Mouvement pour une Alternative Non- violente (MAN)

Activities

• MAN is a politicized NGO that partners with highly biased groups in its projects in Israel and the West Bank.
• In May 2022, MAN hosted an event with Amnesty International and BDS France – Montpellier to present Amnesty’s report, “Israel’s Apartheid Against Palestinians: Cruel System of Domination and Crime Against Humanity,” which denied Israel’s legitimacy as a Jewish state by alleging Israel has committed crimes of apartheid. 
  • The report recommended “Impos[ing] targeted sanctions, such as asset freezes, against Israeli officials most implicated in the crime of apartheid,” as well as “Impos[ing] a comprehensive arms embargo on Israel.” (Read NGO Monitor’s Report “Late to the Propaganda Party – Amnesty’s Derivative Echo of the NGO Apartheid Attack Against Israel.”)
• In November 2021, MAN was a signatory on a statement condemning the decision by the Israeli Ministry to designate six Palestinian NGOs as terrorist organizations. According to the statement, “many of us work very regularly with these organisations. Our organizations strongly deplore this decision and express their full solidarity with the six Palestinian NGOs targeted, which denounce human rights violations in Palestine, and which the Israeli government is trying to silence.”
• In March 2021, MAN was a signatory on a joint statement to the UN Human Rights Council alleging that “Palestinians continue to experience an ongoing-Nakba – an ongoing reality of Israeli settler-colonialism and apartheid.” According to the statement, “By systematically designing and implementing policies of displacement and dispossession tailored to forcibly transfer Palestinians, replacing them with Israeli settlers, to maintain Israel’s settler-colonial enterprise and apartheid regime, Israel continues to violate Palestinian rights, including the Palestinian inalienable right to self-determination, and right of return; while continuing to enjoy an unlawful culture of impunity.”
• From 2013-2016, MAN Lyon partnered with the Palestinian organization The Center for Freedom and Justice on a project titled “Non- violence et maintenance de l’agriculture en Palestine” (Nonviolence and agricultural cooperation in Palestine). The project uses anti-Israel rhetoric such as accusing Israel of “repression and acceleration of ethnical cleansing,” claiming that “the new government applies an aggressive Zionist policy.” It further claims that “the occupation forces have executed a father in cold blood.” Other partners included the Palestinian organization Jordan Valley Solidarity and the French organizations Association France-Palestine Solidarité (AFPS) and Comité Palestine Israël Méditerranée de Châteaubriant.
  • The project was started by the founder of the Center for Freedom and Justice, Mousa Abu Maria, described by MAN as “a non-violent Palestinian militant from Beit Omar.” Abu Maria was convicted for his involvement in the Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine (PIJ), a terrorist organization recognized as such by the U.S., EU, UK, Australia, New Zealand, and Israel (line 155). He was released in 2003 as part of a prisoner exchange, but was re-arrested five years later for his connections to the PIJ. According to the Israeli Military Court of Justice, Abu Maria is “a leading member of the Islamic Jihad organization… He deals with various aspects of the organization’s activity, and is involved in both the organizational-financial aspects of support for terrorist infrastructure, as well as communicating with terror operatives from outside of the area.” (Translation of Israeli Supreme Court verdict 6404/08)
  • In 2016, Abu Maria ended his involvement with MAN due to internal disputes including accusations of MAN employees “misappropriating funds” and Abu Maria’s fundraising without the approval or knowledge of MAN.
• In 2016, “MAN Lyon was involved in a project that supported three Israeli organizations working for peace…the three organizations are De-Colonizer, Windows for Communication, and Two States One Homeland.” It is not clear if this support included funding for these organizations.
  • The organization De-Colonizer, which claims that the “occupation started at the daylight of the Zionist immigration,” was founded by Eitan Bronstein, founder the NGO Zochrot. Zochrot supports a “One State Solution” or a “de-Zionized Palestine,” and refers to Israel as having an “ethnicized and racialized Zionist” system.
  • MAN, together with CCFD-Terre Solidaire and the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Foundation, funded De-Colonizer’s creating a map depicting “Colonialism in Destru(A)ction,” aiming “to show the historical continuum of the ongoing colonial project until today, and gives an indication on what might be the future if there is no political international substantial mobilization to stop Israel.”

BDS Activities

• Highly active in BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions) campaigns against Israel.
• Signatory of the BDS France campaign, despite the fact that such boycotts are illegal under French law.
• In July 2022, MAN was a signatory on a statement titled “No to the 2022 Champions Trophy in Tel Aviv!” According to the statement, “We strongly oppose the holding of this meeting in Israel. It is a sportwashing event aimed at “whitewashing”, through sport, military occupation, colonization, the apartheid system of the Israeli state and its crimes.”
• In February 2022, MAN participated in a campaign titled “#StopTradeWithSettlements,” calling “for an EU law that will end trade with illegal settlements once and for all.”
• In 2017, organized a BDS protest with Association France Palestine Solidarité (AFPS) in a supermarket in Rouen (France) at which activists called on individuals to “boycott the products of the Israeli apartheid.”
• In 2016, organized a workshop with BDS France titled “BDS, non- violence and civil disobedience” that took place in the facilities of the politicized organization La Cimade. The workshop included a panel featuring Omar Barghouti, co-founder and steering committee member of Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI).
• In 2015, supported a petition titled “No drones made in Israel for the French Land Army.” The petition lobbies the French Defense Minister “not be a partner of the crimes committed by the State of Israel,” and falsely claims that “the drone Hermes 450 [produced the Israeli company Elbit] is a weapon that the Israeli army uses to commit war crimes, eventually crimes against humanity…as confirmed by high international authorities and specialized NGOs.”
• In a 2014 article titled “Palestine: Boycott the occupation with BDS?” MAN claims that “Israel wants to make the conquest of the West Bank irreversible” by using a “policy that results in a truly attempt of ethnical cleansing.”
• MAN considers discriminatory BDS campaigns against Israel as “a non- violent weapon par excellence” (emphasis in original).