Activities

• Founded by a coalition of church groups, including the Mennonite Central Committee and the Church of the Brethren, to promote peace and non-violence; main focus in the Middle East.
• Sends “conflict resolution teams” (1-2 weeks) and “peacemaker teams” (longer-term) to Palestinian areas. CPT states that it “places violence-reduction teams in crisis situations and militarized areas around the world at the invitation of local peace and human rights workers.”
• Delegation team-members, when “not on project site live […] in their home communities and are available for short-term organizing, speaking, training, or other peace work.”

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 October 2023, in the aftermath of the brutal Hamas attack on October 7, CPT published a statement referring to “resilient resistance” and calling all Palestinian deaths “martyrs” with no mention of Hamas terrorism, writing,“As of now, there have been at least 2329 martyrs in Gaza and 55 martyrs in the West Bank during the week of the Israeli aggression on Gaza… They were fighters for their homeland, for their land. They were resilient resistance fighters on their own soil, resisting for a better life… They resist the occupation, which has been killing and displacing Palestinians since 1948… This resistance, a natural response to the occupation’s crimes against Palestinians, has been met with condemnation by many, while the occupiers are given the right to defend themselves. The Palestinian resistance is often unjustly labeled as terrorism, even though they are merely defending their land and within their rights of international law and UN General Assembly Resolution 2649 of 1970, which affirms the legitimacy of the struggle for self-determination… I understand that you stand against violence but don’t let your stance against violence create a space of denial for the right to resist.” 
  • In a second statement, CPT urged governments to “examine their hypocrisy of condemning Palestinian resistance to occupation while at the same time refusing to hold Israel accountable for the blatant flouting of international law through 75 years of occupation, apartheid, and ethnic cleansing. International human rights and humanitarian laws are not conditional. Violence is cyclical. As long as the Israeli occupation exists, Palestinian resistance will continue.”
• In August 2023, CPT published an article claiming “Israel is denying Palestinians their human right to water through theft, demolitions, and pollution of water sources.” The article ignored that Israel’s use of water is entirely consistent with international law and practice, and is dictated by the 1995 Interim Agreement (Oslo II) mutually agreed to between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. (For more information, see NGO Monitor’s report: Analysis of Palestinian Water Issues and Israel’s Role.)
• In June 2023, CPT, alongside 80 North American NGOs, launched the Apartheid Free Communities Initiative to “encourage our faith communities and all communities of conscience to step away from any and all support to Israeli apartheid, occupation, and settler colonialism.”
• In April 2023, CPT published an article on the “subtle ways in which apartheid seeps into Palestinian life.”
• In September 2022, CPT published a statement drawing false equivalencies between Russia/Ukraine and Israel. According to CPT, “the decisions that Palestinians have waited to see implemented for seventy years were applied in Ukraine in seven days. Why? Is the Palestinian inferior to the Ukrainian? Why this discrimination?…Why have giant companies remained in so-called Israel instead of pulling out as they did in Russia? Instead, these companies have worsened the situation in Palestine as they support settler-colonialism by opening offices in illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank.”
• In July 2021, CPT, alongside 150 Palestinian organizations, launched a campaign titled “Campaign to Defund Racism,” calling to “revoke the charitable licenses of multiple U.S.-based settler organizations… All of these groups benefit from their state charitable status as they fundraise for illegal Israeli colonization in Jerusalem and the West Bank of occupied Palestine.”
• 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

• CPT is a “National campaign partner” for the campaign “No Way to Treat a Child,” a vehicle for exploiting children for political warfare against Israel. The campaign was initiated by PFLP-linked Defense for Children International- Palestine(DCI-P) and BDS organizer American Friends Service Committee. A February 20, 2017, exposé in the Jerusalem Post revealed the central claims of this campaign to be false.
  • Other “National campaign partners” include  Amnesty International-USA, Christian Peacemaker Teams, Friends of Sabeel North America, Jewish Voice for Peace, Mennonite Central Committee US, and US Campaign for Palestinian Rights.
• The groups call upon the United States government to pressure Israel to end “abuse of Palestinian children,” and encourage supporters to write members of congress on behalf of their cause. The campaign claims that a letter addressed to President Obama calling for the establishment of a Special Envoy for Palestinian Children, initiated by Rep. Betty McCollum (D-MN) and signed by 20 US congressmen, was a “direct response” to demands made by its supporters.
• In 2019, CPT endorsed US Congresswoman McCollum’s proposed legislation meant to advance BDS and demonization of Israeli companies and defense forces.  The entirety of the proposed bill is premised on factually inaccurate claims from anti-Israel advocacy NGOs, including direct quotes from DCIP’s “No Way to Treat a Child” 2016 report and website.

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 October 2022, CPT tweeted, “The EU opposes annexation and considers illegal settlements in occupied territories as an obstacle to international peace. But even though illegal settlements constitute a war crime, the EU allows trade with them. Help us to #StopTradeWithSettlements.” 
• In August 2022, CPT tweeted, “US-based charities are breaking the law by funneling money into Israeli settler communities, funding racism, human rights violations, and apartheid. Does that sound charitable to you? Help us stop the financing of oppression.” 
• 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).