In recognition of the fact that Students for a Democratic Society were anything but pro-democracy, William F. Buckley supposedly had taken to writing out the group’s name as “Students for a Democratic (sic) Society.” I can’t help but see the anti-Zionist hate group known as “Jewish (sic) Voice for Peace (sic)” in the same way.

A new report on JVP from the pro-Israel group StandWithUs helpfully condenses the available information for anyone interested, but it ought to be required reading for media and politicians. Although JVP’s contribution to the global wave of anti-Semitism is by now well-known—JVP is proud of itself and presumably wants its donors to know they are getting a return on their investment—two trends are worth highlighting.

The first is that JVP has gotten more and more extreme over the years, to the point where—and this is important—its original founding mission statements and organizing principles are irrelevant. It is not “against the occupation,” it is against Israel’s existence. JVP made the change explicit in 2019, though it was always clear where their hearts were, even if they wouldn’t say it. In 2011, JVP’s deputy director Cecilie Surasky spoke to the New York Times about why her group was coming out in force to support the Egyptian protests during the Arab Spring, leading to an all-time-great sentence in Jewish history: “Ms. Surasky said she hoped a new political order in Egypt would help speed the end of Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories, which her group opposes.”

Ah yes, the Jews who pine for the Egyptians to liberate the region from the Jews. Some activists want to undo the events of 1948, but that’s child’s play to JVP, which wants to undo the events of the Book of Exodus.

Undoing Jewish history is, in fact, a main goal of the organization. As Joshua Muravchik noted in a deep dive into JVP in COMMENTARY in 2019, the only reason for the “J” in JVP is so that the group can claim to be Jewish. It’s right there in the name! And in fact, it’s only there in the name.

So if we already knew much of this, what’s so useful about the report? The answer is: JVP’s behavior since its 2019 conversion to anti-Zionism is helpful in charting the growing radicalization of progressive anti-Israel activism in the lead-up to the post-Oct. 7 explosion of anti-Semitism across America’s public institutions.

In 2022, JVP joined a campaign to “Free Ahmad Sa’adat,” secretary-general of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, who was imprisoned by Israel for his role in the assassination of an Israeli government minister in 2001.

That campaign was spearheaded by Samidoun, an organization that has since been sanctioned as essentially a PFLP cutout. In 2024, JVP co-hosted a pro-Hamas event with Samidoun. In 2020, JVP lent its support to PFLP hijacker Leila Khaled. In 2023, JVP announced it was “Standing with Jenin,” a reference to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad fighters locked in a battle with IDF troops at the time. In 2020 it commemorated past waves of violence against Israelis with the slogan “L’Chaim Intifada.”

By the time Oct. 7, 2023 rolled around, JVP was indistinguishable from any number of increasingly radicalized anti-Israel and anti-Semitic pressure groups. Its rhetoric and style were indistinguishable, in fact, from the PFLP itself—which isn’t surprising, because the PFLP has been at the forefront of the post-Oct. 7 “tentifada” movement and has enjoyed a resurgence among the American left because it mixes Palestinian nationalism with Marxist anti-Western revolutionary flair.

Which brings us to the second trend one notices when reading through this report. American political and activist culture has reached a point where radicalization is the destination, not the journey. The purpose is to be extreme, almost regardless of what brand of extremism you follow. The progression of the anti-Israel movement foreshadowed this entirely.

And of course, just like anti-Semitism itself, once it’s out of the bottle a whole mess of other stuff emerges from the bottle too. A mass-casualty terror attack in New Orleans stemming from a self-motivated radicalization didn’t seem to follow any straight, coherent lines, but ended up with a gun and an ISIS flag.

Houston, we have a domestic radicalization problem. And as long as we refuse to be honest about the pro-terrorism inclinations and anti-Semitic ideologies kicking this trend into overdrive, it’s only going to get worse.