This misleading messaging is not fact-based and inverts reality. Many people, including our children, encounter these claims regularly, and we owe them facts and context.
On Saturday evening I encountered activists from Jewish Voice for Peace next to the Squirrel Hill Night Market. They were engaging people with talking points that vilified Israel and pushed for a U.S. arms embargo.
JVP describes itself as an “anti-Zionist organization” and has a history of promoting campaigns and political agendas that fuel hatred and conflict, rather than justice and peace. Its materials frame false accusations of “genocide” and “intentional starvation” as undeniable truths; promote the boycott divest sanction (BDS) campaign, which aims to eradicate Israel; and characterizes the eliminationist slogan “from the river to the sea” as a call for “equality and freedom.” JVP blames Israel alone for Palestinian suffering and ignores the destructive actions of Hamas and the Palestinian Authority.
I spoke to a few of the JVP members, challenging their claims with facts about Hamas ruthlessly militarizing civilian areas all over Gaza and Israel’s efforts to avoid harming civilians. While we agreed that the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre was horrific, the JVP representatives held Israel solely responsible for the suffering of the Palestinians, insisted on calling all of Israel “occupied Palestine,” denied any link between anti-Zionism and antisemitism, and refused to acknowledge Israel’s right to self-defense. Their materials even made the misleading claim that stopping U.S. aid to Israel could feed millions of Americans — a false and libelous assertion about budget allocations and the U.S.-Israel relationship.
I am sharing what I heard — and what I didn’t — because this misleading messaging is not fact-based and inverts reality. Many people, including our children, encounter these claims regularly, and we owe them facts and context.
Genocide is a legal term requiring proven intent to destroy a people because of their ethnic or national identity. Israel’s objective is to defeat Hamas and free the hostages. Its military has been forced to carry out this objective in an urban battlefield where an openly genocidal terrorist group spent 16 years ruthlessly militarizing Palestinian homes, schools, mosques and hospitals. Instead of protecting its people, Hamas puts them directly in harm’s way and then exploits their suffering through false claims of genocide. Meanwhile, Israel has sent millions of warnings to Palestinian civilians, urging them to evacuate war zones. It has put its own troops in danger by sending them to fight house to house across Gaza. And it has launched dozens of investigations into the actions of its own soldiers during this war.
Accusations of “intentional starvation” ignore the fact that Israel has helped deliver over 2 million tons of aid into Gaza since it was attacked by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023. Some focus on a period from March to May, 2025, when Israel cut off aid in order to put a new system in place aimed at stopping Hamas from stealing food and other supplies. Two key facts are left out to promote big lies about Israel. First, from Jan. 19 to March 1, 2025, Israel helped deliver 307,908 metric tons of food to Gaza — enough to feed everyone there for up to five months. Second, the BBC and other media outlets confirmed that Hamas uses aid to fuel its war machine, including by taking food that is supposed to be free and selling it to civilians. In July, Israel recognized that the new system failed, leading to severe food shortages in parts of Gaza. Hundreds of truckloads of aid sat inside Gaza, but the U.N. was unwilling or unable to deliver it to all civilians in need. Israel responded to this crisis by pausing many military operations and dramatically expanding deliveries of food, water and medical supplies.
This context doesn’t make the suffering of Palestinian civilians any less horrific. What it should do is change the actions of those who want to help end the devastation caused by the Oct. 7 war. As even Arab leaders begin to openly state that Hamas must lay down its arms and relinquish control of Gaza, all people of good will must focus on making those words a reality.
Far too often, we see anti-Israel activists, including a small minority within the Jewish community, hiding behind “anti-Zionism” to avoid accountability. Criticizing Israeli policies is legitimate. However, anti-Zionism — an effort to strip away the rights of Jewish people to self-determination in their indigenous homeland — is discriminatory. Here’s a simple test for anti-Zionist activists: Do they support both Jewish and Palestinian self-determination, side by side? If not, they are not part of a peace movement; they are singling out one people for discrimination. Since Oct. 7, 2023, Jewish communities, including here in Pittsburgh, have faced threats, vandalism and harassment often justified as “anti-Zionist” activism. This is not a normal policy debate — it’s antisemitism.
During my conversation, the JVP activists did not make any demands for Hamas to release Israeli hostages or end its reign of terror for the sake of everyone in the region. A movement that focuses solely on pushing lies about Israel, while minimizing Hamas’ atrocities, doesn’t advance peace; it fuels division and violent extremism in our community, while harming both Israelis and Palestinians.
These one-sided talking points appear at neighborhood events, on campuses and across local social media, often without context. Our community is dealing with real consequences: near-daily antisemitic incidents, constant battles against anti-Israel initiatives, and protests that blur the line between policy critique and delegitimizing Jewish self-determination. When public spaces are dominated by one-sided slogans, Jewish students and families feel pressured into a false binary: Stay silent or be labeled complicit in imaginary crimes.
We need to be armed with the ability to clearly explain why the misinformation spread by JVP and similar groups is harmful:
• Ideas matter: The fact that groups like JVP identify as Jewish does not excuse them from promoting or enabling the spread of antisemitism. What matters is their ideas, not their identity.
• Words matter: “From the river to the sea” is heard by many Jews as a call for the elimination of Israel. If the goal is equality and coexistence, that must be stated clearly for both Israelis and Palestinians.
• Context matters: Hamas initiated this war on Oct. 7, 2023, still holds hostages and operates from civilian areas — choices that increase risk for everyone.
• Standards matter: Hold Israel to the same legal and moral standards you would apply to any democracy fighting a genocidal terrorist group that ruthlessly embeds itself among civilians, as Hamas does in Gaza.
We cannot allow our story to be inverted or Israel to be demonized, delegitimized, or held to a double standard by anti-Zionists. Any movement seeking to eliminate the world’s only Jewish state must be held accountable for its lies and the harm it does to Israelis and Palestinians alike. All of us have a role to play, by educating ourselves, our families and our wider communities, telling our story as widely as possible, and standing for a truly just peace in the region.
Julie Paris is Mid-Atlantic regional director of StandWithUs.
