Simone Zimmerman is an influential American political activist and movement organizer. Born in 1990 in Los Angeles to a Conservative Jewish family, she attended Jewish day schools and youth programs before studying at the University of California, Berkeley, where she served as president of the student Israel Action Committee. Her experience visiting the Occupied Palestinian Territories led her to question American Jewish institutional support for Israeli military policy.
In 2014, Zimmerman co-founded IfNotNow, a movement of young American Jews protesting the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip and advocating for a shift in American Jewish community policies. In April 2016, she was hired as the National Jewish Outreach Coordinator for Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign, though she was suspended shortly after over past social media posts criticizing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Zimmerman is a central subject in the 2023 documentary film “Israelism,” which examines changing attitudes toward Israel among young Jewish Americans.
Zimmerman organizes grassroots campaigns opposing the political influence of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and leads educational delegations of young American Jews to the West Bank to observe the impacts of Israeli settlement expansion and military governance. Addressing the pushback faced by progressive Jewish activists, she noted: “As more and more American Jews are speaking out in support of Palestinian freedom, now they just say instead we’re overt antisemites, we hate all Jewish people or, even worse, that we’re not Jewish at all.“ She argues that Jewish ethical teachings regarding justice and human dignity mandate active opposition to the occupation and support for Palestinian human rights. Zimmerman is also one of the signatories of the 2025 public statement, “Global Jewish Call on the UN and World Leaders to Sanction Israel.”