How we got here

Palestinians, like all people, should be free. Palestinians have been steadfastly struggling for their freedom for over 78 years.

Palestinians should be free to live and raise their families on the lands of their ancestors, to access education and healthcare, to drink clean water, to move freely without harassment, to make decisions about the government they live under. They should be free from Israel’s bombs and forced starvation, free from the threat of their houses being demolished and their olive groves bulldozed to make way for Jewish-only settlements. They should be free from the constant fear of their children being imprisoned, tortured, and killed.

But since its very founding, the state of Israel has sought maximum Palestinian land with the fewest number of Palestinians.

The state of Israel was founded on the basis of the Zionist movement’s project to create a Jewish state on land that Palestinians had called home for centuries. Early Zionist leaders were always clear about their intentions: seize the maximum amount of Palestinian land, and make sure it had the minimum number of Palestinians. Since 1948, when Zionist militias expelled over 750,000 Palestinians from their homes and declared an Israeli state on Palestinian land, that goal hasn’t changed. 

Ever since, Israeli law has privileged Jews over anyone else, legalizing segregation and discrimination over the entirety of the land, from the banks of the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. An apartheid system of different laws and roads and courts are enforced by military and settler violence that controls, divides, intimidates, displaces, and kills Palestinians. Every decade, Israel drives Palestinians off more and more of their land. Jews from anywhere in the world have the right to citizenship in Israel, while the Israeli government denies Palestinians the right to return to their homeland. 

By September 2023, Palestinians had lived under Israeli apartheid, occupation, and ethnic cleansing for decades. In Gaza, over two million Palestinians had lived under Israeli military blockade for 17 years, and had been living in what the UN called “the world’s largest open air prison. Teenagers had already witnessed five deadly Israeli military offensives in their short lives that had killed over 3,000 civilians since 2008, and watched Israeli military snipers maim and kill Palestinian protestors. 2023 was already the deadliest year for Palestinian children in the occupied West Bank in decades. On October 7, 2023, Hamas launched a military offensive that killed over 778 Israeli civilians and 350 soldiers and security personnel, and took 240 people hostage. The day would reverberate around the world. The Israeli government pledged to “flatten” Gaza, and to treat all Palestinians like “human animals.”

In October 2023, the Israeli state accelerated its genocidal project against Palestinians in Gaza.

Almost nothing remains in Gaza — except two million Palestinians bravely, steadfastly living under inhumane conditions. The Israeli genocide has destroyed 90% of all homes, schools and hospitals, as well the water, sanitation and elctricity grids. Despite the October 2025 “ceasefire,” the Israeli military continues to kill dozens of Palestinians every week and prevents most food and medicine from entering Gaza. Palestinians are suffering from malnutrition, water is increasingly scarce, and contagious diseases are increasing. All the while, the Israeli military is occupying and stealing more and more of Gaza’s land. At time of writing, as confirmed by the Palestinian Ministry of Health, the Israeli genocide has killed almost 75,000 Palestinians (with the number likely being much, much higher) and wounded over 173,000.

As the genocide continues under the rebrand of “ceasefire,” Palestinians in the Israeli occupied West Bank face a campaign of violent forced displacement on an unprecedented scale. Armed settlers and soldiers commit regular pogroms, rampaging through Palestinian villages, burning homes to the ground, lighting vehicles on fire, and injuring and killing Palestinians. Soldiers stand by, join in, and often prevent ambulances and medics from treating the injured.

The Israeli government has expanded its war to Lebanon, Syria and Yemen and, with the U.S., waged war on Iran; in addition to Gaza and the West Bank, Israel is currently militarily occupying over 5% of all of Lebanon and encroaching on Syria. 

Israeli apartheid and genocide is cemented, enabled, and funded by what generations of U.S. presidents have called an “unshakeable alliance” between the U.S. and Israel. 

The U.S.-Israel alliance is rooted in an agenda of maintaining U.S. economic, political, and military power in the Middle East and around the world. The U.S. state provides military funding and diplomatic pressure to ensure Israel cannot be held accountable for apartheid, and the Israeli state provides markets, technology, and intelligence for the U.S. 

In service of this shared agenda, they trade surveillance information and technology, tactics for repressing people’s movements, and weapons tested on occupied Palestinians. They also share cultural narratives that seek to justify, erase, and legitimize structural racism, land theft, supremacy, and inequality. 

The U.S. government gives Israel unconditional military funding and diplomatic impunity, as U.S. corporations profit from Israeli apartheid and genocide.  

Israel is the largest total recipient of U.S. foreign aid since World War II. The U.S. government provides at least $3.8 billion a year in military funding to Israel. That number has skyrocketed in recent years, with the U.S. providing more than $30 billion in weapons and military support to Israel since October 2023. The military funding and weapons sales then line the pockets of U.S. weapons manufacturers — before being used to kill, imprison, displace, and control Palestinians. 

When international bodies — like the United Nations or the International Criminal Court — attempt to hold the Israeli government accountable for its crimes under international law, the U.S. uses its political power to delegitimize or block these efforts. 

At the same time, U.S. oligarchs and their tech and security firms make billions enabling the Israeli government to run its apartheid and genocide, and then help channel that dirty tech back into the U.S., where it’s used by militarized police and ICE against our communities. 

Meanwhile, the Israeli state and its advocates push the idea that oppression of Palestinians is necessary to create safety for Jewish people. 

Many Jews are taught a version of history that says our communities have always been alone and under attack and that we always will be. The state of Israel and its backers promote this version of history, and then turn our fear of antisemitism into a weapon: they say that the best response to fear is a bigger bomb, a taller wall, a more humiliating checkpoint.  

The state of Israel and many Jewish Zionist institutions continually insist that all Jews are Zionists and that being Jewish requires that you support the state of Israel. They say this to try to stop opposition to anything Israel does, including apartheid and genocide, by claiming it is antisemitism. This abuse of Jewishness and Judaism is everywhere, from synagogues with Israeli flags on the bima, to groups like the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) trying to codify misleading definitions of antisemitism into law, to lobby groups like AIPAC channeling resources to politicians constantly trying to prevent holding the Israeli government accountable for its war crimes. 

This legal, cultural, and political conflation turns Judaism into a moral cover for the U.S.-Israel war machine. 

Intentionally linking Jews with support for Israel makes everyone, including Jews, less safe. 

Since the founding of the state of Israel, its leaders have claimed that Israel’s existence makes Jews, everywhere, more safe. In fact, the opposite is true. When the state of Israel and its supporters claim — falsely — that all Jews support Israel, they are trying to make all Jews responsible for the actions of the state of Israel, including the war crimes committed in occupation, apartheid and genocide. It is clear that the Israeli government’s atrocities make all people— including Jews — less safe. Israel carries out brutal wars and genocide against families and children, then falsely claims these war crimes are done in the name of Jews. This leads to more anti-Jewish sentiment.

False accusations of antisemitism are also a tool of fascists in the U.S.  

The far-right does not care about Jewish safety — in fact, its leadership and members regularly peddle in antisemitic slurs and conspiracy theories. Instead, it plays lip-service to supporting Israel and uses that to cover up its antisemitism.

Rightwing leaders also use support for Israel and supposed care for Jewish safety as justification for anti-democratic and racist policies. Through this fake concern for antisemitism, the far-right has advanced laws that restrict our right to protest and censor what we can say, and gutted DEI programming in schools and universities.

But this can end with us. An alliance is only unshakeable until we shake it.  

Systems of domination and supremacy are built through money, political power, and hateful narratives, and they can also be dismantled. We can build the grassroots power needed to form a counterweight to the money and power held by our opposition. 

Palestinians have been resisting oppression and fighting for freedom since Israel was founded. Under utterly inhumane conditions, they have raised their families, educated their children, cherished their elders, cared for their land, preserved their histories, enriched their culture, and taught the world what it means to be steadfast. 

As we fight to dismantle the U.S.-Israel alliance, we have our ancestors at our backs, and we draw inspiration and courage from Palestinian resilience and resistance. It is this that makes our movements unstoppable.

We’ve been organizing for 30 years.

For over three decades, we have grown with intentionality and commitment, building grassroots people power and organizational strength to become a political home for tens of thousands of Jews across the U.S. With care and rigor, we’ve nourished and deepened partnerships across the Palestine movement and with progressive causes the world over. We’ve learned—and unlearned—together, over and over. We’ve evolved our understandings, asked the hard questions, and embraced the beauty and possibility of anti-Zionist organizing as we seeded and supported Judaism beyond Zionism. Through solidarity and a commitment to collective liberation, we’ve fought antisemitism and fought against its weaponization. Through dozens of divestment campaign victories, we’ve moved money away from supporting Israeli apartheid and genocide.

When the genocide began, we understood our role – relentless protest. 

We have been everywhere. From train stations to bridges, and from city avenues to national landmarks, we have demanded no business as usual during a genocide. We took over the halls of Congress. Twice. Our rabbis interrupted the President, our elders were arrested, our students put their futures on the line as our people, in hundreds of protests, demanded that our government stop arming Israel. At the same time, we welcomed an unprecedented number of Jews into a political community, bringing in thousands of people who had never felt belonging into a Jewish community with justice at the center. Now, groups of committed volunteer leaders in almost every U.S. state are working together to make change, in over 100 chapters and other formations.

Global movements have delivered a sea change in public understanding.

Over the last three years, the public understanding about Israel, Palestine and Zionism has broken open. In 2026, a survey conducted by the Jewish Federation of North America showed that 63% of respondents did not identify as Zionists. From JVP’s headline grabbing protests, to Passover Seders in the student encampments for Gaza, and the proliferation of anti-Zionist spiritual and cultural institutions, the myth that Judaism and Zionism are synonymous is crumbling. More than ever before, the American public understands that U.S. support for Israel was never about Jewish safety, and was always about power, profit and land. 

We’ve begun to see that translate to real change.

People everywhere are channeling their grief and rage into concrete action. Israel Bonds divestment campaigns by coalitions including JVP have already lost the Israeli government over $90 million. With a dozen campaigns across the country, additional wins are anticipated and the momentum is just getting started.

Legacy Jewish institutions that, for decades, punished and isolated anyone who questioned Zionism are no longer able to claim they speak for all Jews. Scores of small but growing anti-Zionist Jewish cultural and religious projects are taking root across the country. Anti-Zionist Jewish histories are breaking through the campaign to suppress them. 

The political calculus is also changing: From divestment resolutions across the country to an unprecedented number of members of Congress supporting bills that would block the sale of weapons to Israel. The election of Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani to NYC mayor—a movement victory made possible by the hundred thousand volunteers who mobilized for a candidate prioritizing Palestinian freedom—cemented this fact.

But the horrible truth we confront everyday is that we have not stopped the genocide, let alone ended the U.S.-Israel alliance that upholds injustice.  

Fascists and oligarchs are uniting to destroy our rights and our movements, and Israeli genocide and ethnic cleansing are accelerating. The road ahead is steeper than it’s ever been.  

We know this. We hold the horror and the tragedy and fear. And yet, every day, we recommit to a free Palestine and to each other. We hold fast to what is true: We are the future of Jewish communities. We are side-by-side in formation with our movement partners. We move with conviction, with care, with love. 

The only thing we are more than heartbroken, more than overwhelmed, and more than enraged, is determined.