Hatem Bazian Is The Jewish Voice For Peaceby A.J. Caschetta
Special to IPT News
December 29, 2025 https://www.investigativeproject.org/9431/hatem-bazian-is-the-jewish-voice-for-peace  | | Jewish Voice for Peace posts on Instagram |
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On May 11, 2023, Hatem Bazian, founder of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), tweeted a retort to CNN anchor Jake Tapper, whining that Tapper's "report on Rashida Tlaib's Nakba 75 event was racist and anti-Palestinian." Bazian must have thought he was blasting Tapper anonymously from the Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) Twitter account, but he was actually tweeting from his own personal account. The post ends by asserting, "As Jews who believe in human rights and justice, we demand you do better."  | | Hatem Bazian's May 11, 2023 Tweet |
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Keeping his private Twitter account and his JVP Twitter accounts separate proved too much for Bazian, and his cover was blown. Ilan Berman noted that Bazian's screw-up should have proved embarrassing for him but instead probably "will be forgotten immediately." It was. But this cannot continue. Who Is Hatem Bazian? Bazian is the driving force behind a quasi-academic activist effort to stifle speech and writing about Islamism and to portray research into Islam as inherently hateful. In this capacity, he is founder of the Islamophobia Research and Documentation Project at the University of California, Berkeley, president of the Islamophobia Studies Research Association, and editor in chief of the Islamophobia Studies Journal. He is also co-founder of the American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), co-founder of Zaytuna College, where he is professor of Islamic Law and Theology, and a faculty affiliate at the Rutgers Center for Security Race and Rights. JVP fits neatly into his network. Bazian's Takeover of SJP Bazian identifies himself as the co-founder or founder of SJP when he was a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, but the first SJP was founded in 1993 by Osama Qasem as a moderate alternative to Berkeley's more extremist Muslim Students Association (MSA). "We oppose illegal settlements, not the peace process," an SJP member told the Berkeley media in 1995 at a rally where MSA students shouted "We are your nightmare, Israel" and spat on Hillel counter-protesters. SJP eventually fell apart from a lack of interest in 1999 when the group was unable to meet the 4-student minimum for official club status. But that soon changed with the onset of the Second Intifada. An article in Arab America claims that Bazian founded SJP in 2001, when he "renamed and re-designed the club formerly known as GUPS – General Union of Palestinian Students." Once Bazian was at the helm, SJP was no longer a moderate alternative to MSA. In 2004, Bazian called for an "Intifada in America," and SJP echoed his call. Bazian's Takeover of JVP In 1996, three students at the University of California, Berkeley (Julie Iny, Rachel Eisner, and Julia Caplan) co-founded the Jewish Voice for Peace. In 1996, JVP was not "anti-Zionist" and did not advocate a boycott of Israel. Today, it openly embraces Islamists and antisemites. It's hard to imagine 1996-era JVP members donning Keffiyehs and calling for the destruction of Israel, but JVP members today do so regularly. Pinpointing the precise date when JVP came under Bazian's control is a difficult task. Perhaps it came in 2011, shortly after National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP) was formed and organized its first national conference at Columbia University. According to Dina Omar, one of NSJP's original members, fundraising efforts for travel expenses fell short, so both Bazian's AMP and JVP "chipped in to cover flights for some of [SJP's] members." Or perhaps it came in 2015, when JVP endorsed the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, or in 2019, when JVP declared itself "anti-Zionist." Whatever the date, Bazian decided that, unlike his takeover of SJP, no name change was necessary for his takeover of JVP. In fact, he depended on the illusion of Jewishness to amplify and validate the message that all his organizations espouse. Andrew Pessin, professor of philosophy at Connecticut College calls this tactic "Jew washing," noting how anti-Israel Jews always begin their denunciations of the Jewish state with the phrase "As a Jew..." implying that Jews can't possibly be antisemitic. Had Bazian not deployed the "As Jews" trope, his giveaway Tweet would not have given him away. The JVP-SJP Alliance In spite of the word "peace" in its name, JVP is not interested in peace. It is obsessed with destroying Israel. JVP's messaging today is every bit as antagonistic to Israel as SJP's messaging. As a November 28 JVP Instagram post claims, "Anti-Zionism is anti-colonial and anti-imperialist. We must lead with this framing if we wish to dismantle Zionism." Like SJP, JVP portrays Israel as an apartheid state committing genocide that must be eradicated through a "right of return" for some 7 million "Palestinian refugees" born after 1948. Since October 7, JVP has become the most important front for SJP. At schools where SJP chapters are suspended or banned, many continue to operate under the guise of JVP. At the University of Rochester, where the SJP chapter was "derecognized" in February 2023, but still operates with seeming impunity, JVP enables the outlaw SJP to participate in campus events. As recently as November 12, 2025, the university's recognized JVP chapter and its derecognized SJP chapter jointly held a screening of a film titled 5 Broken Cameras. The two Instagram accounts (SJP.UR and JVP.UR) posted identical messages on November 10, under the heading "SJP X JVP."  | | Identical November 10, 2025, Instagram posts by SJP.UR, left, and JVP.UR, right. |
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Conclusion In 2018, I suggested that JVP should be called the Jewish Voice for Palestine because of its relentless promotion of a Palestinian state. But since the "Jewish" part of the name is clearly a misnomer, "The Voice for Palestine" is more accurate. And since we know that Hatem Bazian runs the operation, an even better name would be "The Fake Jewish Voice for Palestine." Or perhaps we could just call it what it is – SJP.  Chief IPT Political Correspondent A.J. Caschetta is a principal lecturer at the Rochester Institute of Technology and a fellow at Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum where he is also a Milstein fellow.
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Related Topics: A.J. Caschetta, Hatem Bazian, Students for Justice in Palestine, SJP, Jewish Voice for Peace, JVP, University of California Berkeley, Jake Tapper, Rashida Tlaib Related Articles: | 
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