'Jewish Voice for Peace' is neither Jewish nor an advocate for peace. They were protesting around the US last Tuesday, and did so in my hometown, at Woodruff Park, in the heart of downtown Atlanta, Georgia, USA.
People need to know who these radical activists are and who they are not. They are a mouthpiece for “anti-Zionist” (euphemism for anti-Jewish) sentiment, do not recognize Israel’s right to exist, and would love for her to be the 23rd member of the Arab League.
Cheryl Dorchinsky, the founding executive director of the Atlanta Israel Coalition, went to JVP’s rally at Woodruff Park, along with 20 to 30 Israelis, 10 to 15 members of a local Jewish biker group, and a few other pro-Israel advocates from Atlanta’s Jewish community. They were there to bear witness – to what JVP was saying and doing.
“When we arrived,” Cheryl told me, audibly shaken, “they were chanting ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,’” a cry for judenrein, for the end of a Jewish presence in our indigenous home. Cheryl estimated that there were about 200 JVP activists there, most of whom were not Jewish, and many of whom, she said, “didn’t hesitate to let me know it.”
“They (the JVP activists) were reciting the Mourner’s Kaddish for Hamas – saying it in front of Israelis – some of whose relatives and friends had just been slaughtered and who still have loved ones in captivity,” Cheryl said.
JVP blames 75 years of Arab-Israeli conflict on Jewish religious supremacism, a specious narrative to which they cling in support of their anti-Israel agenda. They denounce Israel for purported acts of oppression against Palestinians, but you won’t hear them calling out Hamas for using Palestinian children as human shields, for throwing homosexuals off rooftops, for treating women like chattel, or for strapping bombs on Palestinian children to blow up Israeli civilians.
JVP won't condemn Hamas
JVP activists won’t condemn Hamas for axing to death fathers in front of their children in Elad or for ramming cars into Israeli parents and their children at a bus stop in Jerusalem, but they will be quick to accuse Israel of blowing up a hospital in Gaza in the absence of any factual basis and will not retract that accusation when Palestinian Islamic Jihad is found to be responsible. In fact, they will double down on that narrative, inciting hate toward Israel and her supporters.
JVP ACTIVISTS know that Hamas committed the most heinous atrocities against Israelis on October 7, including gouging out a father’s eyes before cutting off his wife’s breasts and chopping off their daughter’s leg, burning babies alive in front of their parents, and kidnapping Shoah survivors, but they will not spare a fraction of a second to condemn those atrocities, to express any remorse for the victims or their families, or to say Kaddish for murdered Jews (just the terrorists who killed them).
JVP perpetuates the stereotype of Jews as elitist, racist oppressors of non-Jews and irresponsibly embrace age-old tropes, while having neither the humanity nor the moral fiber to denounce Hamas’s atrocities against Israeli civilians. They will call for a ceasefire in Gaza, but they won’t call for the release of Israeli, American, Thai, and hostages of other nationalities being held captive by Hamas in Gaza.
JVP routinely demands the suspension of US military aid to Israel and calls for the boycott of and divestment from Israeli companies – as well as US companies that partner with or benefit from them, but you will never hear JVP condemn the Palestinian Authority for its “pay-to-slay” program. You will only hear them make excuses for, justify, or even celebrate Palestinian terror against Israelis.
JVP’s hateful and irresponsible rhetoric enables Israel’s enemies and puts Jewish lives in untenable danger. They don’t hold a scintilla of empathy for the Jewish community of which they fraudulently claim to be a part. Why do I say fraudulently? Because Jews don’t ignore the slaughter of other Jews. Jews don’t celebrate, dismiss, excuse, or justify the rape, mutilation, torture, and murder of other Jews. Jews don’t bury their heads in the proverbial sand when Jewish children and their parents are burned alive and beheaded.
JVP’s protestations against Israel, its abject refusal to recognize the horrors Israeli civilians are experiencing, doesn’t deserve anyone’s ear. It warrants only our unconditional condemnation and revulsion.
Yes, we can and should want peace for Israelis and Palestinians, but you cannot profess to be a voice for Jews when you ignore and/or excuse or seek to justify the rape of their daughters, the kidnapping of their grandparents, and the cold-blooded execution of their families.
This is the time for moral clarity. There is good. There is evil. There is right and wrong. Be damn clear on which side do you stand.
Am Yisrael Chai.
The writer is an attorney in Atlanta, Georgia and a member of the board of the Atlanta Israel Coalition.