Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM): Five Things to Know
As a part of a branding campaign for content to mark the first anniversary of the October 7 attack, PYM included an image featuring a bulldozer (used by terrorists to break through the Gaza-Israel border fence during the October 7 massacre) on signs, T-shirts, and social media posts. The image also appeared at events, such as at an April 2025 rally in New York City with a banner bearing a caption in Arabic that reads: “Gaza is the cemetery of occupiers.”
A 2025 study series co-sponsored by PYM and the People’s Forum referred participants to a lengthy two-part article that praises “resistance to Israel” and sanitizes the October 7 attack, in which close to 1,200 were killed, a majority of them civilians.
2. PYM is a key community organizer for the anti-Israel and anti-Zionist movement in the United States.
Since the October 7 terror attack, PYM has co-sponsored at least 450 anti-Israel rallies in the United States.
PYM was a key supporter of many of the campus encampments at U.S. universities that spiked in April and May 2024. PYM also backed escalatory actions on campuses, such as the break-in and vandalism of Columbia University’s Hamilton Hall in the spring of 2024. “All power to the students putting their bodies and livelihoods on the line to stand against genocide,” the group wrote on Instagram in late April 2024 alongside a video showing masked students rushing into the building.
The organization has long included and partnered with current and former student activists. In a June 2024 interview with PYM organizer Mohammed Nabulsi published in the Leftist publication Hammer and Hope, he noted that “maybe 80 percent” of its organizers are “former student organizers.”
PYM chapters, he said, work closely with students and student organizations, and provide “direct support, the provision of resources, political advice, strategic advice, and logistical advice,” as well as “bridging the student movement with the outside world.”
During the university protest encampments, he noted that PYM “linked chapters to lawyers and businesses we’ve leaned on to help sustain” such actions.
One of PYM’s major ongoing campaigns has been to pressure shipping company Maersk to stop weapons shipments into Israel. The group appeared to support the vandalism of a Maersk office in Tunisia in April 2025, writing in an Instagram post that “autonomous organizers” have made it “loud and clear that Maersk ships are not welcome in Tunisian waters.” PYM has also led protests against Maersk in New York City.
PYM’s position as a key organizer in the anti-Israel movement predates October 7, 2023. In 2022, for example, PYM claimed to have “organized or co-sponsored over 80+ actions that mobilized thousands of people in over 15 cities across the U.S. and Canada.”
Groups that have cosponsored protests with PYM include Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), and the ANSWER Coalition. PYM has also frequently partnered with Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), often as co-signatories on shared advocacy petitions and by re-posting each other’s social media content.
There is frequently crossover between PYM activists and other notable anti-Israel groups. Some PYM organizers, for example, are also members of Healthcare Workers for Palestine (HCW4P), a U.S.-based network of anti-Zionist healthcare and healthcare-adjacent professionals whose rallies, social media posts, and publications have regularly included explicit support for, as well as whitewashing and praise of, US-designated terrorist organizations and their leaders.
3. PYM, its organizers and supporters frequently express anti-Zionist beliefs that call on age-old antisemitic tropes and canards.
At an April 2025 rally in Los Angeles, California, protesters displayed a PYM-branded banner that depicted a snake — with its tongue labeled “Zionism” and its tail labeled “imperialism” — being crushed by a boot. The image was paired with the text, “Crush Zionism, Break the Empire.” The snake imagery — variations of which are commonly seen on many different PYM banners, signs and social media posts — is reminiscent of historical antisemitic cartoons that portray Jews and Zionists as animals.
The group repeatedly attempts to link Zionism with fascism, greed, and the ruling class, echoing longstanding antisemitic stereotypes. This includes making comparisons between Zionists and Nazis.
At a May 2024 symposium, a PYM speaker claimed that, historically, Zionism deliberately undermined socialist and anti-fascist elements within European Jewry, even collaborating against Jewish resistance to eliminate communists. The speaker described Zionism as a “reactionary” and “colonial ideology” aligned with “European ruling class,” later arguing that the Zionist agenda poses a global threat, extending beyond Palestine and the Arab world to all “oppressed movements.”
At an October 2023 rally co-sponsored by PYM in San Diego, CA, a protester displayed a sign reading, “Well done Zionists, Hitler would be proud,” with imagery depicting blood dripping down the letters.
PYM also promotes anti-normalization — the complete ostracism of “Zionists” from all facets of public life. In an October 2023 New Inquiry article, PYM wrote: “We want the total anti-normalization of a Zionism that has once again shown its face to the world [bold emphasis added].”
4. PYM has been running for close to two decades and has over a dozen chapters in the U.S., Canada and Europe.
PYM was initially founded in 2006 as the Palestinian Youth Network. Its inaugural event that year in Barcelona, Spain, consisted of 35 young Palestinian organizers from Europe and the Middle East, representing varied backgrounds, political affiliations, ideological perspectives and civil society organizations. Between 2006 and 2011, members focused on formulating tactics and strategies for political action that could be implemented in their respective communities.
In 2011, organizers decided that the network had outgrown this model of operation, and the organization shifted, conceiving of PYM at its second General Assembly in Istanbul, Turkey, where attendees solidified their political and ideological platform with position papers and set up a formal organizational structure that included localized representation, activity and programming.
More than a decade later, PYM has over a dozen chapters across North America, including in Atlanta, Austin, Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland, Los Angeles, New Orleans, New York, Toronto, and Vancouver.
Since at least 2022, the organization has continued to expand with new chapters in Sweden and the United Kingdom.
5. PYM receives funding and fiscal sponsorship from anti-Israel foundations.
PYM’s funding primarily comes from fiscal sponsors. As late as July 2024, PYM was fiscally sponsored by the Westchester People’s Action Coalition (WESPAC), a nonprofit organization that funds various other anti-Israel and progressive organizations. Sometime between then and April 2025, PYM changed fiscal sponsors from WESPAC to Honor the Earth.
Honor the Earth describes itself as an “Indigenous-led organization fighting to dismantle settler-colonialism, racial capitalism, white supremacy, and imperialism,” and is perhaps best known for its environmental advocacy. The organization co-sponsored at least one anti-Israel “March on Washington,” as well as supported one employee’s attendance at the 2024 People’s Conference for Palestine. Honor The Earth Executive Director Krystal Two Bulls also signed a letter of solidarity reading in part: “We recognize that Zionism is a form of racism and a colonial ideology that does not represent the views of all Jewish people throughout the world.”
There is some overlap between PYM and Honor the Earth. PYM organizer Nadya Tannous serves as deputy director of Honor the Earth. Lenna Nasr, an Honor the Earth board member, also serves as a “lead organizer” for PYM. Former communications director Aisha Mansour is an organizer with PYM in the Bay Area.
In 2023, PYM received funds from Solidaire Network Inc, California Endowment, Bafrayung Fund, Impactassets Inc, Emergent Fund, Kataly Foundation, Proteus Fund, and Resist, Inc. Some of these organizations also fund other anti-Israel groups.
The article is published courtesy of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).
