by Tyler O’Neil in The Daily Signal

Legacy media outlets and left-leaning nonprofits may seek to distance themselves from the anti-Israel protests on college campuses and in Washington, D.C., many of which have devolved into outright antisemitism. Yet influential outlets and activist groups have at least one key tie to a notorious group supporting the anti-Israel protests, and an organization that represents more than 2,500 Orthodox Jewish rabbis is sounding the alarm.

Despite its anodyne name, Jewish Voice for Peace enflames anti-Israel sentiment. On the very day that Hamas terrorists raped, murdered, and took hostages in Israel (Oct. 7, 2023), JVP leaders blamed “Israeli apartheid and occupation” as “the source of all this violence.”

In the weeks afterward, Jewish Voice for Peace rallygoers in Providence, Rhode Island, chanted, “Hey hey, ho ho, the Yahudi [Jews] have got to go!” JVP speakers in Philadelphia stated: “The anticolonial armed resistance out of the Gaza Strip was provoked by decades of Israeli state-sanctioned violence and to report it otherwise is false and misleading.”

According to the Anti-Defamation League, which monitored these and other incidents, Jewish Voice for Peace “considers supporters of Israel, or even critics of Israel who do not hew to JVP’s own extreme views, to be complicit in Israel’s purported acts of racist oppression of Palestinians.”

Jewish Voice for Peace hosted a protest July 23 in the Cannon House Office Building ahead of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to a joint meeting of Congress. U.S. Capitol Police told The Daily Signal on Friday that the agency arrested 248 protesters that day, charging them with crowding, obstructing, or incommoding under D.C. Code Section 22-1307.

Jewish Voice for Peace did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment.

The Washington-Baltimore News Guild

Amid a resurgence of labor unions on the Left, many nonprofit organizations have unionized. Jewish Voice for Peace is no exception.

Although Americans traditionally associate unions with physical labor and for-profit companies, the labor movement has struggled in the private sector even as it grows and thrives among government employees and nonprofits.

Nonprofit employees, who ostensibly work to advance a cause rather than their own pocketbooks, seem an odd fit for unions. Employees at Jewish Voice for Peace, however, unionized in August 2020.

The Washington-Baltimore News Guild, which came about as a 1964 merger of the Washington Newspaper Guild (founded in January 1934) and the Baltimore Newspaper Guild, represents a broad swath of news outlets and left-leaning nonprofits.

The list includes two American Civil Liberties Union chapters (North Carolina and West Virginia); the AFL-CIO; the American Nurses Association; the Democratic Socialists of America; the Fairfax County Federation of Teachers; the LGBTQ group Lambda Legal; the environmentalist group League of Conservation Voters; the National Abortion Federation; and the Southern Poverty Law Center. The guild also represents news outlets including Politico; Raw Story; the Baltimore Sun; The Charlotte Observer; the Richmond Times-Dispatch; and The Washington Post.

None of these nonprofits and news outlets responded to The Daily Signal’s requests for comment about their relationship with Jewish Voice for Peace. Communication Workers of America, the umbrella union under which the Washington-Baltimore News Guild falls, did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment.

Loud Condemnations of Anti-Israel JVP

The Coalition for Jewish Values, which represents more than 2,500 Orthodox Jewish rabbis in American public policy, asked the Washington-Baltimore News Guild, known as WBNG, to stop representing employees of JVP.

“There are two compelling reasons why the Coalition for Jewish Values unequivocally calls on the Washington-Baltimore News Guild to stop representing Jewish Voice for Peace employees,” Rabbi Ze’ev Smason, midwest regional vice president for the coalition, told The Daily Signal in an emailed statement Wednesday.

“JVP is a radical anti-Israel and anti-Zionist activist group that advocates for the boycott of Israel and eradication of Zionism,” Smason said. “JVP does not represent the mainstream Jewish community, which it views as bigoted for its association with Israel. Furthermore, the spread of JVP’s most inflammatory ideas can help give rise to antisemitism.”

“As the ADL has documented, JVP leaders blamed ‘Israeli apartheid and occupation’ as ‘the source of all this violence’ on the very day that Hamas terrorists raped, murdered, and took hostages in Israel,” the rabbi added. “Therefore, representing JVP employees is tantamount to representing the hate-filled, anti-Israel, antisemitic ideas and actions that JVP has engaged in and promotes.”

Smason also noted that WBNG states on its website: “Together, we hold our employers accountable and ensure that our workplaces reflect our values, which include ensuring everyone is free from harassment and retaliation, earns equal pay for equal work and has a voice in their workplace.”

“It is hard to imagine an organization more antithetical to the values of ‘ensuring everyone is free from harassment and retaliation’ than JVP, that openly espouses anti-Israel sentiment and unabashedly supports the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign against Israel,” Smason said. “Based upon the hateful actions and incendiary, anti-Israel ideals of JVP, and the avowed inclusivity mission of WBNG, the Coalition for Jewish Values emphatically calls upon WBNG to disassociate itself from the representation of JVP employees.”

The New Tolerance Campaign, which publishes a “hate map” to track “hate and hard left extremism” across the United States, has put four chapters of Jewish Voice for Peace on its map.

“The Washington-Baltimore News Guild is free to engage with whichever groups they like under the union banner, but they can’t do so without question—and there are a lot of questions surrounding Jewish Voice for Peace, their methods, and JVP’s associations with groups engaging in political violence,” New Tolerance Campaign President Gregory Angelo told The Daily Signal in an emailed statement Wednesday. “Is this really a group WBNG wants carrying their banner—literally—into campus riots this fall?”

An Unofficial Response

Although none of the involved nonprofits and news outlets responded to The Daily Signal, an employee of the ACLU of West Virginia did send an unofficial response.

Kyle Vass, whose profile on the ACLU of West Virginia’s website identifies him as an investigative reporter who launched the website Dragline, posted an unofficial response to The Daily Signal’s request for comment on the social media platform X. The ACLU of West Virginia didn’t respond, neither to requests for comment for this story nor to a request to confirm that Kyle Vass represents the organization’s union.

Vass identified himself as “the union steward for our collective bargaining unit,” and gave what he characterized as “my official statement from our staff union” on X.

“Shaking down nonprofits for falling under the same union as an org you oppose highlights why companies like The Daily Signal and The Heritage Foundation are enemies of the working class,” Vass wrote. “ACLU-WV Staff United opposes this thinly veiled effort and stands in solidarity with WBNG.”

In no way can I speak on behalf of the ACLU of WV or WBNG, but as the union steward for our collective bargaining unit, my official statement from our staff union (ACLU-WV Staff United) to @Tyler2ONeil is as follows….

— Kyle Vass (@WilliamKyleVass) August 14, 2024

Vass did not comment on Jewish Voice for Peace’s anti-Israel activism nor respond to concerns about organizations that unionize alongside JVP.

Originally published in The Daily Signal