ... ... But I will not stop watching. I will not stop speaking up. I will not change my mind. If I cannot help directly, then I will make sure people do not forget what is going on. I have the luxury of taking breaks mentally from seeing the atrocities committed. I have the luxury of going to bed at night and not fear that I will be bombed in my sleep. I have the luxury of feeling secure in my own home. And I refuse to take that for granted. I will use my voice.

All eyes on Rafah.

All eyes on West Bank.

Free Palestine.

[mental-mona]

The Problems with JVP, part 2

by Elizabeth Wolf on Facebook

Part 2

As for the peace part, JVFP has aligned itself with the most extreme end of the pro-Palestinian movement. They platform, feature, and assist not only groups considered to be terrorist organizations in the US and Canada but individuals who are unrepentant convicted terrorists. It is difficult for me and many others to understand how supporting people who use bombs to express disagreement or a group that has vowed to continue armed conflict is going to create peace. If a group says unequivocally that they won’t participate in peace talks, can you be for that group and also be for peace? What you can definitely do, if you’re JVFP, is do these things and say anyone who questions you wants war.

I’m not going to even get into what is antisemitic or whether this group as a whole is antisemitic. That’s, I don’t know, six separate posts right there? It’s definitely possible to support Palestinian civilians without being antisemitic, but I would argue that backing a person who was convicted of trying to murder a Jewish politician is not doing any favors for Jews or for Palestinians, who too many people already assume to be terrorists.

https://nyunews.com/.../bds-omar-barghouti-speaks-us.../

[paris-geller-was-straightwashed]

I feel like I'm losing my fucking mind.

while the absolute horror continues to bombard palestine - the nonstop bombings, the dead bodies in the street and trapped under rubble those living can no longer get to, the restriction of health care, newborn babies left to die, starvation and thirst, literal sewage in the streets spreading disease, all of this in gaza and even in the west bank, the increased bombings there and raids - daily, meanwhile, here in canada, we apparently have nothing fucking better to do then arrest people for using pro-palestine chants under the guise of it being hate motivated.

WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK

I wish this was a fucking joke, but no. a protestor in calgary was arrested for using 'from the river to the sea, palestine will be free.' apparently the cops stopped by to 'inform' the protestors what chants were allowed and what were ~no no's~ which included 'from the river to the sea', and when a protestor used it anyway (because it's NOT FUCKING HATE SPEECH) they arrested him. for calling for the freedom of people under an occupation.

this is canada, supposedly one of the most free places to be (built atop the blood of indigenous people but anyways). but with pro-israel propaganda and the weaponizing of anti-semitism being repeated by our media and leaders, shit like this happens.

someone tell me right now where in the phrase 'from the river to the sea, palestine will be free' there is a call for an extermination of jewish people. look me in the fucking eyes and try to find where in that call for freedom it shows hatred for jews. this is fucking pathetic. this is a call for freedom. this is a call for liberation of a people who've been oppressed and assaulted for years, since before both my 60+ parents were born. this is a call for them to be able to walk freely within their own homes, within their own land, to be able to control their own lives. liberation for their safety and for their children, from the constant risk of arrest, assault and raids by the israeli army.

this is about ending an occupation, not the jewish people & their way of life.

many new sites like cbc and global reported on this as well as others; the global article also interviewed a jewish man, who claimed the chant was anti-semitic. it mentioned that he was the president of an organization called 'Federation CJA' - one google search of their website, and wouldn't you fucking know it, they're in partnership with israel, from 'birthright' trips to allowing you to send goddamn postcards to their poor, sad soldiers who're exhausted from bombing innocent civilians all day.

so while we sit here in safety, humming over think-pieces about whether a demand from an exhausted people to finally let them be free secretly means slaughtering every person of another marginalized group in site, the death toll in gaza has gone above 11,000.

of all the fucking absurd things canadians could be talking about right now, this has to take the first-place blue ribbon.

frankly, what this does mean at least, is one thing - when the occupier starts crying because the people they've trampled on for years demanded they stop & it hurt their feelings, it means they're scared. it means that the marches and support are working. when the oppressors start weaponizing language used for liberation and claim it's a cry to hang them from the gallows, then they're getting desperate. it's a reminder to us all to keep pushing and fight for a liberated palestine.

from the river to the sea, palestine will be free

(I s2g if any zionists come in my notes trying to claim some bs that is just the regurgitated rhetoric of the propaganda you've swallowed it's on fucking site I will block you).

[eretzyisrael]

by Corey Walker

A slew of anti-Israel groups and activists have turned on left-wing Democratic lawmakers and allies, dismissing them as “enemies” and calling into question their support and loyalty to the Palestinian cause. 

In recent weeks, anti-Zionist organizations and public figures have taken to social media to lash out at high-profile left-wing politicians and activists for criticizing their methods of opposing the Jewish state. Staunchly anti-Israel groups such as Within Our Lifetime (WOL) and Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) have expressed outright indignation at allied lawmakers and activists for suggesting their extreme, sometimes violent tactics are counterproductive and risk cannibalizing the movement against the Jewish state. 

SJP, which promotes anti-Israel propaganda on college campuses, lambasted US Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) for criticizing a mob of pro-Hamas protesters who demonstrated outside an exhibition in New York City that commemorates the victims of the deadly Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack at the Supernova music festival in southern Israel. The group asserted that any public disapproval of pro-Palestinian activists is tantamount to enabling “genocide” in Gaza, the Palestinian enclave ruled by the Hamas terrorist group.

“We are not loyal to our oppressors; elected officials who choose to enable genocide, endorse the architects of said genocide, or otherwise stand in the way of Palestinian liberation will face the political consequences of those choices,” SJP wrote. 

“Figures like AOC and Jamaal Bowman have utility insofar as they leverage their positions within the belly of the beast to shield the masses and our righteous struggles for liberation, directly challenge white supremacist power structures, and stand firmly against Zionism and all manifestations of US imperialism,” SJP continued. “Without these tangible actions, we regard these elected officials as our enemies.”

Ocasio-Cortez and Bowman have been among the US Congress’s most vocal critics of Israel, falsely accusing the Jewish state of “genocide” and “white supremacy,” relentlessly castigating its American supporters, and claiming that the charge of antisemitism has been weaponized for political purposes.

However, their anti-Israel comments and policy proposals haven’t seemingly gone far enough for SJP, which has been behind many of the pro-Hamas demonstrations that devastated universities this past academic year.

Within Our Lifetime (WOL), an organization that promotes the eradication of Israel and Zionism as its central goal, similarly condemned Bowman and Ocasio-Cortez for not taking maximalist stances against the Jewish state. The group criticized the two lawmakers for “sanctioning Palestinian resistance” by voting in favor of a resolution which strengthens the authority of the US president to levy sanctions against entities that use human shields in conflict. Hamas has been widely criticized for its military strategy of embedding its terrorists within Gaza’s civilian population and commandeering civilian facilities like hospitals, schools, and mosques to run operations and direct attacks against Israel.

[autistic-gay-demon]

I js to want to say as a jewish person…being anti-Zionist is NOT anti-Semitic. ALSO u can be non-palestinian or non-jewish and still understand that both groups are inherently human and that pitting them against each other isn’t gonna do shit to stop the israeli government or hamas. AND js because something isn’t happening to u or ur country doesn’t mean u have to completely lack remorse.

IF UR HUMAN PLS SIGN THIS:

[bowtiepastabitch]

Oh by the way don't go on twitter rn

[savage-kult-of-gorthaur]

ON THIS DAY, AND MAY EVERY DAY BE "LAND DAY" IN THE OCCUPIED LEVANT.

PIC INFO: Spotlight on a pro-Palestinian propaganda poster titled "The Generation of Land Day," recurring on March 30 as a day of commemoration for Palestinians, both Arab citizens of Israel and those in the Israeli-occupied territories of the events of that date in 1976 in Israel.

Artist/publisher: Palestine Liberation Organization [PLO]/Research in Progress.

LAND DAY OVERVIEW: "In 1976, the Israeli government's announced a plan to confiscate some 20,000 dunams (20 km2; 7.7 sq mi) of land for state purposes between the Arab villages of Sakhnin and Arraba, of which 6,300 dunams (6.3 km2; 2.4 sq mi) was Arab-owned. It formed part of the Israeli government's strategy aimed at the Judaization of the Galilee.

In response, Arab towns declared a general strike and marches were organized from the Galilee to the Negev. The Israeli military and police killed six unarmed Arab demonstrators, half of whom were women; injured one hundred more; and arrested hundreds of others."

-- WIKIPEDIA

Source: www.palestineposterproject.org/poster/the-generation-of-land-day.