Churches for Middle East Peace (CMEP)

Profile

Country/TerritoryUnited States
Websitehttp://www.cmep.org/
Founded1984
In their own words“CMEP works to encourage U.S. policies that actively promote a just, lasting, and comprehensive resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, ensuring security, human rights, and religious freedom for all the people of the Middle East.”

Funding

  • In 2020, total income was $566,091; total expenses were $504,937.
  • According to its website, Churches for Middle East Peace (CMEP) is “funded by individuals, local churches and organizations, national churches and ecumenical organizations.”
  • In 2019, CMEP received a grant of $7,500 from the Foundation for Middle East Peace.

Activities

  • Churches for Middle East Peace (CMEP) is a coalition of more than 30 national church denominations and organizations.
  • CMEP “engages in directly [sic] advocacy and education with the U.S. Congress. The CMEP board and staff communicate with Senate and House offices on a regular basis to further the policy positions of the CMEP coalition.”
    • CMEP includes on its website “Advocacy Tools,” providing “resources to help you build a relationship with your members of Congress.”

Political Advocacy

BDS Activities

  • CMEP 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.”
    • In April 2016, Warren Clark, then CMEP Executive Director, signed an “Atlanta Summit of Churches in the USA and the Holy Land” document titled “Pursuing Peace and Strengthening Presence,” that “Encourage[d] reference to the Kairos Palestine message as an established initiative.”
  • In April 2023, CMEP called for people to contact their Congressional representatives to “ensure no U.S. assistance is used abroad to violate human rights or harm civilians…The U.S. cannot help encourage a peaceful and just resolution to the conflict without first guaranteeing U.S. funds are not used to expand settlements, annex Palestinian land, or physically harm Palestinians.”
  • In July 2021, CMEP was a signatory on a letter to President Biden to “Halt Weapons Sales to Israel.”
  • In November 2019, CMEP “applaud[ed]” the decision of the European Court of Justice to apply a discriminatory labelling regime on products originating in the Israeli settlements.
  • On April 12, 2017, CMEP hosted Sahar Vardi, the Israel Program Coordinator for the American Friends Service Committee, to discuss the “Human Rights Defenders Club.” Vardi has described the objectives of BDS: “in terms of profit, the real losses will not come from the boycott of products, but from divestment. That’s where the big money is. The last thing I’ll say about the BDS movement is that it’s fun. They’ve started using all these flash mobs and [other] cool activities. It accesses people who normally wouldn’t care. There are huge companies being affected, and [activists] are having fun.”

Staff

  • Dr. Mae Elise Cannon
  • A number of organizations on CMEP’s board also reflect the goal of demonization, under the façade of promoting peace.
    • Church World Service
      • Member of ACT Palestine Forum, a coalition of ACT Alliance Members that cooperates in Israel and the West Bank and Gaza under the Act Alliance network. Published a February 2013 Advocacy Paper, “The ‘Permit Regime’ and Israeli Attacks on Palestinian Freedom of Worship,” alleging that “Under Israeli military occupation, repression has become the worst of history compared to that of South Africa. It’s a sophisticated form of social, economic, political and racial discrimination, strangulation, and genocide, incorporating the worst elements of colonialism and apartheid as well as repressive dispossession, displacement and state terrorism to separate Palestinians from their land and heritage, deny them their rightful civil and human rights, and gradually remove or eliminate them altogether. The ID/permit system is one of many elements designed to make greater Israel an ethnically pure Jewish state.”
      • During the 2014 Gaza war, CWS condemned “Hamas militants’ practice of firing rockets into Israel, and Israel’s bombardment of homes, hospitals and other civilian centers in Gaza,” drawing an immoral symmetry between Israeli self-defense and illegal attacks by terror organizations and failing to acknowledge Hamas’ responsibility through its systematic exploitation of civilians, homes, hospitals and population centers. The statement also ignores the illegal flow of weapons to Hamas and other terror groups in Gaza.
    • American Friends Service Committee (AFSC)
      • AFSC is a leader of BDS campaigns on campuses and churches in the United States.
      • Dalit Baum, director of AFSC’s Middle East program, is co-founder of Coalition of Women for Peace’s flagship BDS project “Who Profits?” Baum lobbies international audiences on how best to promote the global BDS campaign against Israel. AFSC materials include an online investment screening tool aimed to “help individuals and institutions identify companies on their investment portfolios that are directly complicit in ongoing severe violations of human rights and international law.”
      • AFSC promotes “anti-normalization,” rejecting dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians.

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