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jewish voice for peace
As Part of 'Authoritarian Takeover,' Trump Signs Order to Deport Pro-Palestine Students
"Trump and his cronies do not care about Jewish safety—in fact, they and the white nationalists who support them are themselves the greatest threat to American Jews," said one campaigner.
Jan 29, 2025
An executive order signed Wednesday by Republican U.S. President Donald Trump authorizing the deportation of noncitizen students and others who took part in protests against Israel's annihilation of Gaza was condemned by civil rights defenders as an overzealous bid to smear the movement for Palestinian rights under the guise of combating antisemitism.
Before publishing the order—which is titled "Additional Measures to Combat Antisemitism"—the White House accused "pro-Hamas aliens and left-wing radicals" of waging "a campaign of intimidation, vandalism, and violence on the campuses and streets of America" and the Biden administration of turning "a blind eye to this coordinated assault on public order."
Trump's office said the new directive "takes forceful and unprecedented steps to marshal all Federal resources to combat the explosion of antisemitism on our campuses and in our streets since October 7, 2023."
"To all the resident aliens who joined in the pro-jihadist protests, we put you on notice... we will find you, and we will deport you," the White House said, adding that the Trump administration "will also quickly cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses, which have been infested with radicalism like never before."
The White House vowed "immediate action" by federal prosecutors in response to "terroristic threats, arson, vandalism, and violence against American Jews"—without providing any examples of these alleged crimes.
⚠️ “Text groups in NY are urging members to report pro-Palestine foreign students as ‘terrorist supporters’ for deportation under Trump. Other groups are using AI to create lists of names.” Screenshot of one of the texts below. Via Etanetan23 on X Story: www.haaretz.com/israel-news/...
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— Leah McElrath (@leahmcelrath.bsky.social) January 28, 2025 at 3:35 PM
While analyses have shown that pro-Palestine student protests have been nearly 100% peaceful, violence by police and pro-Israel counter-demonstrators was reported on numerous campuses.
Trump signed two additional executive orders late Wednesday; one promoting so-called "school choice" policies critics say are meant to destroy public education, and another ending federal funding for public schools accused of "indoctrination... including based on gender ideology and discriminatory equity ideology."
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) condemned Trump's antisemitism order as "a dishonest, overbroad, and unenforceable attempt to smear college students who protested against the Israeli government's genocidal war on Gaza in overwhelmingly peaceful ways."
Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP)—which led an unprecedented nationwide wave of Jewish-led protests for Palestinian rights—said Trump's order "is pulled directly from the pages of the far-Right Heritage Foundation's 'Project Esther' report, which is a blueprint for using the federal government and private institutions to dismantle the Palestine solidarity movement and broader U.S. civil society, under the guise of 'fighting antisemitism.'"
"These tactics are built to disrupt the historic movement for Palestinian liberation across the U.S.—including on college campuses—before then using those same tactics to attack a wide range of progressive social justice movements," JVP added.
JVP executive director Stefanie Fox said in a statement, "We stand with the student protestors who so bravely put their bodies and academic careers on the line to save lives and demand an end to the Israeli military's destruction of Gaza."
"As Jews, we refuse to be pawns in the far-right's authoritarian takeover," Fox added. "Trump and his cronies do not care about Jewish safety—in fact, they and the white nationalists who support them are themselves the greatest threat to American Jews. They are waging a campaign against all those who are brave enough to challenge their power."
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Now 'Things Get Much Worse': Palestinian Rights Movement Under Threat as Trump Returns
"This administration will likely be coming very quickly to try to take down the Palestinian rights movement," said a Jewish Voice for Peace Action leader.
Jan 02, 2025
Victims of violence by U.S.-armed Israeli forces and advocates for Palestinian rights across the United States are sounding the alarm over Republican President-elect Donald Trump's looming return to the White House and GOP control of Congress.
President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and the divided 118th Congress have faced intense criticism for giving Israel diplomatic and weapons support to kill at least 45,581 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip over the past 15 months and attack Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen. The outgoing Democratic administration and lawmakers have also faced backlash for their response to anti-war protests, particularly on U.S. university campuses, some of which were met with police brutality.
However, recent reporting in the United States and Israel has highlighted fear about promises from Trump and his Republican Party that, as the Israeli newspaper Haaretzput it last week, a "quick and complete" crackdown "on pro-Palestinian sentiment in America will be a defining factor of his administration's early days."
"The Palestinian rights movement is very clear-eyed in understanding that it is very likely that this Trump administration will mean that things get much worse for Palestinians."
Beth Miller, political director of the advocacy group Jewish Voice for Peace Action, toldPolitico on Wednesday that "the Palestinian rights movement is very clear-eyed in understanding that it is very likely that this Trump administration will mean that things get much worse for Palestinians."
"This administration will likely be coming very quickly to try to take down the Palestinian rights movement," Miller added.
Leaders with the Adalah Justice Project and Arab American Institute also noted concerns about efforts to silence advocates and even dismantle organizations—some of which are already underway. In November, 15 House Democrats joined all but one Republican in voting for the so-called Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act (H.R. 9495).
The legislation would enable the U.S. Treasury Department to revoke the tax-exempt status of any nonprofit it deems a "terrorist-supporting organization" without due process. Advocates for various causes have condemned what they call the "nonprofit killer bill."
Although H.R. 9495 never made it through the Democrat-held Senate, Republicans are set to take over the chamber on Friday. The GOP will also retain control of the House, which during this session has repeatedly voted to conflate criticism of Israel with antisemitism, or discrimination against Jews.
In addition to likely facing a new wave of legislative attacks—potentially spearheaded by GOP leaders like incoming House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Brian Mast (R-Fla.), a U.S. military veteran who has volunteered with the Israel Defense Forces and denied the existence of "innocent Palestinian civilians"—rights advocates in the United States could be targeted by key officials in the next Trump administration.
As Haaretz recently detailed, former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, Trump's second choice to lead the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ); Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), his nominee for secretary of state; and Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), his candidate for ambassador to the United Nations, have expressed support for deporting pro-Palestinian protesters who have student visas.
Although former federal prosecutor Kash Patel, Trump's pick to direct the Federal Bureau of Investigation, "doesn't have much of a record on campus protests, he is most notorious for his desire to remove any of Trump's critics and doubters from the national security apparatus," the newspaper noted. "Further, Patel's experience as the National Security Council's senior director of counterterrorism during Trump's first term positions him to crack down on pro-Palestinian sympathizers."
Aggressively anti-Palestinian appointees, who tend to describe all campus protesters as Hamas supporters, will soon steer both foreign and domestic policy, creating a Trump administration united in seeking a crackdown on the pro-Palestinian movement. www.haaretz.com/israel-news/...
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— John Sloboda ( @johnsloboda.bsky.social) December 26, 2024 at 6:07 PM
Haaretz also highlighted comments from Harmeet Dhillon, Trump's pick to lead the DOJ's Civil Rights Division, and Linda McMahon, his nominee for education secretary, as well as Project Esther: A National Strategy to Combat Antisemitism—an October proposal from the Heritage Foundation, the right-wing think tank that is also behind the sweeping Project 2025 policy agenda.
"The virulently anti-Israel, anti-Zionist, and anti-American groups comprising the so-called pro-Palestinian movement inside the United States are exclusively pro-Palestine and—more so—pro-Hamas," states the Project Esther report. "They are part of a highly organized, global Hamas Support Network (HSN) and therefore effectively a terrorist support network."
Two co-chairs of the Heritage-backed National Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, James Carafano and Ellie Cohanim, wrote earlier this week at the Washington Examiner that "Project Esther is a blueprint to save the U.S. from those utilizing antisemitism to destroy it."
"The objective is to dismantle the infrastructure by denying it the resources required for its antisemitic activity," they argued. "Targeting the groups and organizations that receive the funding and deploy it to their grassroots followers who engage in antisemitic activity, the useful idiots we see on college campuses, for example, will divorce the means from the opportunity, thereby rendering these activists incapable of threatening U.S. citizens."
Posting the piece on X—the social media platform owned by billionaire Trump ally Elon Musk—Carafano
declared that "when Donald Trump starts to take on the global intifada he will need partners. We will need to be there."
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Israeli Use of AI Weapons in Gaza Denounced as Blatant Violation of Treaty Obligations
"As the Israeli military weaponizes AI for oppression, the world must confront this hypocrisy and hold it accountable to save lives," said Jewish Voice for Peace.
Nov 20, 2024
Amid reporting that the Israel Defense Forces is using an artificial intelligence weapons system touted as improving "operator lethality," Jewish Voice for Peace said Israel's use of technological warfare is "nothing new"—but pointed out that the new reports follow the country's signing of "the first global 'safety' AI treaty."
The Framework Convention on Artificial Intelligence, spearheaded by the Council of Europe, was signed by Israel in September, and "claims to be a legal framework governing AI systems to mitigate risks to human rights, democracy, and the rule of law—but the Israeli military is using AI to do precisely the opposite," said JVP.
The Jewish-led advocacy group spoke out after Middle East Eye (MEE)reported that the IDF has been using a weapons system in Gaza that came out of a collaboration between Israeli Weapons Industries and the Indian company Adani Defence & Aerospace.
The AI system, Arbel, was first unveiled at a defense expo in Gandhinagar, Gujarat in October 2022. MEE reported it is capable of turning "machine guns and assault rifles into computerized killing machines," using algorithms to increase Israeli soldiers' chances of hitting targets with accuracy and "efficiency."
The huge death toll in Gaza—which is conservatively estimated to be about 44,000 but which nearly 100 medical professionals estimated to be more than 118,000 last month, based on their experiences in hospitals there—has previously been linked to Israel's use of AI.
As Common Dreams reported in April, an AI machine called Lavender has been used by the IDF to devise "kill lists," with the military deeming 100 civilian deaths for every Hamas official an acceptable error rate. In December, the Israeli outlets +972 Magazine and Local Callreported that another AI machine called Gospel has been used to target dozens of buildings per day.
Defense analysts told MEE that Arbel has likely been used to "carry out the carnage of Palestinians in a more efficient manner in Gaza."
Antony Loewenstein, an independent journalist who tracks the use of technological warfare in Gaza and the West Bank, told MEE that as Israel has used numerous AI systems over the past 13 months, "targeting civilians was the point. It was never about just going after Hamas."
"I have spoken to people in Gaza, I have seen the direct human impact of this kind of killing," he told the outlet. "It is horrific."
Research analyst Noah Sylvia of the Royal United Services Institute in London told MEE that the IDF "has demonstrated a disregard for civilian life in Gaza to the point of routinely targeting children with small arms, meaning that Arbel could easily be used to make the killing of civilians, of children, more efficient."
The impact of the AI system depends "on the military's operating procedures and commitment to international humanitarian law," said Sylvia.
Humanitarian groups and human rights experts have said Israel is blatantly disregarding international law with its near-total blockade of aid into Gaza and its attacks—some with U.S. weapons—on civilians infrastructure.
JVP said the IDF's use of Arbel indicates Israel is also violating the Framework Convention on Artificial Intelligence, and noted reports that the military has also used "facial recognition technology and advanced weapons to monitor, silence dissent, cut internet access, and obscure its war crimes."
Marwa Fatafta, Middle East policy and advocacy director for Access Now, warned that Israel's partnering with India—where AI companies reportedly have the sixth-highest AI investments in the world at $7.73 billion—may provide "a new and terrifying blueprint for tech-enabled warfare... this time through Indian-Israel military tech."
"Rarely does a technology stay dormant in one location," Fatafta said. "The lawlessness and impunity in which Israel commits egregious crimes with the use of AI should terrify everyone."
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