The Jewish Voice for Peace chapters at GW, American and Georgetown universities disaffiliated from the national organization earlier this month and formed the student-led Anti-Zionist Jewish Student Front, establishing a chapter at each campus.

The three chapters announced their name change and disaffiliation from JVP’s national organization in a joint Instagram post on Sept. 7, saying they were forming a separate student-led group for pro-Palestinian Jewish students at colleges and affirming their commitment to Palestinians’ rights to self-determination and an end to the ongoing war in Gaza. The change follows a one-year suspension of GW’s former JVP chapter, after officials said the group violated University policies by ignoring prior sanctions and posting content on social media that targeted Jewish students — prompting the group to disaffiliate from the University.

“We work to dismantle Zionism in its entirety by confronting Zionist institutions on campus, to struggle for divestment, and to pursue the criminalization of Zionism as a white supremacist weapon of war,” the joint Instagram post announcing the rebrand reads. 

GW’s AJSF coordinating committee said in a statement that the rebrand creates a student-led organization — a divergence from JVP, which wasn’t just led by students and organized on college campuses, but rather a national organization with local college chapters. The committee said the new group committed to “resisting Zionism,” the movement centered around the formation of a Jewish national state in Palestine, the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people, and promoting Palestinians’ right to return and live in the area.

“As Jewish students, it is our unique responsibility to expunge Zionism from our Jewish institutions, who are complicit in the genocide,” the coordinating committee said in an email.

In forming AJSF chapters on their three campuses, the GW, American and Georgetown chapters of AJSF created a new national organization. Only the three D.C. schools so far have rebranded from JVP to AJSF.

AJSF’s national organization did not return a request for comment and has only posted once on their Instagram, announcing the organization’s formation.

In the joint post announcing the change from both the national organization and three founding chapters, the groups reaffirmed their demands for their universities to divest from companies tied to weapons manufacturing and Israel in the video, adding that universities nationwide have become a site of resistance against imperialism.

“​​We demand an end to repression of pro-Palestinian voices on campus,” the video accompanying the announcement post said. “We demand the Jewish values of Tzadak — we demand justice.”

The formation of the GW AJSF chapter comes a month after the former JVP chapter disaffiliated from the University following their suspension. A JVP member, who requested anonymity over fears of University repression, said in August that the group disaffiliated from GW after it continually faced disciplinary proceedings from officials but will continue pursuing “the student struggle.”

“At this critical moment, anti-Zionist Jewish students will continue to organize and pressure the university to divest from genocide and protect its students amid an attack against immigrants and anti-Zionists in academia and across the country,” the member said in an email in August.

As the two-year anniversary of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel that sparked the outbreak of the war in Gaza nears, the GW coordinating committee said it is the responsibility of anybody living in countries that support Israel, like the United States, to demand their governments end their financial support and arming of the country’s military.

More recently, a United Nations commission of inquiry concluded last week that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, as the United Kingdom, Australia and Canada formally recognized the state of Palestine on Sunday. Within the U.S., political leaders on both sides of the spectrum, like Bernie Sanders and Marjorie Taylor Greene, have said Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

“After almost 2 years of US-backed Zionist genocide in Gaza, it is critical that anti-Zionist Jewish students are firmly united in unconditional solidarity with Palestinians and in demanding our universities and institutions cease material and intellectual support for the ongoing genocide,” the coordinating committee said.

The coordinating committee also said the recent Israeli ground invasion in Gaza City, which started Tuesday, parallels the 1948 Nakba and further urges the group to organize and protest on their campuses. The Nakba saw 700,000 Palestinians flee or be expelled by Israeli forces during the Arab-Israeli War in 1948, which led to the creation of Israel.

The coordinating committee said GW is complicit in the war and the deaths of Palestinians because it has pursued disciplinary action against pro-Palestinian organizations on campus, maintained ties with weapons manufacturing companies and refused to fire economics professor Joseph Pelzman.

In the immediate aftermath of the April 2024 pro-Palestinian encampment in University Yard, officials said they would not consider divesting from companies tied to Israel. 

Students have called on officials to fire Pelzman since February, after the professor authored and sent a plan to people associated with President Donald Trump in July 2024 for a potential economic redevelopment of Gaza following the end of the war. Trump first mentioned the proposed economic redevelopment of Gaza in February with his suggestion that the territory could become the “Riviera of the Middle East.”

The calls to fire Pelzman led to officials suspending another pro-Palestinian organization, Students for Justice in Palestine, for a year over the summer, pushing the group to disaffiliate from the University. Officials had already suspended SJP for a year at the end of the spring semester for hosting unauthorized events.

“We, as Anti-zionist Jewish students, remain committed to our demands that the university sever all ties to the Zionist entity and protect all students, faculty, and staff from the fascist Trump administration and the DOJ,” the coordinating committee said.

The coordinating committee also said they want officials to declare GW a “sanctuary campus,” re-emphasizing demands that students initially laid out last spring for officials to ban federal law enforcement from GW’s campus and protect free speech and academic freedom at the University.

JVP was a part of numerous protests on campus, including the pro-Palestinian encampment, along with other pro-Palestinian demonstrations and protests against the decision to arm GW Police Department officers.

The organization also hosted a celebration this past February with other local JVP chapters marking the Jewish holiday Tu B’Shvat, which symbolizes the start of the agricultural season in the Hebrew calendar.

In August 2024, University officials suspended JVP for a semester and placed the organization on disciplinary probation through the conclusion of the spring 2025 semester over the group’s involvement in the pro-Palestinian encampment.

American University’s JVP chapter has not faced any disciplinary proceedings from the university. AU’s SJP chapter last faced disciplinary proceedings in November 2024, where officials placed the organization on disciplinary probation and restricted their tabling privileges for the remainder of the 2024-25 academic year.

It is unclear whether Georgetown’s JVP or SJP chapters have faced any disciplinary proceedings from officials.