It should be no surprise that some Islam advocacy organizations in the United States have more critical views of Israel than, say, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Today the Anti-Defamation League — an organization that fights bigotry and often focuses on anti-Semitism — released a list of the top ten anti-Israel groups in the United States. The list included several organizations that have been investigated for their ties to terrorism, such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations. The list also includes:
- Act Now to Stop War and End Racism (ANSWER)
- Al-Awda
- Friends of Sabeel-North America
- If Americans Knew
- International Solidarity Movement
- Muslim American Society
- Students for Justice in Palestine
- US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation
But, the list also includes what would seemingly be an unusual organization to be wrapped in with the other groups — Jewish Voice for Peace.
Normally, that group but appear like the skunk at the garden party, but in actuality Jewish Voice for Peace is just as biased as its other list cohorts.
The California-based group is composed of anti-Zionists who contend Israel has apartheid policies and regularly pushes divestment campaigns. In fact, the group unsuccessfully pushed a divestment resolution at Berkley.
The Jewish Voice for Peace’s website is filled with photographs calling for divestment and accusing Israel of human rights violations, with Jewish images and Hebrew regularly appearing in the photographs.
This organization is not the only Jewish group oppossed to Israel and in fact many ultra orthdox Jews — living in the United States (and Brooklyn in particular) and even in Israel — are anti-Zionist and do not believe in the Jewish state. However, there on the fringe of the ultra-orthodox community, which is fairly indicative that these groups are extremely marginalized.
There are many reasons to be critical of Israel. But often, these reasons are leveraged as masks to hide anti-Semitic sentiments that are the root cause of anti-Israel biases.
And these anti-Zionist Jewish groups use their identity to state that, by definition, they are not anti-Semitic and are merely objecting to human rights violations. However, these groups also use narratives and biased information that was crafted and conjured by anti-Semites. Their “facts” are often mired in anti-Jewish prejudice that, while perhaps unintentional, makes their positions inherently anti-Semitic.
Criticism of Israel is just fine, and there’s enough material that considering the anti-Semitism-laced positions of these groups is simply unnecessary.