This project studies the impact of discourse surrounding the Israeli occupation of Palestine on American Jewish-Muslim solidarity efforts. The author uses a Muslim-Jewish dialogue that took place between 2001 and 2014, the Muslim-Jewish Bridge Building Group (MJBBG), as a case study, conducting interviews with former participants and facilitators. The data demonstrates that the entanglement of Jewish and Muslim religious identities with the political Palestinian is an impediment to addressing the root cause of Jewish-Muslim tension in the United States. The author suggests that this problematic reframing be addressed at the beginning of American Muslim-Jewish solidarity efforts in order to dispel misplaced tension and dismantle the xenophobic project of equating Islam and Palestinians, Jews and Zionists.