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. 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. In 2015, SWU condemned
The United Church of Christ, one of the United States' largest Protestant denominations, for calling for "divestment from companies that profit from Israel's occupation or control of Palestinian territories and boycott of products produced in such territories by Israeli companies". The group called those who promoted the resolutions "anti-Israel extremists within the U.C.C." and said they had "severely damaged the U.C.C.'s relationship with the vast majority of the Jewish community, promoted hatred and discrimination against Israelis, and undermined efforts to achieve a just peace between Israelis and Palestinians." In 2016, over 350 people attended a conference SWU organized with the purpose of devising strategies to combat the BDS movement. The group was also involved in the Maccabee Task Force, an eight-college-campus initiative by
Sheldon Adelson with the goal of finding effective ways to combat BDS and antisemitism.
Billboard and ad campaigns In various countries, SWU has promoted billboard and poster campaigns for solidarity with Israel, often in opposition to ads run by other organizations. These include a campaign depicting Palestinian leaders and institutions as
tutoring children to be terrorists. In May 2007, the pro-Palestinian U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation placed 20 poster ads in the
Washington, D.C. subway system showing a tank with its turret pointing at a child with a school bag. The text on the poster read: "Imagine if this were your child's path to school. Palestinians don't have to imagine." SWU in response launched its own ad campaign with posters showing Palestinian children with military gear, with one ad reading "Teaching children to hate will never lead to peace." In October, SWU launched a transit campaign in
Vancouver buses and light rail stations, running two pro-Israel ads in opposition to ads run by the Palestine Awareness Committee. The ads depicted three maps purporting to show "Jewish Loss of Land" dated from 1000 BCE until "today", and another showed smiling Israeli and Canadian children alongside the statement "Shared Values & Freedom." The ads run by Palestine Awareness Committee had depicted "Disappearing Palestine" on a series of maps, illustrating Palestine shrinking through the years 1946 to 2012. In May 2019, SWU placed a billboard advertisement on a main Israeli highway in opposition to ads put up by
Breaking the Silence. The Breaking the Silence ads targeted tourists visiting Israel to attend Eurovision, and juxtaposed an image of an Israeli beach with the West Bank security barrier. In February 2022, SWU partnered with
JewBelong to launch a billboard campaign against antisemitism in Toronto. In November 2022, SWU launched a campaign against the
Albanese government's decision to retract recognition of
West Jerusalem as the Israeli capital. The group placed an advertisement in
The Australian urging readers to email Prime Minister
Anthony Albanese and Foreign Affairs Minister
Penny Wong to reconsider the decision.
Protests and rallies In September 2007, SWU sponsored a protest against
Columbia University, which had invited Iranian President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak as part of its World Leaders Forum. SWU Campus Director Dani Klein said that inviting Ahmadinejad went "above and beyond the issues of free speech" and that giving him a platform was "honoring him". Columbia President
Lee Bollinger defended the decision to invite Ahmadinejad as giving the students a chance to hear an adversary's views. In January 2009, following Israeli air strikes on Gaza, SWU co-organized at least a dozen pro-Israel rallies throughout the United States. In November 2016, to protest the resolutions passed by
UNESCO which denied Jewish and Christian connections to
Jerusalem, SWU erected a massive
Pinocchio effigy near the
United Nations headquarters in
New York City. Rothstein expressed concerns that the resolutions not only disregard the
historical Jewish roots in Jerusalem but also deprecate and belittle Judaism itself. In April 2021, SWU organized a protest outside the French Consulate in Los Angeles demanding justice for
Sarah Halimi after the man who killed her was acquitted.
Caterpillar shareholder resolution (2005) Four Roman Catholic orders of nuns and the pro-Palestinian group
Jewish Voice for Peace planned in 2005 to introduce a resolution at a
Caterpillar shareholder meeting. The resolution asked for an investigation into whether Israel's use of the company's bulldozer to
destroy Palestinian homes conformed with the company's code of business conduct. In response, SWU urged its members to buy Caterpillar stock and to write letters of support to the company. SWU representatives also planned to attend the shareholder meeting and speak out against the resolution. SWU and other Jewish organizations said that Israel was being unfairly singled out.
J Street (2009) In October 2009, SWU campaigned against a conference organized by
J Street. The organization distributed literature accusing J Street of endorsing "anti-Israel, anti-Jewish narratives" and of demonizing Jewish settlers in the occupied territories. J Street's president Jeremy Ben-Ami responded that SWU was engaged in "thuggish smear tactics". The campaign was not perceived to be effective in discouraging policymakers from attending, given the conference's greater-than-expected turnout, with the attendees including several members of Congress and
National Security Advisor General James Jones. SWU has said that its objection to J Street is based on its support for efforts that demonize Israel, such as the
United Nations Goldstone Report, and its advocacy for specific policies that Israeli voters democratically rejected, rather than solely on its criticism of the Israeli government's policies.
Disrupting Jewish Voice for Peace meeting (2010) On November 14, Robin Dubner, Michael Harris, and eight other SWU activists disrupted a local Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) meeting in
Berkeley. They heckled the speakers and prevented the meeting from taking place. One activist pepper-sprayed two JVP members but said she was "physically attacked". JVP members said the pepper-spraying was unprovoked. The SWU activists said that the action was in retaliation for heckling of Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu by JVP members the week before. Harris said they acted as individuals and not as part of an organized SWU action.
SJP amicus brief (2020) In 2020, SWU filed an amicus brief in support of
Fordham University's decision to deny
Students for Justice in Palestine's (SJP) application to become an official student group, leading SJP to file a successful lawsuit. The organization argued that the courts had limited jurisdiction in dictating private universities' decisions, that the decision was consistent with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, and that SJP violated the
IHRA definition of antisemitism.
UC Merced Professor antisemitism allegations (2020) SWU and the
Center for Combatting Anisemitism sent a letter to
UC Merced asking it to take action regarding a professor who made tweets they labeled as antisemitic. One tweet had an image of the "Zionist Brain", in another tweet he wrote, "the Zionists and IsraHell interest have embedded themselves in every component of the American system, media, banking, policy." SWU expressed support for his constitutional right to free speech but expressed concerns that he'd publicly expressed hatred toward some of the people he was teaching. A formal investigation was launched and the professor was removed from the teaching roster for the spring semester.
Condemnation of Paul Gosar (2021) SWU called on Rep.
Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) to apologize for his participation as the keynote speaker at the
America First Political Action Conference (AFPAC) in Orlando, Florida. The event was organized by white nationalist and
Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes. SWU's CEO stated that a sitting U.S. member of Congress attending a white-supremacist conference legitimizes racism and antisemitism, and she urged the Republican Party leadership to distance itself from Gosar, paralleling the actions taken against former Congressman
Steve King for his racist comments.
Condemnation of Lara Sheehi (2022) SWU filed a complaint with the
U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights against
George Washington University. The complaint stemmed from an extracurricular event organized by psychoanalytic therapist and psychology professor Lara Sheehi featuring a talk by
Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, a Palestinian law professor at the
Hebrew University of Jerusalem who is critical of Israel's policies. Some Jewish students felt unsettled by the talk and raised their concerns in Sheehi's class, accusing her and Shalhoub-Kevorkian of antisemitism. SWU took action by filing the complaint to address what they perceived as harassment of Jewish students. They alleged that the talk was a "two-hour diatribe" against Israel that left students feeling vulnerable and unsafe and that Sheehi had made offensive comments to a Jewish Israeli student earlier in the semester, telling her, "It's not your fault you were born in Israel", an allegation Sheehi denied. SWU also alleged that the university failed to properly investigate previous complaints against Sheehi, and cited private tweets of hers critical of Israel and Zionism, which she defended as a reflection of her anger at Israeli military actions and occupation. The complaint prompted the university to hire law firm
Crowell & Moring to investigate the allegations. The subsequent administrative investigation cleared both GWU and Sheehi of wrongdoing and concluded that her comments were misrepresented. Despite this, Sheehi accused the university of failing to defend her, and the controversy surrounding her involvement in the event and the ensuing accusations of antisemitism caused significant division within the psychoanalytic community and sparked broader debates about the role of psychoanalysts in activism and politics and the limits of academic freedom.
Miscellaneous In 2009, following Israeli air strikes on Gaza set up a "Web Situation Room" to counter online criticism of Israel. In May 2010, SWU invited
Elvis Costello on a free VIP tour to Israel "designed to show Mr Costello the diverse nature of Israeli society and highlight the challenges Israel faces in its efforts to promote peace." In 2016, the group dispatched an airplane that flew over the venue of a
Roger Waters' set at
Desert Trip, displaying the message, "Support Israel-Palestine Peace — Not Hateful Boycotts." In 2020, SWU criticized
President Donald Trump's choice of retired Army Col.
Douglas Macgregor to oversee US-German relations and called for a new nominee to serve as ambassador. They referred to Macgregor's 2012 remarks where he claimed that Jewish individuals, known as neocons, unconditionally support the Israeli government. SWU CEO Rothstein criticized this as a rehashed antisemitic conspiracy theory suggesting Jews prioritize Israel over their own countries. Later that year, SWU successfully urged
Zoom to prevent a conference from using the videoconferencing platform to host
Leila Khaled, invoking the platform's terms of service and anti-terrorism laws. In February 2021, SWU launched letter-writing campaign to Che and
Saturday Night Live condemning a joke made about Israel only vaccinating "the Jewish half" of its population. In April, fashion house
Armani removed a blazer resembling a Holocaust concentration camp uniform following a request by SWU. SWU holds a number of annual gatherings, including a "Festival of Lights" gala, which raises funds to combat antisemitism and has drawn over a thousand attendees each year, and an "Israel in Focus" International Conference. SWU has conducted nation-wide tours for Israeli army veterans while opposing Jewish communities who host speaking tours of
Israeli soldiers who speak out against the occupation. == Media ==