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Esther Tsvayg
Esther Tsvayg [Esther Helen Tsvayg] has expressed support for terrorists, spread hatred of Israel and engaged in anti-Israel activism.
Tsvayg is a co-founder and former co-president of the anti-Israel campus group Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) at Stanford University (Stanford).
Tsvayg has also been affiliated with the anti-Israel campus group Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at Stanford since at least 2017.
As of May 2025, Tsvayg’s LinkedIn profile said she was a customer success manager at BuildOps.
Also as of May 2025, Tsvayg’s LinkedIn said she graduated from Stanford with a bachelor’s degree in history in 2020.
As of the same date, Tsvayg’s LinkedIn said she was located in Los Angeles, California.
On May 17, 2017, Tsvayg participated in a Stanford SJP event titled: “Join Students for Justice in Palestine in the #Saltwater Challenge.” The event was created to support Palestinian inmates hunger-striking in Israeli prisons.
The “Saltwater Challenge” was held in solidarity with hunger-striking Palestinian prison inmates convicted of terrorism. The strike was initiated by Marwan Barghouti, who was serving five consecutive life sentences for his role in suicide bombings that killed five Israelis during the second intifada. Aarab Barghouti, the son of Marwan Barghouti, launched the “Saltwater Challenge.”
Tsvayg also indicated on Facebook that she “went” to a May 26, 2017 event hosted by Stanford SJP featuring Aarab Barghouthi titled: “Palestinian Dignity Hunger Strike.”
The “Dignity Strike” was a hunger strike initiated on April 16, 2017, by Marwan Barghouti, the terrorist who financed the guitar-case bomb used in the Sbarro Cafe bombing. More than 1,000 other Palestinian prisoners participated in the hunger strike, most of whom were also incarcerated for acts of terrorism.
Tsvayg retweeted a December 6, 2017 tweet that said: “it’s a good day to remember that Israel has always been a settler colonial apartheid state that denies Palestinian people their democratic and human rights, upholding ethnic genocide that is funded mercilessly in billions by the West.”
Tsvayg retweeted a December 4, 2017 tweet by JVP depicting a series of maps purporting to show the “Palestinian loss of land 1946-present” with the caption: “.@MSNBC shows Palestinian land loss to Israel from 1946 to present day. #Shoutout2MSNBC for the courage to do this.”
The maps claim that lands once controlled by Britain, Egypt and Jordan as autonomous “Palestinian land” were purportedly stolen by Israel. In February 2016, publisher McGraw-Hill Education recalled copies of a college textbook containing the fraudulent maps. In October 2015, American cable news network MSNBC apologized for airing a similar series of maps and retracted them.
On December 3, 2017, Tsvayg participated in a Return the Birthright protest held outside the Taglit-Birthright offices in New York City, where JVP members assembled to chant anti-Birthright slogans.
Birthright Israel is a heritage trip to Israel for Jewish young adults from across the world.
In September 2017, anti-Israel group Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) issued its #returnthebirthright campaign manifesto, calling for the boycott of the Birthright heritage trip to Israel for Jewish young adults. The manifesto accused Israel of “ethnic cleansing” and alleged “the modern state of Israel is predicated on the ongoing erasure of Palestinians.” The text claimed the trip “is only ‘free’ because it has been paid for by the dispossession of Palestinians,” and concluded: “we commit to promoting the right to return of Palestinian refugees…Israel is not our Birthright…”
Tsvayg spoke [01:10:48] on a megaphone during the event and said [01:12:24]: “It is important for me to be in solidarity with the victims of white supremacy...if we consent to the settler colonialism of the Israeli nation-state then we are also condoning our class system, anti-blackness, Islamophobia and anti-Semitism.”
Tsvayg continued [01:13:44]: “I reject the Birthright because I reject the forces of colonialism and imperialism that Israel colludes with, disguised as a seemingly apolitical exploitation of a Jewish identity…”
On December 4, 2017, Tsvayg retweeted a JVP statement about the protest which praised the activists and demonized Birthright.
The JVP statement said: “young Jews...decried the injustice of being offered a free trip to Israel” and “young JVP members symbolically returned Birthright plane tickets to Israel, lit Hannukah candles, and rededicated themselves to strong Jewish identities founded upon solidarity and justice, not occupation and apartheid.”
The statement also promoted JVP’s “#ReturntheBirthright pledge” and featured NYU SJP member Khalid Abu Dawas who called Israel a brutal occupier.
Abu Dawas has expressed support for terrorists, called for the destruction of the State of Israel, glorified violent protesters and promoted the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.
The JVP statement also quoted JVP Campus Coordinator Ben Lorber, who said that Birthright exemplified “politics of exclusion and xenophobia.”
Lorber has promoted anti-Semitism, expressed support for terrorists, defended a violent agitator and demonized Israel and Zionism.
Tsvayg indicated on Facebook that she “went” to a “Summer Skill Share Retreat for Palestine Student Activists,” hosted by SJP at the University of California, Riverside (UC Riverside). The retreat took place on July 30-August 2, 2017.
The event’s Facebook description said it was “organized and facilitated by student activists and recent graduates, with support from the Campus Palestine Support Network, a collection of [anti-Israel] groups including members of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights and more.”
Tsvayg also indicated on Facebook that she “went” to Stanford SJP’s Palestine Awareness Week, on April 24-28, 2017. Palestine Awareness Week was formerly known as Israel Apartheid Week (IAW).
Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) is presented internationally as a “series of events that seeks to raise awareness of…Israel’s settler-colonial project and apartheid system over the Palestinian people.” One of its goals is to build support for the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement. IAW has been renamed Palestine Awareness Week.
JVP was founded in Berkeley, California in 1996, as an activist group with an emphasis on the “Jewish tradition” of peace, social justice and human rights. The organization is currently led by Rebecca Vilkomerson and its board members include Israel critics Naomi Klein, Judith Butler, Noam Chomsky and Tony Kushner.
JVP, which generally employs civil disobedience tactics to disrupt pro-Israel speakers and events, consists of American Jews and non-Jewish “allies” highly critical of Israeli policies. A staunch supporter of the BDS movement, JVP claims to aim its campaigns at companies that either support the Israeli military (Hewlett-Packard) or are active in the West Bank (SodaStream).
Although several Jewish groups critical of Israeli policies, like J Street and Partners for a Progressive Israel, make efforts to operate within the mainstream American Jewish community, JVP functions outside. The group is often criticized for serving as a tokenized Jewish voice for the pro-Palestinian camp and is widely regarded as the BDS movement’s “Jewish wing.”
JVP denies the notion of “Jewish peoplehood” and has even gone so far as to refer to its own Ashkenazi (Jews who spent the Diaspora in European countries) leadership as “white supremacy inside of JVP."
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has accused JVP of being “the largest and most influential Jewish anti-Zionist group in the United States,” and said the group “exploits Jewish culture and rituals to reassure its own supporters that opposition to Israel not only does not contradict, but is actually consistent with, Jewish values.”
The ADL also claimed that “JVP consistently co-sponsors rallies to oppose Israeli military policy that are marked by signs and slogans comparing Israel to Nazi Germany, demonizing Jews and voicing support for groups like Hamas and Hezbollah.”
According to the ADL website, JVP “uses its Jewish identity to shield the anti-Israel movement from allegations of anti-Semitism and provide it with a greater degree of legitimacy and credibility.”
SJP is the leading student organization engaged in anti-Israel activity on North American college and university campuses. The first chapter of SJP was founded in 2001 at the University of California at Berkeley by Professor Hatem Bazian, who has spread anti-Semitism and defended the Hamas terror group.
SJP organizes anti-Israel campus campaigns, including running annual Israel Apartheid Weeks and pushing the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement. SJP activists have reportedly physically assaulted, intimidated and harassed Jewish students, and SJP chapters have often endorsed and campaigned for terrorists.
