Jewish Voice for Peace Submits Amicus Briefs in Landmark Legal Cases Asserting that Anti-Zionism is not Antisemitism 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

06.10.2025 

Media Contact: Liv Kunins-Berkowitz | 510-314-7660 | [email protected] 

Massachusetts (June 9, 2025)  – Jewish Voice for Peace, one of the largest progressive Jewish organizations in the world, submits amicus briefs in landmark legal cases defending freedom of speech and affirming that anti-Zionism is not antisemitism. In the two cases both before the District Court of Massachusetts – President & Fellows of Harvard v. U.S. Department of Health & Human Services and AAUP Harvard Faculty Chapter v. U.S. Department of Health & Human Services – the US government has targeted universities for allowing criticism of Israel or Zionism, defining these beliefs as antisemitic. To remediate antisemitism, the government has pushed for  Universities to adopt the misguided International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (“IHRA”) re-definition of antisemitism to now include anti-Zionism and criticism of Israel.

As anti-Zionist Jews who are critical of the Israeli government’s policies, JVP believes that their voice is essential for the court’s decision in this case. JVP submitted the amicus briefs to express its “grave concerns” that the Court will redefine criticizing Israel and opposing Zionism as antisemitic, and in turn require Jews to support Israel and Zionism. Such a finding would redefine what is to be a Jew, what Jews must believe, and declare Jews who are anti-Zionist or critical of Israel as somehow not Jews.  JVP’s briefs provide the court essential context of the longstanding disagreements within the Jewish faith, a 2,000-year-old religion, regarding Israel and Zionism, a political ideology little more than 100 years old:

“As Jews, JVP does not believe that to be Jewish you must support Zionism…The Court would be ruling that any actions opposing Zionism or criticizing Israel, including by Jews in JVP, are antisemitic. Such a ruling would mean that Zionism and supporting Israel are required parts of the Jewish faith. But this Court dictating what constitutes valid or required Jewish beliefs runs directly counter to the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, its history, and its purpose.”

In a statement to the court Stefanie Fox, Executive Director of Jewish Voice for Peace, stated: 

“Some Jewish legacy institutions make supporting the Israeli government the price of entry into our religion. They suggest that our millennia-old religion requires adherence to Zionism: an ideology that has required in practice the Dispossession and oppression of Palestinians to create and maintain an ethno-state where Jews have more rights than Palestinians on their own indigenous land. As Jews, we do not believe that to be Jewish you must support Zionism. We welcome our communities into the life-affirming politics of anti-Zionism. Where Zionism suggests Jews require a supremacist nation state to answer the real question of Jewish safety, anti-Zionism means supporting justice for the Palestinian people, including their right to live in freedom and equality, and to return to their homes and land. Anti-Zionism also means believing that Jews, and all people belong and should be safe wherever they live.”

Amicus briefs available upon request 

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Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) is the largest progressive Jewish anti-Zionist organization in the world. JVP organizes a grassroots, multiracial, cross-class, intergenerational movement of U.S. Jews into solidarity with the Palestinian freedom struggle, guided by a vision of justice, equality and dignity for all people.