"Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) is a zionist-funded and facilitated organization with a knack for furthering dubious sentiments and uplifting zionist voices. It was founded by UC Berkeley students Julia Caplan, Rachel Eisner, and Julie Iny in 1996 in the San Francisco Bay Area. Since its initiation JVP has nurtured and sustained policies, ideologies, and objectives that wholly support the fascist colonial state of “israel” and its continued imperialist existence on indigenous Palestinian land.
In particular, JVP’s role has been to “normalize”* the existence of israel while simultaneously reducing the Palestinian struggle for National Liberation to an abstract “human rights” based campaign that poses no threat to the zionist entity.
… One of the founding members of Jewish Voice for Peace, Rachel is based in Berkeley, California where she currently works as a Director of Development & Communications with Civicorps. Her professional portfolio lists her as a B.A graduate of multi/interdisciplinary studies from the University of California, Berkeley where she was fairly active in the Progressive Zionist Caucus society. She co-founded JVP in 1996 and immediately after (with no time to lose) was hired as Associate Regional Director at the New Israel Fund (NIF) in 1997 where she worked for over 4 years.
(The NIF, a US-based non-profit, lists its own objectives as aiming to “strengthen israeli democracy and attain equality and justice for israelis” while routinely allocating millions of dollars in grants to zionist establishments and simultaneously accepting funding from similar entities as well.)
Later in 2010, Rachel attained the position of Northwest Regional Director at J Street and worked with the pro-israel organization for more than 8 years. It goes without saying that J Street, yet another US-based non-profit, strives towards advancing zionist interests with its two-state solution advocacy and strengthening american-israeli relations i.e maintaining a steady flow of financial aid from the US to fund the genocide of Palestinians.
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Rebecca has been affiliated with JVP since 2001 and only recently called it quits with the org in 2019 after her husband was exposed for directly working for the cyber security branch of the israeli military. During her 19-year employment period, she was an Executive Director for 10 of them. This senior role probably emboldened her to take decisions such as collaborate with J Street under the facade of furthering the BDS movement. However, in 2017 when Jonathan Lebowitsch, her husband, was exposed to be working as a Solution Architect for Check Point Software Technologies (a cybersecurity vendor established in Occupied Palestine by zionist military forces) her sense of invincibility dropped a couple notches and 2 years later it was quits for her with JVP. Her husband’s affiliation with the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone, Rebecca illegally took up residence in Occupied Palestine during the years of 2006-2009 with her family.
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Isaac Lev Szmonko, is another one of the many JVP board directors who relish in their collaboration and normalization with zionist-backed and funded organizations. Isaac, in particular, has worked with donor organizations as well as enterprises falling in that category.
He has worked with Resource Generation; an organization that is funded by the Bafrayung Foundation (this one funds IfNotNow which closely works with JVP) & the Tides Foundation (and this one funds J Street). Isaac also represents a position of authority within the Bafrayung Foundation as he signed a signatory on its behalf in 2020. His co-worker at the Gelman Giving; Rachel Gelman also chairs this foundation.
Bafrayung Foundation also happens to be funded by the Morningstar Foundation; which provides grants to “leftist israeli” orgs. It must be made clear by now that there is no such thing as left-wing/right-wing israelis. That is simply another distraction technique to deter the public eye from paying attention to the criminal identity of each ‘israeli’ and the whole settler colonial entity that likes to call itself ‘israel’. Because if these settlers aren’t being deployed to the military, they are bearing weapons to assault and brutalize Palestinians and if not that then squatting in a Palestinian’s home and aiding the occupation regime continues its cycle of genocide and apartheid on indigenous people.
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One of JVP’s most prominent funders, Rockefeller Brothers Fund (RBF) as of 2015 had a revenue of $14,599,535 and assets worth $859,466,256. In 2019 the fund distributed $38,700,000 in grants in almost 350 grants. However, when scrutinizing the list of the organizations that received these grants, Jewish Voice for Peace sits among others like the Anti-Defamation League Foundation (ADLF), IfNotNow Movement, J Street Education Fund, Just Vision, and the Sierra Club Foundation.
Most important among RBF’s donor organizations is the ADLF, which supports the “left-leaning” anti-semitism watchdog; Anti-Defamation League. It is highly interesting since Jewish Voice for Peace has been allegedly ‘doxxed’ and ‘outed’ as anti-israeli & anti-semitic by the ADL for almost a decade now. That undoubtedly stirred up a lot of commotion in the media and earned JVP its fair share of press and spotlight. However, that all is barely believable since the ADLF (which provides funding and support to the ADL) garners a chunk of its finances from the same funder that’s JVP’s biggest donor. Not to mention the ADL also routinely publishes public profiles threatening the safety and privacy of Palestinian activists. Which begs the question, why are the ADL and JVP commonly funded by the same entity whereas they both claim to have polar opposite approaches/goals?
It is also worth noting how the term “left-wing/left-leaning” is thrown around when referring to these NGOs. An entity that regularly endangers the life of Palestinians, while the other claims to advocate for Palestinian peace and rights; are both referred to as left-wing.
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JCF, in 2019, had a revenue of $822,229,715 and assets worth $2,031,447,910. Possibly the most interesting of all of JVP’s funders, the NGOMonitor reported in 2016 that the JCF granted JVP $25,100 in 2015 and another source quotes the granting of a sum of $10,500. On the other hand, in 2016 & 2017 JCF reportedly made grants of $1 million to the Central Fund of Israel; “a conduit” for funnelling US grants to ‘right-wing’ Israeli federations. The Central Fund of Israel was also utilized by the Helen Diller Family Foundation to make donations to Megamot Shalom (a Zionist public benefit corporation that runs Canary Mission)
Quite interesting how JVP’s funding is linked to both the ADL and Canary Mission; both entities that claim to allegedly have ‘doxxed’ the org. It’s clear the snowflake doxxing that the ADL and CM utilize for their Zionist counterpart JVP is merely a facade to dupe the public."
I didn’t want to comment on this thread, because frankly arguing with people is one of my least favorite activities, but I’m afraid that now I am going to have to explain why I still refuse to shun JVP after reading this.
First of all, this page does not even attempt to explain why this movement repeatedly denounces Zionism. In fact, the very FAQ that the page quoted also says that ‘our Palestinian partners had long theorized Zionism as the root cause of the Palestinian condition. More and more of our members not only agreed, but understood Zionism as damaging to Jewish identity and spiritual life. In 2014, it became clear that we needed to clarify our position in order to effectively continue doing our work.’
I have never heard of JVP purging itself of anti‐Zionists. On the other hand, the very evidence presented here suggests that the moderate Zionists have only been drifting away from this movement; including them anyway suggests that the author is either a purist or cannot manage time. I’ll admit that the notion that the Palestinians and the neocolonists can ‘reach a mutually agreed upon solution’ is naïve, but waiting for that utopian solution isn’t their focus, and it’s unlikely that all of their members agree with it anyway.
Some of these claims are hard to believe, as
Including this one?
As for the donors, aside from the outdated information, I find very odd how the author was content to cite right‐wing sources like InfluenceWatch (whose page for the Schwab Charitable Fund doesn’t mention JVP at all) and NGO‐Monitor (which hasn’t updated its JVP page since 2016). The author seems to be under the impression that funding alone is proof that the Zionist lobby controls the explicitly anti‐Zionist JVP, but doesn’t care to explain why the lobby would support moderate and generic Zionists simultaneously, though they got close:
Why indeed. It is an interesting question why a ‘philanthropist’ would spend money on a left‐wing cause (image improvement, maybe?), yet we’re left answerless. Presumably the answer would be that the JVP is a trick to make left‐wingers support Zionism (somehow).
I can agree that JVP needs radicalization, but the lack thereof hasn’t stopped the police from assaulting them either. This isn’t the time for purity tests; pick your battles.
Thawabet isn’t “purity testing”… the trick is the Oslo strategy. “Pro Palestine” but anti-resistance. Peace is only possible when the “israeli” government ceases to exist. Solidarity groups who propose anything less is not a friend even if they may sometimes be useful.
I encourage you to learn more about normalization and liberal zionism. 👍