Jewish Groups Slam Pro-Palestinian Activists In Boston For Creating Map of “Zionist leaders and powerhouse NGOs”

Boston Jews are furious over the recent making of an antisemitic map by an activist group that says it aims to expose “local institutional support for the colonization of Palestine” and reveal how support for Zionist causes is a nexus point for various “other harms” in society.

A dense interactive map of “Zionist leaders and powerhouse NGOs” in Massachusetts has been created by ‘The Mapping Project’, a Boston-area pro-Palestinian activist collective aligned with the local Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement targeting Israel, is using its map (which includes addresses of the organizations and names of their staffers) to draw literal links between dozens of area Jewish groups, universities, foundations, police departments, and other organizations.

Source: The Forward (Jon Cherry/Getty Images)

With this map, the group says its goal is to demonstrate that “institutional support for the colonization of Palestine is structurally tied to policing and systemic white supremacy here where we live, and to US imperialist projects in other countries.”

Jewish groups slammed this hateful activity, with Jeremy Burton, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston saying, “They are choosing, in their desire to be intersectional, to essentially point the finger at the Jewish communal infrastructure of Greater Boston as responsible for every evil under the sun that they can think of. They make no bones about it.”

In a joint statement, Boston’s communal Jewish organizations say that the map and its creators’ stated goal amount to little more than an effort to “dismantle” the city’s organized Jewish community writ large. “As a Jewish community, and one that has made allyship and outreach the cornerstones of our work, we condemn this demonization of the Boston Jewish community and attack on its relationship with others,” CJP, the New England ADL and the Boston JCRC said Wednesday. “This is no thinly veiled attempt to target the Jewish community — it is an explicit one that is keeping lists and naming names.”

The joint statement from the CJP, ADL and JCRC said the map “draws on age-old antisemitic tropes that are all too clear to our community: Jewish wealth, control and conspiracies.”