Jewish Voice for Peace Speaks Out

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Graphic created by Terelle Jerricks

By Mark Friedman, RLNews contributor. Member International Association of Machinists, Local 1484

This reporter posed a series of questions through an interview with Camilo Cienfuegos, a youth leader of Jewish Voice for Peace in Los Angeles. Cienfuegos has worked closely with Estee Chandler of JVP, who is the host and producer of the long running KPFK radio show, Middle East in Focus. JVP, a rapidly growing organization in LA and nationally, has been active in organizing protests demanding a ceasefire in Gaza. In his own words.

RLn: What is the program of JVP?

Camilo Cienfuegos – JVP’s vision is a world where everyone, from the U.S. to Palestine, lives in freedom, justice, equality, and dignity. Inspired by generations of Jewish leftists, we’re on a mission to dismantle oppressive institutions and create something new, joyful, and life-sustaining.

In the face of threats, JVP resists Zionism out of love for Jews, Judaism, and Jewishness. Our struggle against antisemitism is integral to our broader fight against oppression and bigotry. We recognize that Palestinian and Jewish safety are inextricably entwined. We categorically object to the propaganda narrative pitting our peoples against one another; identifying Zionism, with its brutal and genocidal legacy of displacement, apartheid, and ethnic cleansing, as the real enemy of peace.

Our program involves envisioning a future where the Apartheid wall is in pieces, Israeli jails are empty, and Palestinian refugees have the right to return to their ancestral homelands. We’re committed to accountability to Palestinian partners, working against Zionism to create a just future for our collective peoples. For the American Jewish diaspora, this begins at home. We organize to end U.S. support for Israel’s oppression of Palestinians— building a grassroots movement uniting U.S. Jews in solidarity with the Palestinian freedom struggle.

RLn: Give our readers a brief history of JVP

Camilo Cienfuegos – JVP had humble beginnings in 1996, founded by three UC Berkeley students in the San Francisco Bay Area. By 2002, we had a bigger vision: to influence U.S. policies through grassroots efforts. Our funding? Primarily from grassroots campaigns, with a strong emphasis on support from individual donors, then and now. Originally having avoided a hard stance on Zionism to reach a wider audience. By 2014, JVP embarked on a major upheaval to officially enshrine anti-Zionism into its organizational values. This radical transformation came as a result of loving feedback from Palestinian partners and our own membership body, who had long theorized Zionism as the root cause of Palestinian oppression, and as damaging to Jewish identity and spiritual life. Since its founding 27 years ago, JVP has undergone exponential growth and change, both in our membership numbers, and our political values. Once a “fringe” organization, we have now become the largest progressive anti-Zionist movement body in the world.


RLn: How did you get involved?

Camilo Cienfuegos – I became involved in JVP out of a need to consolidate my organizing efforts for maximum impact. As a third-world, Cuban-American Jew, anti-imperialist + decolonial values are at the center of my political practice, and Palestine has been one of my largest issue items for over half a decade. I had walked away from organizing in 2020, after a negative experience at my last movement home left me disillusioned and disempowered in my ability to enact effective change as a part of an organization. I remained politically engaged through attending actions, supporting local efforts, and voting, but otherwise avoided active involvement. Israel’s brutal attacks against Palestinians post-Oct. 7 was a wakeup call for me. I found myself unable to remain unaffiliated as the Zionist entity justified atrocity after atrocity in my “supposed name”, and felt a moral imperative to counter the -largely unquestioned- narrative propagated by the Israeli machine conflating Zionism with Judaism. I had known about JVP for a long time, and jumped at the opportunity to join the newly forming Los Angeles chapter. Though it is growing by the day, Anti-Zionism is still considered quite a fringe position, at least among Jewish diaspora in the US. Palestine is the issue of our lifetime, and as someone who has stood proud in their Jewish and Anti-Zionist identity for years before this unprecedented wave of criminal violence from Israel captured global attention, I could not live with myself if I didn’t do everything in my power to stop my community’s complicity in genocide. JVP is my movement home, and I couldn’t imagine a better organization to contribute to.

RLn: What do you see as a solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?

Camilo Cienfuegos – Well first of all, I don’t consider it a conflict. I believe language is very powerful, and using words like “conflict” to describe the situation on the ground is part of the problem. What mainstream media describes as “conflict”, or a “war”, is a relationship between the occupier and an occupied people, or as Palestinian freedom fighter Ghassan Khanafani once said, a conversation between the boot and the neck.

Zionism is a colonial ideology that at the root, positions Euro-Jewish settlers as superior to the indigenous population in the land they occupy. This hierarchy is sustained through a monopoly on violence, where only the state’s actions are justified, and any resistance from the occupied population is inherently illegitimate. Whether violent (armed struggle) or non-violent (Great March of Return, BDS, etc.) Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation has always been mislabeled as terrorism. The source of this “conflict” is colonialism, ethnic cleansing, and white supremacy, and the solution is self-determination for the Palestinian people, reparations, and complete dismantlement of the apartheid regime. This is not a religious conflict, as Jews, Christians, and Muslims lived in peace for thousands of years before the Zionist project.

I personally believe in a one-state solution, the complete dismantlement of the Israeli state, Palestinian self-determination and stewardship of the land returned. One nation, with equal rights, and democratic process for all its citizens.

RLn: As a Cuban-American how do you view Cuba’s position on Palestine?

Camilo Cienfuegos – It is impossible for me, both as a Cuban national living in the US, and as an American Jew, to not see the similarities between the US aggression and economic strangulation of my homeland, Cuba, with Israel’s illegal occupation of historic Palestine and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. The divide and conquer strategy and propaganda efforts I see the Zionist entity utilize in its annexation of the West Bank, the siege on Gaza, and suppression of Palestinian communities in Jerusalem feel intimately similar to the American occupation of Guantanamo and complete economic blockade in Cuba. These are tactics that imperial forces utilize to turn colonized people into agents of their own destruction. Cuba also experiences systemic delegitimizing on the world stage, and our people’s cries are also ignored. When I see Cuba’s solidarity and support of the Palestinian struggle, I feel immensely proud. I only wish more global leaders with GDP’s and military forces far mightier than my homelands had half the courage of the Cuban people and followed suit in cutting all diplomatic ties with Israel, expressed public outcry at the Israeli state’s genocidal agenda, staunchly opposed asymmetrical, Zionist U.N. resolutions, and mobilized their masses in solidarity with the Palestinian people.

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