StandWithUs (SWU) (also known as Israel Emergency Alliance) is a nonprofit pro-Israel advocacy organization founded in Los Angeles in 2001 by Roz Rothstein, Jerry Rothstein, and Esther Renzer.
StandWithUs is a leading pro-Israel advocacy group. It maintains a significant presence on university campuses throughout the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, South Africa, Australia and Brazil. The organization aims to combat what it perceives as antisemitism and misinformation related to Israel while promoting a positive image of the country. It trains students in pro-Israel advocacy, organizes protests, runs billboard and ad campaigns, and files complaints on the behalf of students. StandWithUs actively works to counter Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) campaigns on campuses and beyond. It has also engaged in collaborations with the Israeli government on various initiatives.
Founding and organization StandWithUs was founded in 2001 by Roz Rothstein, a family therapist in Los Angeles whose parents were Holocaust survivors, her husband Jerry Rothstein, and Esther Renzer. She has said the turning point for her came during the Second Intifada, when she observed what she perceived as distorted media portrayal of the conflict, specifically following the murders of Koby Mandell and Yosef Ishran. After meeting with dozens of local Jewish leaders, Rothstein concluded that there was no organization with the resources to "explain Israel" so she decided to create her own.
Rothstein remains SWU's executive director. Due to her leadership, she has twice been named one of the 50 most influential Jews in America by The Forward, and The Jerusalem Post named her one of the 50 most influential Jews in the world in 2016. In 2015, its board of directors included Naty Saidoff and Adam Milstein. The organization has a team of 80 lawyers who provide pro-bono legal services to students and faculty confronting antisemitism or "antisemitism disguised as anti-Zionism". Roberta P. Seid previously served as an education-research director.Both Rothstein and Seid have written, in a review of Dror Moreh's documentary The Gatekeepers based on Moreh's interviews with 6 of Israel's top security experts, that 'deeply partisan political message' to imply, as they think the documentary does, that terrorism will subside and peace ensue if Israel withdraws from its occupation of the West Bank. Roz Rothstein, Roberta Seid, "The Dishonesty of the Gatekeepers". The Jerusalem Post February 13, 2013; Zahi Zalloua, Continental Philosophy and the Palestinian Question:Beyond the Jew and the Greek, Bloomsbury Publishing 2017 p.138 n.45.
SWU is a trade name or dba name of "Israel Emergency Alliance". According to Jewish Voice for Peace, Israel Emergency Alliance is an IRS-registered nonprofit and SWU and Creative Community for Peace are alternate names for this entity.
SWU is a member of the Israel on Campus Coalition. The Center for Combating Antisemitism is part of SWU. In 2020, SWU and the Israeli American Council (IAC) led a nonpartisan slate in the World Zionist Congress elections.
As of 2022, SWU has 18 offices across the U.S. and branches in Israel, France, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, South America, and South Africa.
Views While SWU is often categorized as right-wing, Rothstein rejects the label and asserts that the organization is nonpartisan. In terms of its position within a large range of American Jewish pro-Israeli movements, sociologist Dov Waxman says that SWU lies on the right end of the spectrum of American Jewish groups, with such groups as The David Project, the Zionist Organization of America, the Israel Project, and the Jewish Institute for National Security of America. SWU also voices its opposition to all forms of racism, including Kahanism.
Rothstein says that SWU does not advocate specific policy positions and that its goal is merely to inform and "counter the vicious anti-Israel, anti-Semitic propaganda campaign" by educating the public about Israel. According to authors Cronin, Marusek and David Miller, SWU does not believe the West Bank is occupied and supports Israeli settlements.; ; ; ; In an interview with Haaretz, Rothstein acknowledged having an emotional attachment to what she called "Judea and Samaria", because it is where the Jewish people began. She has said that Palestinian leaders have used the settlements as an excuse for "postponing negotiations and for rejecting all possible peace offers from Israel" and that ceding parts of the territory for a future Palestinian state would require "serious negotiations". SWU views the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as territorial rather than existential. Lessons by SWU have highlighted that Palestinian refugees "were not the result of Israel's founding but of the war Arab nations launched against Israel", a position Israeli historians contest.
SWU is opposed to J Street, a self-declared "dovish" pro-Israel lobby.; In a debate with J Street President Jeremy Ben-Ami, Rothstein accused him of thinking that he knows "better than the Israelis" how to achieve peace with the Palestinians. She also complained that J Street primarily pressures and criticizes Israel and not the Palestinians. Ben-Ami faulted her for taking a black-and-white approach to the conflict and concluded that there was little common ground between them. Rothstein is also opposed to Breaking the Silence, an organization of former Israeli soldiers opposed to the occupation. She has described as disingenuous groups that profess love for Israel but blame it for the lack of peace while refusing to address Palestinian anti-peace behavior. Rothstein believes supporters of Israel should support whatever government is elected in Israel and that Zionists who are publicly critical of the state of Israel for its treatment of Palestinians do not support the country.
SWU actively opposes the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement,; which it considers antisemitic. SWU is a proponent of anti-BDS laws, which are intended to discourage boycotts of Israel by requiring state contractors to promise that they are not boycotting Israel, and does not believe that they impinge on freedom of speech. SWU claims that BDS's true objective is "the elimination of Israel and the end of Jewish self-determination" and calls the movement "a dangerous new front that has opened in the war against Israel". SWU believes that anti-Israel views, often masked in "human rights language", risk gaining influence in the American political system, and that they are easier to spot on the far right than on the far left, according to the group's Midwest executive director Peggy Shapiro.
In April 2021, SWU praised The Associated Press (AP) for changing the spelling of "anti-Semitism" to "antisemitism". They described it as an important move, saying that in doing so, the AP had joined the collective effort against Jew hatred. The organization has endorsed and advocated for adopting the IHRA definition of antisemitism.
Pro-Israel activism training The organization offers two one-year programs to train students in pro-Israel activism, distributes pamphlets and "fact sheets" on Israel, and sets up pro-Israeli lectures. According to Haaretz journalist Judy Maltz, no organization compares with SWU for "turning up the heat on the Israel-Palestinian debate at universities", and its tactics in doing so are controversial.
SWU established and funds its own network of "fellows", students trained to use cameras, videos, and robotsEmma Goldberg (March 14, 2016). "'Bizarre' pro-Israel Robot Accused of Harassing Students at Brown University". . Haaretz. "A robot representing a right-leaning Israel advocacy group has been accused of 'harassing students' and 'policing academic discourse' at a Brown University discussion on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict last week. The robot's creator, however, claims its only purpose was to 'introduce greater diversity' into the debate. The robot-spy at the center of the bizarre incident was built by Israeli robotics engineer Roey Tzezana, cofounder of the firm Tele-Buddy. Tzezana's robot was a wheeled contraption topped by an iPad, which showed the face of Shahar Azani – northeast executive director of the pro-Israel advocacy group StandWithUs. Via live video, Azani was able to 'move' around the room and chat with students." to film events that are considered anti-Israel at universities, and whose role is said to be one of acting as SWU's "eyes and ears" on campuses. According to Maltz, the presence of SWU activists at anti-Israel demonstrators has often provoked clashes that, in her view, serve the organization's interests. Students are taught to warn anti-Israel demonstrators when their disruptions may be violating the law.
The Emerson Fellowship program, created in 2007, trains college student leaders from 90 universities throughout North America to be pro-Israel advocates on their campuses. As of 2020, the program is offered to North American, British, and Brazilian students. The number of students enrolled in the program has grown from 38 in 2007 and 2008 to 107 in 2020. SWU also offered a Hispanic Emerson Fellowship. A year-long UK Emerson fellowship, based on its American fellowship, launched in September 2018. The fellowship launched in South Africa in November 2022.
The group is also involved in training high school students. Created in 2012, the StandWithUs High School Internship is a program directed at North American high school students in 11th and 12th grade and had 125 students enrolled in 2020. It prepares students for challenges potentially faced in college regarding pro-Israel advocacy.
Other educational programs include Shagririm (meaning "ambassadors"), a program directed at young adult Israeli-Americans in southern California with the objective of connecting people to generate pro-Israeli initiatives. In 2012, the program included 54 students from southern Californian universities. Unlike Emerson Fellows, Shagririm was open only to Israeli-Americans. The program was sponsored and run by the Milstein Family Foundation's Israel Leadership Council, later rebranded as the Israeli-American Council.
Campaigns and activities SWU is a campus-oriented advocacy group and is heavily invested in the recruitment and training of students in pro-Israel advocacy and in media. The organization is active on American, Canadian, British, and Brazilian campuses. It has also run programs in Australia for more than a decade and plans to officially open an Australian office. SWU has also worked with the Israeli government. In 2011, Danny Ayalon said SWU created leverage for the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Opposition to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement SWU has organized a number of anti-BDS conferences, and has pushed for anti-BDS legislation in various U.S. states, including a Texas bill passed in 2017. It has condemned various divestment resolutions passed by universities, calling them discriminatory and hateful.
In 2011, SWU helped organize the Olympia Food Co-op lawsuit. In 2010, the Olympia Food Co-op's board of directors instituted a boycott of Israeli goods. Five co-op members, aided by SWU, sued, alleging that the board had acted beyond the scope of its authority and breached its fiduciary duties. According to Mondoweiss and Ali Abunimah, SWU denied running the case on behalf of the plaintiffs. The court ruled in 2012 that the lawsuit was an illegal Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation (SLAPP), a decision upheld by the appeals court. In 2015, the Washington Supreme Court ruled that the state's anti-SLAPP law was unconstitutional and returned the case to the lower courts. In 2018, the court gave summary judgment finding the plaintiffs had no standing to bring a case because they failed to show the co-op was injured.