Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT)
Profile
Country/Territory | United States |
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Website | www.cpt.org |
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Founded | 1986 |
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Funding
- In 2019, total income was $1 million.
- In 2019, Christian Peacemaker Teams spent $70,614 on “Palestine.”
- According to its website, Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) “does not accept money from any government or governmental agency.”
- In 2015-2018, Christian Peacemaker Teams participated in a €1 million project funded by the Italian Agency for Development Cooperation (AICS).
- In 2018, Christian Peacemaker Teams together with the Ecumenical Accompaniment in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI) served as implementing partners for a UNICEF project, receiving $244,558 to “To provide protective presence and accompaniment to ensure safe access to education for vulnerable school children in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.”
- EAPPI sends volunteers to the West Bank to “witness life under occupation.” Upon completion of the program, the volunteers return to their home countries and churches where many engage in anti-Israel advocacy, including advocating for BDS campaigns in churches, comparing Israel to apartheid South Africa and Nazi Germany, and other delegitimization strategies.
- In 2017, Japan granted UNICEF $191,191 for “Protected and safe access to schools as an emergency response for vulnerable communities in the State of Palestine.” CPT and the Ecumenical Accompaniment in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI) are listed as “implementing partners.”
Activities
Political Advocacy
- CPT rhetoric includes accusations of “apartheid,“ “ethnic cleansing,” “collective punishment,” and “colonization,” as well as supporting a Palestinian “right of return.”
- CPT also endorses the Kairos Palestine document, which calls for BDS against Israel; denies the Jewish historical connection to Israel in theological terms; and rationalizes, justifies, and trivializes terrorism, calling it “legal resistance.”
- CPT provides on its website a “Sample Letter About Violations of Children’s Rights” for people to use to write to congressional representatives about the “daily hardships, traumas and humiliations experienced by those living under Israeli occupation” and “strongly urge [them] in your official capacity to demand that there be an independent investigation of this incident to determine if the Israeli military violated international law and if any sanctions or restitution to these children and their families are warranted.”
- In June 2021, CPT launched a campaign to “stop the flow of money to the instigators of Apartheid: Israeli settlers.”
- In May 2021, CPT Canada Coordinator Rachelle Friesen participated in the “3rd Annual Nakba Day of Action,” which called to “Tear down the apartheid wall” and for “Boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel and its economy until Palestinian rights are fully respected.”
- In July 2020, CPT published an article titled “Annexation in the West Bank: How the Israeli State is facilitating ethnic cleansing and apartheid,” calling for people to sign a petition to the US Secretary of State to “stand up for human rights and equality to end this incremental ethnic cleansing.”
- In February 2020, CPT was part of a coalition to “Dismantle the Ghetto: Take the settlers of out of Hebron.” According to the campaign, “Before the establishment of the State of Israel, the Zionist movement…funded and instituted a program of settler-colonialism. This program carries on today, and with it, the elimination and erasure of indigenous Palestinian communities.”
- Was a signatory on the “#DroptheADL” campaign.
- In March 2017, Executive Director Sarah Thompson spoke about “Spiritually and Activism from Palestine to Ferguson to Standing Rock: Deepening Continuous Resistance” at Sabeel’s tenth international conference in Jerusalem to mark “100 years since the Balfour Declaration; 70 years since the UN Partition Plan; 50 years since the occupation of the state of Palestine: the West Bank, including East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip; 30 years since the beginning of the first intifada, and 10 years since the beginning of political divisions among our Palestinian people.”
- On February 7, 2017, CPT was a signatory on a call to “end the European complicity – marking 100 years of injustice against the Palestinian people.” The call “solemnly reaffirm[ed] that in 2017, after 100 years of dispossession, denial and ethnic cleansing, the rights of the Palestinian people must, at last, be respected.”
No Way to Treat a Child
BDS Activities
- On February 23, 2010 CPT-Palestine endorsed BDS against Israel “because sixty years of negotiations and diplomacy have only enabled Israel to solidify its military occupation of Palestine. The international community has long called for Palestinian society to resist the violence of the Occupation nonviolently, so we, as members of an international peace organization, believe that when Palestinians mount nonviolent campaigns against the Occupation, we are morally obligated to support them.”
- CPT encourages “individuals, companies and states to engage in divestment and in an economic and commercial boycott of everything produced by the Israeli occupation.”
- CPT “started making videos answering ‘why do we boycott Israel? ’,” urging followers to do the same.
- In May 2021, CPT participated in a “National March for Palestine” to “build support for Palestinian rights and the effort to sanction Israel for violating these rights.”
- In November 2020, CPT held a webinar titled “From Turtle Island to Palestine: Unite to Decriminalize Indigenous Struggles,” discussing how “Indigenous leaders face colonial governments attempting to criminalize their resistance” and the “impacts of settler-colonialism on their lives.”
- In September 2020, CPT called for the UN General Assembly to “Launch international investigations into Israel’s apartheid regime over the Palestinian people as a whole, as well as associated State and individual criminal responsibility,” to “Ban arms trade and military-security cooperation with Israel,” and “Prohibit all trade with illegal Israeli settlements and ensure that companies refrain from and terminate business activities with Israel’s illegal settlement enterprise.”
- In June 2020, CPT was a signatory on a letter to then Presidential candidate Joe Biden calling for “support for conditioning U.S. military funding to Israel on an end to Israeli violations of Palestinian human rights and adherence to all relevant U.S. laws, including the Arms Export Control Act and the Leahy Law.” The letter further called for Biden to “promise to provide full U.S. cooperation with the International Criminal Court’s investigation into alleged war crimes committed by all sides in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip.”
- In July 2018, CPT was involved in a campaign calling to boycott Hewlett Packard due to its “complicity in the Israeli occupation of Palestine.”
- In April 2018, during the violence on the Gaza border, CPT was a signatory on a statement calling for the “imposition of appropriate economic sanctions by the Canadian government and UN on those parties who are complicit in the violation of Palestinian human rights.”
- In June 2017, CPT signed a statement “condemn[ing] JNF Canada’s role in entrenching Israel’s fifty-year-long military occupation” and called on the government of Canada to “Ensure that Canadian taxpayers are no longer subsidizing these activities, which are making Canada complicit in violations of international law (sic).”
- On June 14, 2017, Rachelle Friesen, the Canadian coordinator of CPT, wrote an op-ed in the Canadian Mennonite stating, “The time has come to take up the call of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) unapologetically. This support means not only condemning the settlements or the occupation; it means the entire BDS framework of liberation is adopted, including: Ending the colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the wall.”
- In April 2017, CPT was a signatory on a letter to the Toronto Symphony Orchestra calling on them to “reconsider your participation in the TSO’s planned ‘Arabian Nights’ tour of Israel,” as “Israel instrumentalizes culture to cover up its violations. When international artists perform at Israeli cultural venues and institutions, they help to create the false impression that Israel is a ‘normal’ country like any other. This visit by the world-renowned TSO will be paraded as an endorsement of Israel’s actions.”
- In March 2017, CPT, alongside the Canadian BDS Coalition, signed a letter to HP calling on them to “speak out against the violations of International Humanitarian Law and abuses of human rights associated with HP/HPE technology infrastructure that Israel uses to maintain its system of apartheid and settler colonialism over the Palestinian people… We expect you to show just leadership and stand on the right side of history to end your company’s complicity with Israeli oppression” (emphasis added).
Related Articles
Reports
Palestinian and international NGOs – funded by European governments and working in tandem with UNICEF’s West Bank and Gaza branch – have built an extensive campaign, using false charges of abuse of Palestinian children in the effort to trigger sanctions against Israel.
All Articles about Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT)