ABOUT
Mission Statement:
Ithaca Committee for Justice in Palestine is an anti-Zionist, multi-generational group of individuals from a diverse range of beliefs, religions, and backgrounds. We organize the Ithaca-area community to take action to end our complicity in apartheid and colonial violence against Palestinians, working to support the liberation, self-determination, and human dignity of Palestinians, free from genocidal Zionist oppression and erasure.
We aim to end material and political support that flows from our local community, New York State, and the United States for the systemic oppression of Palestinians. We do so by aligning with calls made by Palestinians – such as those for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions and for the U.S. government to stop arming Israel. Our work is part of larger anti-racist, anti-colonial international movements – both directly in solidarity with the Palestinian people’s movement for self-determination, and broader movements for collective liberation from intertwined forms of oppression. We strive to be strategic, dynamic, and effective through our nonviolent campaigns and events – including educational and cultural events, pushing for legislative change, protests, and more.
Our values
As organizers whose work centers around justice, we are deeply committed to working toward a world of safety for all people. We support a free Palestine where all Palestinians can live with peace, dignity, and human rights. These values require working against antisemitism, Islamophobia, and all forms of racism and bigotry. We oppose all attempts to equate criticism of Israel or Zionism with antisemitism – recognizing the dangers both of considering any government policies off-limits from political critique and of conflating Israel with Jewish people worldwide.
Our work is part of a growing worldwide movement of resistance against the state of Israel’s ongoing genocidal catastrophe (Nakba) against Palestine. In the face of Israel operating with impunity and threatening the safety of people around the globe, we respond to the calls for justice, reparations, and Palestinian self-determination. We condemn the extreme military repression against Palestinians, and we support their right to resist within the confines of international law.
We support the constitutional right of free speech to protest the policies and actions of Israel through boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) and we oppose all legislation that obstructs this right.
Structure
Ithaca CJP consists of a core group, several working groups, and active members. The “core group” of CJP is a small group of experienced, committed members from across working groups, dedicated to the ongoing health and effectiveness of the organization. The core group discusses inter-working-group and organization-wide issues, making decisions by consensus.
Working groups, each with a unique area of focus, are the best way to get involved in Palestinian solidarity work with Ithaca CJP. These groups are democratically run, ensuring that every member feels included and valued. They are action-based, implementing a broad range of activities and approaches, coordinating and collaborating with other working groups. While autonomous, each group operates within the broad framework outlined by the Ithaca CJP group agreements and our mission statement & values.
Campaigns
The Campaigns Working Group engages in short and long-term campaigns to build pressure around particular demands to achieve material gains and concrete change for Palestinians. The campaigns are also planned strategically to expand the power of our Palestine solidarity movement to achieve our political goals.
We organize protests and implement a wide variety of tactics, including teach-ins, petition drives, phone banking, canvassing, direct action, postering, and local legislative resolutions. Various levels of involvement are possible to fit your personal situation.
Some of our past campaigns include Ceasefire Now!, Stop Starving Gaza, and the statewide NYS Not on Our Dime! Campaign, which aims to end New York State funding for Israeli war crimes and create an opening for affected Palestinians to seek justice through legal remedies.
Culture and Education
Membership
We build people power for ending US complicity with Israel’s military occupation of Palestine and supporting Palestinians’ liberation by supporting Ithaca CJP’s membership. We strive to make sure that CJP is a space that anyone aligned with our work is inspired and enabled to join, and then has the support they need to share their skills/offerings effectively and thrive in our CJP community for the long-term. We do all this through orienting new members, fostering diverse opportunities for participation and community building, developing organizational infrastructure, and more.
Communications
We are dedicated to expressing CJP’s work through messages and stories that help build our movement. Collaborating with other local networks is key to effectively getting the word out. We work with social media, a website (wordpress), email newsletters, internal organization communication tools, press releases, photos, and more.
We welcome members whether you “have no communications experience” and are just looking to take on a routine logistical task, have a professional communications background or are somewhere in between! (Plus, we can help connect members with opportunities to get training on media skills.)
Jews for Mutual Liberation
We cultivate local anti-Zionist Jewish community, bringing more Jewish people into the pro-Palestine movement through events, rituals, stories, conversations, protests and more. Membership in this working group is open to everyone regardless of religious or other identities :). We also serve as a point of connection with the campus chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace at Cornell.
HISTORY OF ITHACA CJP (2015-PRESENT)
Principles and Origins
The Ithaca Committee for Justice in Palestine (CJP) is rooted in a history of collaboration with local community and university activists and organizations to educate, mobilize and advocate for US policies that support human rights, justice and liberation for Palestinians. In 2014, local activists and organizations protested together to call for an end to Israel’s “Operation Protective Edge” in Gaza. This collaboration provided the foundation for Ithaca CJP’s formation in 2015. Soon Ithaca CJP, Ithaca Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and other local community organizations launched the Food Justice Campaign, calling on the GreenStar cooperative market to stop selling products from companies contributing to Israel’s occupation.
Local/Regional Movement Building and Collaboration
As the Food Justice campaign concluded, the work of Ithaca JVP and CJP had become substantially intertwined, and in 2016 these organizations created a common infrastructure. For the following eight years, Ithaca CJP-JVP played a major role in local organizing for Palestinian human rights and liberation and protesting against US political and economic support for Israel’s repression. We have consistently organized well-attended events with speakers linking analysis with activism. Speakers include Palestinians defending their land from confiscation and villages from repression, US activists linking struggles for racial justice from the US to Palestine, faith leaders demonstrating interfaith solidarity with Palestinians, and Jewish Israeli activists exposing the disastrous impact of the US-Israeli alliance. We organized campaigns targeting local, state and national politicians and organizations supporting Israel’s occupation and war machine. The group also took a leadership role in some regional efforts, including the creation of the Southern Tier for Palestine and an upstate network for the NYS Not on our Dime campaign.
Adapting Over Time
In the fall of 2023, Israel’s US-backed genocidal campaign against Palestinians provoked broader participation in Palestine solidarity work around the world, including on the Cornell campus and in the Ithaca community. It also deepened repression against Palestine solidarity organizations and activists, which led to the reorganization of National JVP and Ithaca CJP. Consequently, our local infrastructure integrating the work of JVP and CJP was no longer viable based on national JVP’s new regulations. In 2024 Ithaca CJP prioritized developing a working group and membership structure to create more options for participation by local community members. Ithaca CJP continues a diversity of strategies that have evolved since its founding.