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The ongoing civil unrest in Los Angeles has been co-opted by anti-Israel extremists to propagate antisemitic messaging in an orchestrated effort to open another propaganda front targeting the Jewish people and state.
Anti-Israel groups — including National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP), Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), Within Our Lifetime (WOL), and Unity of Fields (formerly Palestine Action US) — have urged their followers to take to the streets, casting the protests as part of “the global struggle against Zionism.”
“We have a duty to resist oppression wherever it manifests: from the barrios of LA to the refugee camps of Bethlehem,” declared NSJP. “We will globalize the intifada. Death to the occupation, from the West Bank to LA.”
NSJP also circulated an image of U.S. government officials with a Nazi swastika, calling the Trump administration “the Fourth Reich” — a grotesque example of Holocaust trivialization.
As students and organizers for Palestinian Liberation, it is our duty to mobilize to defend the communities who are most subjected to police violence and the deportation machine, to stand arm in arm with those who endure the harshest forms of state-sanctioned brutality, and to… pic.twitter.com/9bM7Kou6jE
— National Students for Justice in Palestine (@NationalSJP) June 9, 2025
PYM in Los Angeles made its position unmistakably clear in a public statement responding to the deployment of National Guard forces. The group wrote: “This wave of raids and abductions is not isolated — it is a direct continuation of the US imperialist agenda that criminalizes migration, funds genocide, and represses resistance. The state that cages children in Southern California is the same one that funds and arms Israel as it bombs, starves, and massacres Palestinians in Gaza.”
It continued: “ICE agents that are terrorizing our neighborhoods are part of the same global war machine fueling the genocide in Gaza. The struggle for migrant justice cannot be separated from the global struggle against Zionism.”
The statement concluded with a call to action: “The community must continue to organize and defend one another against Zionist fascist state repression and organize with each other until all our peoples are free.”
Social media accounts affiliated with Unity of Fields posted Molotov cocktail imagery, an apparent reference to the recent firebomb attack against Jewish marchers in Boulder, Colorado, and declared: “TELL ME WHAT YOU’RE FIGHTING FOR! INTIFADA, PEOPLE’S WAR” [all caps in original].
What NYC needs now is not another barricade-guarded standing-around hangout in downtown Manhattan pretending to be a protest. What NYC needs is mass revolt in the neighborhoods ICE is targeting. These uprisings are not just out of moral opposition to ICE! They’re proactive… pic.twitter.com/ordoEEXulN
— Unity of Fields (@unityoffields) June 10, 2025
On June 7, the group shared a statement on Telegram saying: “This level of militant, revolutionary internationalism in the heart of Amerika was unthinkable before the al-Aqsa Flood. We owe everything to the anti-colonial armed resistance of the Palestinian people.”
“[Yahya] Sinwar and [Mohammed] Deif and all of the brave warriors,” it added, referring to the masterminds of the October 7th massacre in Israel, that Hamas calls the “al-Aqsa Flood.”
On the streets of Los Angeles, walls and signs have been vandalized with graffiti reading “Free Palestine,” “Israel trains ICE,” and “From Mexico to Gaza, globalize the Intifada,” alongside inverted red triangles, which have been repurposed by Hamas a threatening symbol of violence and intimidation.
The graffiti “Israel trains ICE” is particularly notable as it mirrors the discredited “Deadly Exchange” conspiracy theory, which falsely alleges that Israeli security forces train U.S. law enforcement entities to carry out state-sanctioned violence. This talking point has long been used by groups like JVP to vilify Israel and sow suspicion of Jews within progressive spaces.
JVP’s official commentary reinforced this narrative, claiming: “The same surveillance drones used over Gaza now fly over the US-Mexico border. This is a global infrastructure of state violence and we must dismantle it together.” It added: “Never again means never again for anyone. Not for Palestinians under siege. Not for immigrants in detention.”
In one widely-circulated video clip, a masked protester asserted that “everybody has the same enemy from LA to Africa to Palestine to Vietnam.”
Banners and flyers seen at Los Angeles demonstrations have featured slogans such as “From the River to the Sea,” “Intifada Now,” and similar messages.
As disturbing as the rhetoric is, its real-world consequences are even more alarming. In San Francisco, demonstrators vandalized a Jewish-owned community hub. The storefront was defaced with antisemitic slogans, including: “death to Israel is a promise,” “free Gaza,” “die Zio,” and “the only good settler is a dead one.”
Last night, under the cover of an anti-ICE protest, agitators forcibly entered and vandalized @welcometomannys, a beloved Jewish-owned civic engagement hub and community space. This wasn’t an isolated incident; @manny_yekutiel and his establishment have been subjected to a… pic.twitter.com/d6nDl80PMi
— JCRC Bay Area (@SFJCRC) June 10, 2025
Manny Yekutiel, the owner, commented: “There is no justification for attacking me other than the fact that I am Jewish.” This wasn’t a protest against ICE — it was an attack on Jews, driven by the imported hatred of anti-Israel extremists.”
This was not the first time Manny’s had been targeted. Last fall, around the first anniversary of the October 7th massacre, the space was also vandalized with antisemitic graffiti.
The Los Angeles demonstrations have also seen protesters carrying Palestinian flags and wearing keffiyehs, and one man was photographed wearing paraphernalia of Hamas and the PFLP — both U.S. designated terrorist groups — while waving a Mexican flag in front of a burning car.
Wearing a Hamas armband and a PFLP headband while burning a Waymo vehicle and waving a Mexican flag at the militant anti-ICE resistance is some real unity of the fields type shit pic.twitter.com/jGw2irw76x
— Unity of Fields (@unityoffields) June 9, 2025
This is not the first time anti-Israel groups have sought to tether their cause to divisive American domestic issues. During the Ferguson, Missouri protests in 2014 and again following George Floyd’s death in 2020, slogans such as “From Ferguson to Palestine” echoed in the streets.
Today, that same provocative manipulation is being practiced again, under the new banner of “From LA to Palestine,” to exploit a moment of heightened social tension to promote a hate-filled agenda — one that scapegoats Jews, demonizes Israel, glorifies terror, and incites real-world antisemitic violence, the threat of which is all-too-clear after the recent attacks in Washington, D.C., and Boulder.
