Sophia Goodfriend
Overview
Sophia Goodfriend [Sophia L. Goodfriend] is an anti-Israel journalist who has worked for and with activist groups in the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement since 2013. In university, she was a leading activist with the pro-BDS campus groups Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP).In 2021, while Goodfriend was working with them, 7amleh began working with groups designated as terror organizations by the Israeli government.
Goodfriend has collaborated on projects with activists from the anti-Israel organizations Breaking the Silence and Youth Against Settlements (YAS).
Goodfriend has authored articles for several anti-Israel websites, including Mondoweiss, +972 Magazine and Jewish Currents. She has reportedly had her work published in the Electronic Intifada (EI). In these articles and on social media, Goodfriend has promoted hatred of Israel and Zionism.
In her SJP and JVP activism, Goodfriend expressed support for a terrorist and promoted anti-Israel historical revisionism.
In January 2020, Goodfriend’s WayUp profile said she had been the “Programming Coordinator” for SJP at Tufts University (Tufts SJP), where she graduated in 2016. As a Tufts SJP activist, she attended National SJP’s 2014 and 2015 conferences.
In April 2016, Goodfriend was an organizer for the Tufts JVP chapter and a member in 2015.
As of May 2023, Goodfriend’s LinkedIn page said she had been a “Doctoral Candidate and Researcher” and a “PhD Student in Cultural Anthropology” at Duke University (Duke) since September 2018. Goodfriend’s LinkedIn also said she had been a “Graduate Teaching Assistant” at Duke since August 2018.
As of the same date, Goodfriend’s LinkedIn said she had been in the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad (DDRA) Fellowship for the 2021-2022 academic year.
As a recipient of the DDRA award, Goodfriend reportedly would be allowed “to conduct 12 months of ethnographic research in both Tel Aviv and Jerusalem” and be a visiting scholar at Tel Aviv University (TAU). Goodfriend worked as a “Research Assistant” in the Faculty of Law at TAU from July to October 2018.
As of May 2023, Goodfriend’s webpage said she had been a Dissertation Research Fellow at Palestinian American Research Center (PARC) since June 2021. PARC is based in Washington, D.C. and multiple members of its board of directors are BDS activists, including Ilana Feldman, Sa’ed Atshan and Amahl Bishara. Atshan was the Tufts SJP faculty advisor in 2014 when Goodfriend was an activist.
Also as of May 2023, Goodfriend’s LinkedIn page said she received a master’s degree in Socio-Cultural Anthropology from the University of Chicago (UofC) in 2017 and a bachelor’s degree in American Studies from Tufts in 2016.
As of December 2022, Goodfriend went by the username “Sop Good” and the handle “@sopgood” on Instagram. She also used the handle “@sopgood” on Twitter.
As as of May 2023, Goodfriend’s LinkedIn page said she was located in “Tel Aviv-Yafo, Tel Aviv District, Israel.” As of the same date, Goodfriend wrote on her website that she was “currently based in Jerusalem.”
Anti-Israel Activism (7amleh, AJ English)
On May 6, 2023, Goodfriend featured [00:03:11] as a contributor in an AJ English documentary titled “Israel's automated occupation | The Listening Post.”In the video, Goodfriend described [00:03:41] Israel’s security surveillance technology in Hebron as “carceral” and claimed [00:14:47] that “in the mind of Israeli military leadership…Palestinians present a security threat to an expanding settler movement, and so to contain this so-called security threat, as they put it, the army needs evermore advanced surveillance technologies to control a population.”
The documentary criticized [00:19:20] an American non-profit, the One Israel Fund, for funding “settler cameras” for security purposes at the Tapuah Junction. The junction has been the scene of numerous Palestinian terror attacks, including shootings, stabbings and car rammings.
Also in May 2023, Goodfriend participated in an AJ English Twitter Spaces online event promoting the documentary alongside Breaking the Silence advocacy director, Ori Givati. During the event, Goodfriend claimed [00:32:22] that Israel’s counter-terror surveillance systems were “based on racial discrimination and really solidifying the goals of Israeli settler expansion and colonial control over territory.”
In July 2022, Goodfriend published a report on behalf of 7amleh titled: “Supply and Demand: The U.S.’ Impact on Israel’s Surveillance Sector.”
In her report “Recommendations,” Goodfriend wrote [p. 10]: “The U.S. security establishment and U.S.-based technology companies have an outsized influence over Israel's surveillance sector… The U.S. should establish comprehensive and far-reaching regulations to reign in the sale and transfer of both mass and targeted surveillance technologies.”
Goodfriend also wrote [p. 11]: “By joining efforts to establish and follow a global regulatory framework for surveillance technology, the U.S. can prevent new firms in Israel and beyond from developing more invasive technologies.”
Goodfriend said [00:04:24] she began working as a 7amleh researcher in the summer of 2021. 7amleh reportedly partnered with Al-Haq and Addameer in 2021 to establish the Palestinian Digital Rights Coalition (7or).
Al-Haq and Addameer were two of six Palestinian non-governmental organizations (NGOs) Israel designated as “terrorist organizations” in October 2021, stating that they operated “as an arm” of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terror group. The report said that the groups funneled donor aid to militants.
On May 17, 2022, Goodfriend spoke [00:08:00] in an online panel discussion during the Palestine Digital Activism Forum (PDAF) 2022, titled: “Mass Surveillance Technologies.” A national JVP organizer moderated the session.
On December 5, 2021, Goodfriend participated [00:02:33] in an online webinar titled: “Who’s Watching: Who's Watching? An Examination of Israeli Surveillance in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.” The anti-Israel group Ir Amim hosted the webinar, during which Goodfriend promoted [00:16:17] a 7amleh report she published in November 2021 titled: “The Expansion of Digital Surveillance in Jerusalem and Impact on Palestinian Rights.”
On November 18, 2021, Goodfriend spoke [00:04:27] during a webinar titled: “Welcome to the Panopticon: Israel’s Systematic Surveillance of Palestinians & its Implications.” The anti-Israel Foundation for Middle East Peace (FMEP) organized the event where another one of the speakers was a Breaking the Silence leader.
7amleh is located in Haifa, Israel, and Goodfriend said [00:04:37] in the webinar: “7amleh…provides hands-on digital activism and digital security capacity for Palestinian activists and civil society here in Palestine.”
Spreading Hatred of Israel and Zionism
In the article, Goodfriend alleged: “Many of these technologies are sanitized of their carceral effects… instead being promoted as convenient and humane security solutions…”
Goodfriend also cited Duke Cultural Anthropology Professor Rebecca Stein, a PARC board member, who argued that Israel’s innovations in surveillance technology were employed as “a deliberate marketing campaign by the Israeli government” to “distract from the more sinister uses of many of these technologies.”
On February 21, 2022, Goodfriend published an article in Foreign Policy titled: “How the Occupation Fuels Tel Aviv’s Booming AI Sector.”
On November 23, 2021, Goodfriend published an article in +972 Magazine where she blamed Israel for “a surveillance arms race that threatens to erode civilians’ right to privacy around the world.”
Goodfriend claimed former members of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) “effectively served as ambassadors of Israel’s new spyware diplomacy” who “trained officials in democracies and autocracies alike to use advanced cyberweapons on their own civilians, without the inconvenience of oversight or accountability.”
On December 5, 2019, Goodfriend wrote an article in Jewish Currents titled: “Naked Gun,” discussing Israel’s changing tactics in social media. The article focused on a group of former and current female Israeli soldiers called “Alpha Gun Angels (AGA),” who created “Israel’s premier gun-modeling and social media–marketing agency.”
Goodfriend claimed that "the Angels’ sexy selfies frame Israeli militarism as something to be desired rather than condemned” and that “AGA exports Israel’s ability to deny violence and normalize occupation by aestheticizing warfare.”
On July 18, 2018, Goodfriend tweeted: “read the v wise @wesamsharaf1 on the parallels between Israel’s tyrannical rule over Palestine and the violence of Assad’s regime in Syria.”
In her tweet, Goodfriend embedded a Haaretz op-ed titled: “The Cruel Similarities Between Israel’s Occupation and Assad’s Regime,” in which the author wrote: “Israel's ‘war on terror’, along with ‘Assad and Putin fighting ISIS terrorists,’ legitimates in the eyes of those respective governments disproportionate killing, collective punishment, the use of forbidden or indiscriminately harmful weapons, and mass transfer against the societies they have already demonized.”
On March 31, 2017, Goodfriend tweeted: “‘Zionism is the face of white supremacy and ultimately antithetical to Judaism’ Judith Butler live at #JVP2017.”
Zionism is the belief that Jews have the right to self-determination in their own national home, and the right to develop their national culture.
Supporting a Terrorist (PFLP)
On October 14, 2015, Goodfriend featured in a Tufts SJP Facebook photo holding a sign that said: “Justice4 Rasmea,” a reference to terrorist Rasmea Odeh. In the photo’s caption, Tufts SJP linked to a donation page for Odeh’s legal fund.Anti-Israel Historical Revisionism
Goodfriend also claimed [p. 5] that “Zionism is thus predicated upon settler colonialism” and also wrote: “Whether or not Jews are indigenous to the region is irrelevant to my analysis.” She also accused [p. 6] Israel of “ongoing settler colonial and colonial occupation of Palestinian lands” and ethnic cleansing.
The Western Wall refers to a part of the retaining wall of the complex that housed the Second Jewish Temple approximately 2000 years ago in Jerusalem.
Goodfriend’s zine repeatedly mocked [pp. 2, 8] the Jewish historical and religious connection to the Land of Israel and [pp. 9, 15] to Jerusalem’s Western Wall.
Goodfriend also alleged [p.18]: “Zionist settlers in Israel actively seek to make themselves native to Israel by expropriating Palestinian land and evicting Palestinian communities, creating their own origin stories, or claims to nativism, in their place. Through skewed historiographies, writing maps over in Hebrew, and labeling recently seized Palestinian landscapes as sacred Jewish sites, Zionist settlers erase Palestinian claims to the land Jews now call Israel.”
In her Mondoweiss article, Goodfriend wrote: “On Birthright ‘celebrating Jewish values’ means glorifying wars that continue to kill, confine, and displace thousands of Palestinians.”
University Anti-Israel Activism (SJP)
On March 9, 2016, Goodfriend reportedly participated in a protest as part of Tufts SJP’s Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) 2016, held on campus March 7-12, 2016.On March 10, 2016, the Tufts Daily student newspaper reported: “Goodfriend explained that the demonstration was not advertised to ensure its success.”
The article quoted Goodfriend as saying: “We’re just really trying to educate people and we didn’t want to make a big fuss beforehand to make people who might not agree with us prevent us from doing the action.”
On October 15, 2015, Goodfriend featured in a Facebook photo from the 2015 National SJP Conference held in San Diego, California.
On October 30, 2014, Goodfriend featured in a Tufts SJP Facebook group photo from that year’s National SJP Conference held at Tufts. The photo was captioned: “Thank you to everyone who made our conference possible!”
On April 27, 2014, Goodfriend featured in a Facebook photo from a Tufts SJP “die-in,” held next to a Friends of Israel (FOI) event celebrating Israel’s Independence Day, which Tufts SJP referred to as “Nakba Day.”
The term “Nakba” is generally translated as “catastrophe” in Arabic, referring to the outcome of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. It is a term often used to delegitimize the creation of the State of Israel by defining it as a catastrophe.
On March 8, 2014, Goodfriend featured [00:00:34] in a Tufts SJP YouTube video recording a “mock annexation,” where Tufts SJP alleged that Israeli soldiers arrested Palestinians without cause. The event was part of that year’s IAW.
On March 30, 2013, Tufts SJP published a zine titled “The Zintifada,” a play on the word “intifada.” Goodfriend wrote an article in the zine minimizing Hamas rocket attacks, stating [p. 8]: “I spent many family dinners nodding along with my grandparents while they blamed anti-Semitic terrorists, who fire ramshackle rockets at the empty deserts outside of Tel Aviv from a mysterious territory…”
Israel commenced Operation Cast Lead (OCL) and Operation Pillar of Defense (OPD) in 2008-09 and 2012, to stop Hamas rocket fire from Gaza targeting Israeli civilians.
The term “intifada,” which translates from Arabic as “uprising” or “insurrection,” carries the connotation of violence. Palestinian intifadas waged against Israel have been marked since 1987 by hundreds of hijackings, shootings, stabbings, bombings and suicide missions.
SJP
SJP is a 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. Bazian has spread classic anti-Semitism, reportedly promoted religious anti-Semitism and defended the Hamas terror group. In 2004, Bazian called for “intifada” in America.
SJP organizes anti-Israel campaigns, including running annual Israel Apartheid Weeks, often in collaboration with Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and Muslim Students Association (MSA) campus chapters.
SJP has been a major force in pushing the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement on campuses. Chapters have initiated dozens of BDS resolutions in student governments, which have been proposed on or around Jewish holidays, a time when many Jewish students are off-campus.
SJP activists have reportedly physically assaulted, intimidated and harassed Jewish students, disrupted pro-Israel campus events and demonized pro-Israel campus organizations.
Chapters have often endorsed and campaigned for numerous terrorists and whitewashed terrorism.
JVP
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 value.”
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.”
BDS
The Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement was founded by Omar Barghouti in 2005 to challenge “international support for Israeli apartheid and settler-colonialism.” BDS is an allegedly “Palestinian-led movement,” although leading BDS activists have admitted [00:01:01] this is not true.
One of the demands of BDS includes [point 3] what is generally known as the “right of return,” a demand discredited as a way to eliminate Israel. Barghouti said the “right of return” is a means to “end Israel’s existence as a Jewish state.”
Barghouti has said that BDS “aims to turn Israel into a pariah state, as South Africa once was.”
In his activism, Barghouti has also said [00:05:55] regarding Israel: “Definitely, most definitely, we oppose a Jewish state in any part of Palestine. No…rational Palestinian, not a sellout Palestinian, will ever accept a Jewish state in Palestine.”
The movement has been linked to numerous terrorist organizations and received a public endorsement from Hamas in 2017.
BDS initiatives include calling on institutions and individuals to divest from Israeli-affiliated companies, promoting academic and cultural boycotts of Israel, and organizing anti-Israel rallies, protests and campaigns.
The movement’s most notable achievement has been the infiltration of university campuses through lobbying for “BDS resolutions.” In these cases, student governments and student groups, backed by their own anti-Israel members and affiliates, have proposed resolutions on some form of boycott of, or divestment from, Israel and Israeli-affiliated entities.
Boycott resolutions, although non-binding, have been passed by student governments on numerous North American campuses.
BDS activity is often aggressive and disruptive. It has been noted that universities that pass BDS resolutions see a marked increase in anti-Semitic incidents on campus. On one campus, when the student government debated a BDS resolution, reports emerged of violent threats against those opposing it.
Social Media and Weblinks:
Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/sophia.goodfriend
- Status:
- Professional
- University:
- Tufts,
- more...
- Duke,
- UofC
- Organizations:
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- Last Modified:
- 04/29/2025
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