New Israeli regulations ban a number of organizations, including Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), from entering the county. According to its mission statement, JVP “opposes anti-Jewish, anti-Muslim, and anti-Arab bigotry and oppression” and “seeks an end to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and east Jerusalem.” It also supports the boycott, divest, and sanction movement (BDS), celebrates Palestinian terrorists, and dedicates most of its efforts to libeling the Jewish state. Even worse, writes Andrew Mark Bennett, is the organization’s underlying obsession with the evils it ascribes not only to Israel but to American Jews:
Beyond its anti-Zionism, JVP consistently positions Jews as the cause of society’s ills. . . . The most glaring example of JVP’s obsession with Jewish wrongdoing is its “Deadly Exchange” campaign. According to JVP, Jewish organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League sponsor “exchange programs that bring together police, ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement], border-patrol, and FBI [agents] from the U.S. with soldiers, police, border agents, etc. from Israel.” Through these exchanges, JVP says, “worst practices” are shared “to promote and extend discriminatory and repressive policing in both countries.” . . .
The campaign seeks to hold the Jewish institutions accountable for their alleged complicity in funding and promoting this “state violence.” [It is] an anti-Semitic libel designed to paint Jews with blood by . . . “exposing” the role of American Jewish organizations in U.S.-Israel exchanges as a shadowy Jewish conspiracy . . . to subvert race relations and to erode democracy and human rights. . . . In fact, there is no evidence whatsoever to substantiate suspicions that these exchanges are in fact pernicious, let alone unusual or especially deadly. . . .
JVP has [also] long considered Zionism to be a form of white supremacy. That absurd [slander] became more prominent over the last year with the rise of the “alt-right.” As white supremacists maliciously drew spurious comparisons between Zionism and their own desire for a white ethno-state, JVP latched on to them as if they were legitimate. . . . .
[In short], it’s hard not to arrive at the conclusion that JVP is anti-Semitic. As such, it does not merit . . . [a] defense when it is excluded from Jewish communities and the Jewish state.
Read more on Forward: https://forward.com/opinion/391783/jvps-anti-semitic-obsession-with-jewish-power/