“JEWISH”? NOT SO MUCH.
Over the years, the wider Jewish community has questioned JVP’s alleged Jewishness. Its views are, statistically, not representative of the Jewish community as a whole. Many of its chapters were started by non-Jews. In 2019, Facebook’s transparency feature revealed that the JVP page administrator was based in Lebanon, a fact that JVP later tried to hide. There are around 20 Jews living in Lebanon today, all of them elderly, which makes it unlikely that any of them have managed the page. JVP has also hosted panels on “antisemitism” ran by people who are not only not Jewish, but have also been accused of antisemitism in the past.
JVP sends email lists encouraging their followers — Jewish or not — to post “as Jews” on social media.
Hatem Bazian is Muslim. He claims he simply copied and pasted a JVP Action Alert that generates tweets. If that’s the case, why is JVP not vetting that those who post “as Jews” are actually Jews?
ENDANGERING JEWS
JVP openly endorsed the Mapping Project, a map depicting “Zionist organizations” in Massachusetts, including Jewish summer camps, disability centers, nonprofits, and more. Then they stated that “we need this resource in every city!” It didn’t take long for the Mapping Project to appear on Goyim TV, a white supremacist video-sharing website, making it easier for white supremacists to target Jews.
TIES TO THE TERRORISTIC, GENOCIDAL ISLAMIC REGIME.
JVP has recently been organizing with Samidoun, a propaganda arm of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Samidoun is also intimately connected to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which is not only designated a terrorist organization by most western countries, but has also openly boasted about its “blood brothers” relationship with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of Iran. Iran thus financially sponsors PFLP terrorism. Samidoun’s international coordinator, Charlotte Kates, is married to Khaled Barakat, who is a central committee member of the PFLP.
The Islamic Republic of Iran is responsible for the murder of Jews across the world over. For example, the 1994 bombing at Argentina’s largest Jewish community center, which killed 85 people, has been attributed to Iran. The PFLP specifically is responsible for the murder of Jewish civilians or those perceived to be Jewish civilians in Israel, Greece, Switzerland, Germany, and more. Additionally, the PFLP has carried out numerous civilian plane hijackings.
The Lod Airport massacre of 1972, planned by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which claimed the lives of 17 non-Jewish Puerto Ricans, eight Israeli Jews, and one Canadian Jew.
Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb, who sits on JVP’s Rabbinical Council, visited Iran on a regime propaganda trip, despite the fact that Iranian Jews live as second-class citizens constantly under suspicion of the capital crime of “Zionism.”
1994 bombing of the largest Jewish community center in Argentina, which took 85 lives. Just one of the many massacres attributed to the genocidal Iranian regime.
SUPPORTING NAZISM. YES, REALLY.
JVP has recently liked and shared a series of posts celebrating the 1936-1939 Arab Revolt in Palestine. The purpose of the Arab Revolt was to oppose Jewish refugee immigration to Palestine on the eve of the Holocaust.
But it gets worse. The Arab Revolt began as a series of pogroms — anti-Jewish massacres — targeting Jewish civilians. These pogroms were carried out with weaponry from Nazi Germany. As early as 1933, the Nazis boasted that they had established a contact with the Arab leadership in Palestine with the purpose of “adopting the Nazi program to the Holy Land.” The Revolt was led by a literal Nazi SS member, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin Al-Husseini, who is mentioned positively in that post. The Nazis likely planned the brutal 1938 pogrom in Tiberias, which took the lives of 19 Jews.
Though they are obviously quite ignorant, at the very least, JVP must be aware that the Mufti was a Nazi collaborator who met with Hitler.
The Sentinel, June 1936
1938 Tiberias Massacre, likely planned by the Nazis. Like, the actual Nazis.
JEWISH HISTORY? THEY DON’T LIKE IT.
JVP consistently distorts, revises, and/or makes a mockery of well-recorded Jewish history. Let’s make something abundantly clear: denying a historically marginalized people our 3000-year-history is bigoted.
Below is one of many examples. In June 2021, JVP posted an “alternative” program to Tisha B’Av, the saddest day in the Hebrew calendar. Among other things, Tisha B’Av commemorates the destruction(s) of our sacred Temple(s), which then led to our ethnic cleansing (twice) and a genocide (the Hadrianic Genocide). For 2000 years our ancestors have mourned the Temple. JVP, however, claims to “release all attachment to the Temple” because its existence directly contradicts their position that Jews are foreign colonizing interlopers in Palestine. This also veers dangerously close to the antisemitic conspiracy of Temple Denial, which asserts that there was never a Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, despite the mountains of physical evidence to the contrary.
Section of the program in which they “release all attachment to the Temple.” Tisha B’Av is a day specifically to mourn atrocities in Jewish history; the universalization of Tisha B’Av is nothing more than “White Lives Mattering” a day reserved specifically for Jews.
BLOOD LIBEL.
Blood libel is one of the oldest and most pervasive antisemitic conspiracies, dating all the way back to the second century. Blood libels are false claims that Jews drink or consume the blood of non-Jewish children for ritual purposes. Blood libels were common in Nazi Germany and have led to the massacres of millions of Jews over the past 2000 years.
JVP frequently shares the work of cartoonist Carlos Latuff, a virulent antisemite who frequently draws blood libels and placed second in Iran’s 2006 International Holocaust Cartoon Competition.
In the summer of 2022, JVP posted this blood libel on its social media.
Notice the Israeli soldiers “cheering” with blood cups.
“Criticism” of Israel, the world’s only Jewish state, that employs antisemitic tropes is not criticism. It’s antisemitism. You can criticize Israel with resorting to ancient antisemitic conspiracies.
The image that JVP posted resembles thousands of years’ worth of blood libels. For example, this is an antisemitic caricature from the Middle Ages depicting Jews extracting a child’s blood.
One of the many blood libels by Carlos Latuff, whose work JVP frequently endorses.
For a full bibliography of my sources, please head over to my Patreon.