Who supports “A Jewish Voice for Peace” (JVP)? Formerly only a gaggle of Berkeley-based left-wing extremists, JVP was the only Jewish organization to make the ADL’s list of the top ten anti-Israel groups in the nation in October 2010. Recently it got a plug in the San Francisco Bay Area supplement of the NY times, which claims that
Jewish Voice for Peace’s mailing list has risen to 100,000 from 35,000 since the start of the Gaza conflict, according to the organization; the number of chapters has grown to 27 from 7. From 2008 to 2009, the group’s operating budget, fueled by donations, grew 44 percent.
JVP, which calls for a ‘right of return’ to Israel for Arab ‘refugees’ and promotes the boycott-divestment-sanctions movement against Israel — indeed, JVP supported the failed campaign at UC Berkeley to divest university holdings from Israel — has received a total of more than $1.8 million in tax-deductible donations and grants between 2002 and 2008 (the last year for which their IRS form 990 is available).
This is a huge amount of money for an organization whose rhetoric and actions are far more extreme even than the phony ‘pro-Israel’ J Street. There is no way that this organization can be supported by the mostly young student activist base that is its public face. Like J Street, there is no doubt that JVP receives large donations from elements hostile to the state of Israel.
So who are they? We are going to find out. But in the meantime, here are some possibilities:
- The Carter Center (which got at least $10 million from the Saudi Kingdom) praised JVP in 2008 for helping to gather signatures on a petition calling for ‘dialogue’ with Hamas. Did Carter funnel some recycled petrodollars to JVP?
- The Presbyterian Divestment campaign lists JVP as one of its partners. Could unsuspecting liberal Protestants have helped JVP?
Stay tuned.
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I would bet American anti-Israel Jewish groups with that kind of funding receive nearly all of it outside the Jewish community.
The same pattern holds with anti-Israel NGOs in Israel, who receive the bulk of their funding from European governments and hostile anti-Israel NGOs abroad.
Follow the money… whenever you see a well-funded anti-Israel Jewish or Israel group, assume that they have non-Jewish backers with very deep pockets who are financing an agenda inimical to Jewish/Israeli survival.
The rotten fruit seldom falls far from the tree.