Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), an organization that supports Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS), has come under fire for a since-deleted tweet that appears to glorify the First Intifada.
The Dec. 8 tweet featured a poster from a JVP member stating “where there is oppression, may there thrive resistance” and “L’Chaim Intifada.” JVP described the First Intifada in the tweet as “a series of mass protests against Israeli settler-colonialism and occupation.”
Various pro-Israel users on Twitter condemned the post.
“277 Israelis, mostly civilians, were murdered during the First Intifada,” tweeted Avi Mayer, director of global communications for the American Jewish Committee. “What do you call a group that celebrates the deaths of Jews?”
He added in a subsequent tweet that the poster featured in the JVP tweet “equates Palestinian rioters with partisans during World War II, suggesting that Israel is akin to Nazi Germany. As a reminder, this is defined as a form of antisemitism by the [International] Holocaust Remembrance Alliance.”
The Israel Advocacy Movement, a pro-Israel group in Britain, similarly tweeted: “This utterly repulsive antisemitic tweet from JVP will shock you. In it they compare the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade terror group and [Leila] Khaled [a terrorist who hijacked a plane] to Jews who resisted the Nazi genocide. This is disgusting, even by their standard.”
International human rights lawyer Arsen Ostrovsky tweeted, “[The] 1st Intifada was a brutal and violent Palestinian uprising. But trust [JVP] to stand up and glorify the terrorists.”
JVP did not respond to the Jewish Journal’s request for comment.
This article was first published by the Jewish Journal.