Jewish Voice for Peace speaks with an odd monotone

A few dozen self-appointed left-wing zealots closed down Walnut Street for an hour on Tuesday, under the banner of the deceptively-named Jewish Voice for Peace.

It is not a “Jewish voice.” It is a voice of very few Jews, it is opposed by most Jewish organizations,  and it is not for “peace.” It is for one-sided surrender by the state of Israel. And it lies about “genocide,” which has a legal definition that does not fit what is happening in Gaza, despite the tragic loss of life.

The key thing to know about Jewish Voice for Peace, aside from its having an outlandishly large voice, is that it, by its own admission on its own website, is anti-Zionist. 

And since Zionism is the expression that the Jewish people are entitled to their own homeland, if you oppose that, you oppose the existence of Israel.

Anti-Zionist =  Anti-Israel. 

Despite its attempts to wiggle away from that simplicity, it remains the truth. If you oppose Zionism, you oppose Israel.

One could further expand the equation to Anti-Israel = Anti-Semitism, but that is not always true and I consider the charge of anti-Semitism, like racism, to be so toxic I am loath to use it without certainty.

Jewish Voice for Peace, which I’ll call JVP from here on, had revenue of $3.2 million in its 2019 IRS filing, the latest one I could find, listing 34 employees and 1,000 volunteers. The NGO Monitor website was able to uncover some of its financial foundation support, including left-wing philanthropies run by the Rockefeller brothers and George Soros.

JVP was founded in 1996 by a couple of left-wing students at Berkeley, one of America’s most radical campuses, and one of its primary ambitions is to isolate Israel through the BDS movement —  Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions. 

I oppose BDS for two reasons: First (leaning on Saul Alinsky’s rules for radicals) it targets only Israel, it freezes it, personalizes it, and polarizes it for human rights abuses.

Never mind China, Russia, Iran, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, North Korea, Burma, Eritrea, Libya, etc. JVP has no interest.

Why?

It often falls back on the Jewish admonition  of (in Hebrew) tikkun olam or “heal the world,” but defines the “world” as one nation —  Israel.

Which is not to say Israel has never crossed a line, or conducted itself improperly or illegally. It has, and when it does, I am embarrassed. So I criticize the government —  Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu is an obstacle to peace — but I don’t question Israel’s right to exist any more than I question France’s. 

Second, JVP presents so-called “human rights abuses” without any explanatory context.

This is widespread when it comes to reporting about Israel. It is persistent, perhaps rooted in ignorance, perhaps in bias. 

Just the other day, the AP carried a story about the current displacement of Gazan Palestinian Arabs, harkening back to a displacement of Palestinian Arabs before and during Israel’s 1948 War of Independence when it was attacked by five Arab nations sworn to destroy the infant state. The story starts out talking about  “mass expulsion” of Arabs, which is not true, then moderates to “fled or were driven out.”

The latter gets closer to the truth, that an estimated 700,000 Arabs were displaced.

Two things not said: First, the war was launched by the Arabs and the Israelis were vastly outnumbered and were fighting for their very existence. The Arabs lost and there are always consequences for the losing side. 

Second, during the same time, an estimated 700,000 Jews were expelled from, or fled, Muslim Arab nations around the Mideast.

The same number of refugees on both sides. But the Jewish expulsions from Arab lands, which is the definition of anti-Semitism, are rarely mentioned. 

One difference in the outcome:  Israel took in every single displaced Jew, while the Arab world allowed the Arab refugees to rot in refugee camps, where they remain today.

So JVP is very selective in its outrage.

Of the dozens of human rights violators, JVP selects only one, the Jewish one. Not a Christian one, not a Muslim one, only a Jewish one.

Hmm.

So maybe I can’t say JVP are all self-hating Jews, but I can say they are anti-Israel and everything they say and do should be seen in that light. People who would deny their own place in the world are deeply disturbed.