Media Roundup: When we fight for Palestine, we fight for all of us.

Our communities are under attack. In the weeks since Trump’s inauguration, he has issued executive orders targeting and dismantling protections for nearly every marginalized group in the U.S. He has welcomed Israeli PM and wanted war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu to the White House, who sat beaming beside him as he promised to ethnically cleanse Gaza. He began trying to implement his plans to deport non-citizen student activists because they stand up for Palestinian freedom, under the guise of combating antisemitism.

To resist the far-Right, we must move in solidarity with and for one another. Because if our oppressors are the same, then the only way forward is collective liberation.

We must also recognize that U.S. support for Israel is an increasingly right-wing project, one that is core to carrying out a bigoted agenda that puts all of our communities at risk. That means that when we fight for Palestinian freedom, we fight for all of us.

From California to Vermont, Portland to Chicago, we refuse to be erased, we refuse to comply, and we refuse to cede any ground before we’ve lost it. In the words of JVP Executive Director Stefanie Fox, “It’s not ‘me or you’, it’s ‘They are going to have to come through me to get to you.’” 

Trump threatens to cancel student visas of pro-Palestinian protesters, San Francisco Chronicle, January 29, 2025

“It is hardly antisemitic to protest against Israeli state violence – valuing every life as precarious and valuable is a Jewish thing to do. Antisemitism should surely be opposed, as should every other racism, but to use the charge of antisemitism to silence and punish those who hold critical and dissenting views is an abuse of the term.”

Judith Butler, JVP Academic Council 

Trump’s Big, Bad, Destructive, and Unpeaceful Imperialism, Common Dreams, January 31, 2025

“With a secretary of defense beholden to a president driven only by personal wealth and power, and unaccountable to any faction of the U.S. ruling class, the danger of a new military escalation looms. At some rather random point in his speech Trump claimed that his “proudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker.” But in his drive for empire, he will be describing an imperial scenario much closer to that passed down by the great historian Tacitus: “the Romans brought devastation, and they called it peace.”

Phyllis Bennis, JVP Advisory Board 

Candles, community and calls for justice: Lehigh vigil honors Palestinian lives, The Brown and White, February 11, 2025

“I think it’s very important for American Jews to stand in solidarity with Palestinians.”

Jennifer Zallen, Jewish Voice for Peace-Lehigh Valley

How Title VI investigations are silencing grade-school students against Israel’s genocide in Gaza, Prism, February 10, 2025

“Complaints allege that the mere acknowledgment of Palestine’s and Palestinians’ existence is somehow antisemitic. They seek to ban the very language of human rights from the classroom, even though the United Nations, the International Criminal Court, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and countless other prominent human rights organizations all describe the Israeli state as carrying out genocide, starvation and ethnic cleansing in Gaza. One complaint even alleges that the use of the term ‘Occupation,’ a term regularly used by the U.S. State Department, constituted antisemitism.”

_{Jonah Rubin, Manager of Campus Organizing, JVP} 

Trump’s order hurts us all, J Weekly, February 10, 2025

“We already have laws for the deportation of people who pose a risk to our nation. The president’s executive order is a stunt designed to divide Jews and feed raw meat to his rabid followers. I am gratified to see so many Jewish organizations voicing opposition to Trump’s attack on free speech and flagrant pandering to anti-Islamic racists.I do not know what it will take to stop this weaponization of antisemitism. I do know it is not consistent with Jewish values to turn in our neighbors for having a different opinion.” 

Laurie Leiber, JVP-Bay Area

Levy makes me proud, J Weekly, February 10, 2025.

“Levy’s [decision to divest from Caterpillar] remind me that my support for a free and liberated Palestine come from my values as a Jew.”

Gina Schumacher, JVP-Bay Area

Caterpillar divestment was necessary, J Weekly, February 10, 2025

“I am reminded of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s statement that “One has not only a legal, but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.” I applaud Levy for divesting the county from Caterpillar — even before the existence of a formal policy — and I support the development of an ethical investment policy in Alameda County that would prohibit investing our tax dollars in additional companies that are complicit in human rights violations.”

_{Alison Hamburg, JVP-Bay Area}

Ideas & Opinions — Israel did not win in Gaza, The Union, February 1, 2025

“Justice for Palestinians is the only path towards peace, and as a Jew, I was horrified to finally witness the truth of Israel’s barbaric occupation of Palestinian lands.”

_{Cheryl Zatuchni, Camptonville}

Donald Trump is ‘calling for ethnic cleansing,’ says Illinois House Democrat, Wand News, February 5, 2025

The plan has received support from both American Palestinians and members of the Jewish community. At the press conference, they lined up behind Rashid, applauding as he condemned Trumps comments on Gaza. Rabbi Brant Rosen, co-founder for Jewish Voice for Peace, said the current law actively criminalizes free speech. “It was immoral and illegal to do so when it was enacted by Gov. Rauner in 2015 and it remains so today,” Rosen said.

How Zionism went from protecting Jews to threatening them, KCRW, February 7, 2025

At the Maine Jewish Museum, an art exhibit, a protest — then a conversation, Portland Press Herald, February 9, 2025.

“We reject this brazen show of support for Israeli nationalism and the Israeli armed forces, especially during this moment when these forces and the Israeli state have been credibly accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity. In particular, we find it deeply out of touch to celebrate those who feed the soldiers of the very armies credibly accused of using starvation as a method of warfare against the Palestinian people.”

_{Jewish Voice for Peace-Maine}

As we remember the Holocaust, we cheer the ceasefire in Gaza | Letter, North Jersey, February 5, 2025.

“Yet we cannot allow tenuous and woefully insufficient relief to weaken our resolve to end Israeli apartheid, to ensure that all people from the river to the sea enjoy full human, political and civil rights. We have despaired to hear the callous and incoherent invocation of the Holocaust to justify the oppression and genocide of Palestinians. What rest can our dead have in such a world? We honor them with our solidarity in the Palestinian struggle.”

Renée Steinhagen and Stephen R. Shalom, JVP-Northern New Jersey

Hundreds in Chicago Protest Israel’s Gallant, Wanted for Crimes Against Humanity, Truthout, February 7, 2025.

“War criminals need to be held to justice. Hosting one in a synagogue is an affront to Palestinians and a disgrace to the Jewish community”

Rabbi Brant Rosen, JVP Rabbinical Council

Jewish Voices for Peace protest Northampton defense contractor’s tax subsidies, Mass Live, February 7, 2025.

“We oppose this weapons manufacturer in our backyard. This is a factory where the engineers design and produce weapons that we have proven have been sent for use by the Israeli military financed by the Department of Defense.”

_{Molly Aronson, JVP-Western Mass}

GUEST ROOM | Jewish Voice for Peace at Cornell Statement on the Weaponization of Antisemitism, The Cornell Daily Sun, February 9, 2025

“Jewish Voice for Peace at Cornell strongly condemns President Donald Trump’s newly issued executive order, Additional Measures to Combat Anti-Semitism, and calls on Cornell University to protect international students, staff and faculty whose visa statuses are threatened by the proclamation. This order does not protect Jewish students. Instead, it seeks to silence anti-Zionist speech on campuses and in communities across the United States. With specific reference to campus activities of the last year, the order implies that the protest and divestment movement is inherently harmful to Jewish students. As Jewish students, faculty and alumni actively involved in a cross-national movement, we reject that pro-Palestinian activism is anti-semitism.” 

Trump’s New Attorney General Directs Prosecutors to Pursue Harshest Sentences Possible, The Appeal, February 7, 2025

“Jonah Rubin, the senior manager of campus organizing for Jewish Voice for Peace, told The Appeal that Bondi’s memo is part of the ‘far-right, authoritarian push to shut down not just pro-Palestine activism on campus, but really any kind of social justice activism on campus using the cover of anti-Semitism and terrorism laws.’

‘It’s particularly offensive to us as Jewish Voice for Peace that this is being done using the excuse of Jewish safety,’ he said. ‘Jewish safety has never been achieved through these types of repressive, authoritarian far-right actions.‘”

A Reconstructionist Reckoning, Jewish Currents, January 30, 2025

“ Louisa Solomon, who is currently in her fifth and final year, told me that she was asked in her interview if she knew about the school’s requirement that students study in Israel. She answered that she hoped by her fourth year Palestine would be free.”

When Jews organize against Zionism, KPFA, January 24, 2025

15 Months of Protest Art for Gaza, Hyperallergic, January 27, 2025

“Channeling the Young Lords’s historic “Garbage Offensive” of 1969, thousands of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) activists and allies marched through Manhattan from the United Nations headquarters to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s (AIPAC) office in Midtown on February 22, 2024. Sparked by the US’s third consecutive veto of the United Nations Security Council’s draft ceasefire resolution two days prior, JVP called on Congressman Hakeem Jeffries as well as Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand to “dump AIPAC,”  a reference to the Young Lords’s iconic demonstrations against inadequate sanitation services affecting Puerto Rican and Latine communities in New York City.”

Northwestern reacts to Trump’s pledge to cancel student visas of non-citizen college students, pro-Palestinian protestors to fight antisemitism, The Daily Northwestern, February 5, 2025

“As Jewish students, we are deeply concerned for the rising antisemitism happening blatantly in the US, and we understand actually ensuring Jewish safety will never involve displacement, deportation and detainment of people whether in the United States or Palestine”

_{JVP-Northwestern} 

Trump threat to deport pro-Palestinian students mirrors rightwing Heritage blueprint, The Guardian, February 2, 2025

“There are students who participate in this activism as non-citizens, so there’s a very clear threat to them. And then there’s also this general fear and repression that that plays into, which is ongoing in these various attempts to dismantle the Palestine solidarity movement.”

_{Benjamin Kersten, JVP-UCLA}

Letter: I count as a Jew too, J Weekly, December 20, 2024

The images I’ve seen from Gaza since last October are hauntingly reminiscent of the horrors that I heard about from my family members and in my community when I was a child. Jewish tradition teaches us to stand against injustice and to do what we can to repair the world. Alameda County’s decision to stop investing our tax dollars in corporations that enable Israel’s human rights abuses is entirely consistent with those values. I, along with countless other Jewish Alameda County residents, wholeheartedly support it.”

_{Brandon Veseley, JVP-Bay Area} 

Letter: I relate to Levy’s grappling, J Weekly, January 254, 2025 

“While it was Iraq that got my attention, I quickly learned from other activists about similarities between the U.S. war in Iraq and the Israeli occupation of Palestine. As a Jewish person raised in a Zionist community, I can relate to Mr. Levy’s grappling with the contradiction between Jewish values and Israeli policy. In March 2003, the same month the war in Iraq started, Rachel Corrie, a student activist just a few years older than I was, was run over by a Caterpillar bulldozer in Gaza while trying to protect a Palestinian home. And now, more than 20 years later, I’m relieved and proud to live in a community that’s divested from Caterpillar.”

_{Steve Schwartz, JVP-Bay Area}

Letter: Don’t erase us, we’re Jews too, J Weekly, January 24, 2025

“A huge portion of those supporting this ethical investment policy are ourselves Jews, standing against violence and with our Palestinian siblings for the sanctity of every life. Many of those who gave public comments cited their descent from Holocaust survivors and their Jewish identity as core motivators for opposing the horrific and disproportionate violence the Israeli state has leveled against Gaza. I am a proud Jew with a deep relationship to my heritage, who believes in justice and dignity for all. The cited comment from that JCRC speaker appeared aimed to erase Jews like myself.”

_{Yael Platt, JVP-Bay Area} 

Letter: Attack on free speech, San Francisco Chronicle, February 2, 2025

“Conflating criticism of the Israeli government with antisemitism is the biggest weapon that Israel uses to silence the world. In addition, President Donald Trump’s chilling message, which seeks to shut down freedom of speech on college campuses, is against our constitutional tradition. Though Trump and the Anti-Defamation League say this is about antisemitism, we may soon find our most important First Amendment rights have been chipped away. Soon this tactic may be used to silence many other voices of dissent across this country. Americans, beware.”

_{Laurie Winestock, JVP-Bay Area} 

A pro-Israel group says it gave the Trump administration a list of students to deport, Salon, January 31, 2025

“Betar attacks all who express support for Palestinian freedom or even sympathy with Palestinians who have endured unimaginable violence at the hands of the Israeli military. They make common cause with neo-fascist militant and antisemitic groups like the Proud Boys. Betar endangers many communities including Jewish communities who oppose their violent supremacist ideology.”

_{Stefanie Fox, Executive Director, JVP}

Trump threatens to cancel student visas of pro-Palestianian protesters, San Francisco Chronicle, January 25, 2025

“As Jews, we refuse to be pawns in the far-right’s authoritarian takeover”

_{Stefanie Fox, Executive Director, JVP}

How the U.S. hid truths about the Gaza war, Salon, January 18, 2025

“The Gaza war has received a vast amount of U.S. media attention, but how much it actually communicated about the human realities was a whole other matter. The belief or unconscious notion that news media were conveying war’s realities ended up obscuring those realities all the more. And journalism’s inherent limitations were compounded by media biases.”

_{Norman Solomon, JVP member}

Vermont’s Jewish community celebrates final night of Hanukkah, NBC5, January 2, 2025

“Not much has changed, and that’s really disheartening for a lot of us. It’s the 14th month of genocide in Gaza, it’s the 75th year of Israeli occupation, we’re out here tonight to engage in a Jewish ritual around Hanukkah”

_{Member, JVP Vermont}

How US Activists are Infiltrating Israeli Events Selling Palestinian Land, Waging Nonviolence, January 10, 2025

“We were horrified to learn of the proliferation of real estate fairs to sell property in the occupied West Bank to North American Jews. These events advance ethnic cleansing in the West Bank and are in violation of international law. It is an insult to the Jewish tradition that synagogues around the country would host such events. These are supposed to be our holy spaces and instead they are collaborating in the destruction and displacement of Palestinians.”

_{Stefanie Fox, Executive Director, JVP}