Open Letter to the Santa Barbara City Council:
We are writing to clarify the position of the Jewish Federation of Greater Santa Barbara in response to a Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) opinion piece that appeared in the Independent on October 27, 2023. We stand by our statements made at the City Council meeting of October 24, 2023, which characterized JVP as a radical organization that does not represent Santa Barbara’s Jewish community. In fact, JVP utilizes a relative handful of Jewish individuals as tokens to misrepresent the legitimate Jewish community. The recent call from JVP to remove Jewish Federation flags from public display was not only wrong. It was immoral as it encouraged and fostered anti-Semitism.
In its recent piece, JVP heaped praise upon British and American politicians Jeremy Corbyn, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib. These are telling examples, as all three have been rebuked repeatedly by their own parties for their pervasive anti-Semitic statements and actions. In fact, after leading the British Labour Party far down the path of anti-Semitism, Corbyn was expelled in 2020. With allies and heroes like these, JVP marks itself as clearly outside the boundaries of the broader Jewish community in the U.S. and globally.
The most widely embraced definition of anti-Semitism is known as the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition, which has been adopted by more than 40 countries around the world. Nations subscribing to the IHRA definition are as diverse as Belgium and Bahrain, Australia and Albania, and Sweden and South Korea. Here at home, IHRA has been adopted by the U.S. Department of State, Department of Education, and even the student government of our own UC Santa Barbara.
According to the IHRA definition, today, anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism are intertwined. IHRA includes the following contemporary example of anti-Semitism: “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.”
JVP and its allies embrace the destruction of the nation-state of Israel and anti-Zionism. We, and they, have made our positions clear.