Civic Coalition for Palestinian Rights in Jerusalem (CCPRJ)

Activities

• While CCPRJ seeks “to combat human rights abuses under the Israeli occupation through research and legal analysis, advocacy and human rights education,” the group regularly undermines peace and promotes false allegations against Israel through inaccurate reports and appeals to influential international organizations and officials.
• CCPRJ advocacy & public relations coordinator, Ingrid Jaradat Gassner, is a representative of the Palestinian NGO Network (PNGO). Jaradat is the former director of BADIL and a BDS activist.
  • Multiple PNGO officials have ties to terrorist organizations, and at least five PNGO members have ties to EU-designated terror organizations, including through their employees and/or board members who are directly involved in activities and programs.
• CCPRJ executive director Zakaia Odeh formerly worked at Bisan.
  • On October 22, 2021, the Israeli Ministry of Defense declared Bisan a “terror organization” because it is part of “a network of organizations” that operates “on behalf of the ‘Popular Front’.”
  • Ubai Aboudi, Bisan’s Executive Director, was arrested by the Israeli authorities on November 13, 2019. In June 2020, Aboudi was sentenced to 12-months in prison. According to his conviction, Aboudi “was convicted of being a member and an activist of the Popular Front organization during the period starting from 2016 and ending in July 2019.” Specifically, Aboudi “was responsible for recruiting additional activists to the organization from young people and students, as well as strengthening the organization’s infrastructure in the area” (on file with NGO Monitor).

Demonization

• Regularly accuses Israel of “ethnic cleansing,” “violating human rights,” “forced evictions,” “extensive home demolitions,” ”land confiscation,” “displacement of countless Palestinian families,” “destruction of property” and “Judaization of Palestine.”
• In June 2024, Odeh claimed, “Injustice, Colonization, and Occupation Can’t Last Forever…the main thing we do is international legal advocacy, because we believe the problem in Jerusalem and everywhere is the Israeli settler–colonial apartheid system…it is a larger issue of occupation, colonization, discrimination.”
• In December 2023, CCPRJ was a signatory on a letter to the UN Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide calling to “Acknowledge and publicly recognise that Israel’s conduct in the Gaza Strip is tantamount to an unfolding genocide”; “Third States to investigate, arrest and prosecute persons on their territory or nationals who may have committed or contributed to acts of genocide against the Palestinian people”; and for “States to take all available measures to avoid complicity in Israeli conduct through the provision of materials, arms, economic and diplomatic support to a regime responsible for ongoing and persistent widespread and systematic violence and abuse of the Palestinian population amounting to genocide.”
• In October 2023, CCPRJ was a signatory on a letter to ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan to “Issue Arrest Warrants, Investigate Israeli Crimes and Intervene to Deter Incitement to Commit Genocide in Gaza.”
• In February 2023, CCPRJ was a signatory on a letter to the International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor to “Urgently expedite your investigation into the Situation in Palestine, including the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution.”
• In November 2022, CCPRJ endorsed a report published by Al-Haq titled “Israeli Apartheid: Tool of Zionist Settler Colonialism.” The antisemitic report defined Zionism and the State of Israel as inherently illegitimate and extorted the international community to dismantle the Jewish State. The report also called on Member States of the UN General Assembly to “adopt a resolution to reconstitute the UN Special Committee against Apartheid and the UN Centre against Apartheid to address Israeli authorities’ commission of the crime against humanity of apartheid against the Palestinian people as a whole, and empower these bodies to proactively pursue the dismantlement of Israel’s settler colonial apartheid regime.”
• In August 2022, CCPRJ signed a joint statement condemning the decision by the Israeli Ministry to designate six Palestinian NGOs as terrorist organizations. The statement called for the international community to “take effective measures to end all other actions that deny Palestinians their inalienable human rights” and to “their support and increase funding to the organizations and engage with financial institutions to ensure the transfer of funds to the organizations.”
• In May 2022, CCPRJ was a signatory to a flagrantly antisemitic report submitted to the UN Human Rights Council’s permanent Commission of Inquiry against Israel. The submission presented a blatantly false historical account that denied Israel’s right to exist, categorized Israel’s very existence as illegal, and labeled Zionism as a form of racism, demanding that the Commission “Recognise and Address Zionist Settler Colonialism and Apartheid as the Root Causes of Israel’s Ongoing Violations.”
• In February 2022, CCPRJ published a statement accusing Israel of “silent ethnic cleansing policy” in Jerusalem and called for the EU, UN, and international community to take “appropriate and effective action…by calling for sanctions against Israel.”
• In April 2021, CCPRJ welcomed the decision of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to launch a formal investigation into alleged war crimes committed by Israel in the “State of Palestine.” According to CCPRJ, “This is a long-awaited and a critically important step towards ensuring the rule of law and ending impunity, while ensuring accountability for Israel’s crimes within the jurisdiction of the Court.”
• In April 2021, CCPRJ was a signatory on a joint submission to the UN Secretary-General on Intimidation and Reprisals for Cooperation with the UN, stating that “Since its establishment, Israel has created and maintained an institutionalised regime of racial domination and oppression, amounting to apartheid, over the Palestinian people as a whole…Israel has sought to fundamentally undermine key human rights and accountability work and thereby further entrenched impunity for its apartheid regime over Palestinians.”
• In March 2021, CCPRJ was a signatory on a joint statement to the United Nations calling to “Recognise and to declare that the laws and policies Israel have created, and continue to maintain, as an institutionalised regime of racial domination and oppression over the Palestinian people as a whole, which amounts to the crime of apartheid” and to “support[] a full, thorough, and comprehensive investigation into the Situation in Palestine by the International Criminal Court.”
• In July 2020, CCPRJ was a signatory on an urgent appeal to the United Nations referring to Israel’s supposed“shoot-to-kill policy” as “contributing to the maintenance of Israel’s apartheid regime of systematic racial oppression and domination over the Palestinian people as a whole, which, embedded in a system of impunity, prevents Palestinians from effectively challenging Israel’s apartheid policies and practices.”
• In May 2020, CCPRJ signed a statement referring to the Nakba as being “far from a distant memory for the Palestinian people: it is an ongoing reality of Israeli settler-colonialism, population transfer, apartheid, and dispossession, policies which have never ended and continue to be entrenched today.” The statement further called to “take effective legal and political measures to eradicate colonialism, to bring perpetrators of suspected war crimes and crimes against humanity to justice at the ICC, and to publicly recognise and collectively overcome Israel’s apartheid regime imposed over the Palestinian people as a whole.”
• In May 2018, during the violence on the Gaza border, CCPRJ signed a joint statement accusing Israel of “excessive, lethal force… These practices attest to the continued domination and subjugation of the Palestinian people. The marches and Israel’s excessive use of force and unlawful killings demonstrate the urgent need to ensure protection for the Palestinian people and to hold Israel to account in accordance with international law.” The statement ignored the violent nature of the protests, which have consisted of an organized armed attack on the Israeli border and IDF positions, attempts to destroy and breach the border fence, and sustained arson, rocket, and mortar attacks on Israeli civilian communities.
• In November 2017, CCPRJ was a signatory on a call to support “A World Without Walls,” drawing comparisons between “Israel’s apartheid wall on Palestinian land to the US wall of Shame on indigenous land at the border with Mexico.”

BDS Activities

• In November 2023, CCPRJ was a signatory on a statement urging states to issue a “Two-Way Arms Embargo on Israel,” demanding that “The US, the UK, Germany, Canada, Italy, the Netherlands and other States that authorise the continued transfer of arms, and other forms of military support to Israel to immediately bring an end to such transfers…and immediately halt the provision of any materiel, equipment or other commodity that may foreseeably be used in the commission of serious international law violations including international crimes.” 
• In February 2023, CCPRJ was a signatory on a statement “welcom[ing] the historic announcement by the Barcelona City Council to suspend all institutional relations with apartheid Israel.” The statement called for “arms embargo against apartheid Israel, stopping trade with Israel’s illegal colonial settlements, and ending projects and agreements that sustain the illegal situation, including the EU-Israel Association Agreement, the EU-Israel Association Council, international agreements for gas pipes through the Gaza coast, and the Euro-Asia Interconnector project receiving electricity from Israel’s colonial settlement enterprise.”
• In September 2022, CCPRJ endorsed a report by Al-Haq and Just Peace Advocates calling to “Update the UN database annually” and “Continue to exert the necessary efforts to ensure transparency and promote accountability for business activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, to counter the pervasive impunity stemming from corporate- related violations and grave breaches of international law in such contexts.”
  • The UN BDS “blacklist” of businesses operating across the 1949 Armistice line selectively targets Israel apart from all other nations, is aimed at economically damaging companies that are owned by Jews or do business with Israel, and is ultimately meant to harm the Jewish State.
• In August 2021, CCPRJ signed a letter to the States Parties to the Arms Trade Treaty calling to “put an end to Israel’s notorious use of arms and military equipment…by immediately imposing a comprehensive two-way arms embargo on Israel.” According to the letter, “This systematic brutality, perpetrated throughout the past seven decades of Israel’s colonialism, apartheid, pro-longed illegal belligerent occupation, persecution, and closure, is only possible because of the complicity of some governments and corporations around the world.”
• In September 2020, CCPRJ 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 July 2020, CCPRJ was a signatory on a statement calling for “Immediate targeted sanctions to stop Israel’s annexation and apartheid.” The statement further called for “A ban on arms trade and military-security cooperation with Israel,” “Suspension of trade and cooperation agreements with Israel,” and “Investigation and prosecution of individuals and corporate actors responsible for war crimes/crimes against humanity in the context of Israel’s regime of illegal occupation and apartheid.”
• In March 2020, CCPRJ was a signatory on a letter to then UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet “welcome[ing]” the release of the discriminatory UN database of businesses operating across the 1949 Armistice line, aimed at bolstering BDS campaigns against Israel. According to the letter, the signatories “look forward to continuing to work with the OHCHR, with a view toward ending corporate impunity for profiting from grave breaches of international law.”
• In May 2019, CCPRJ was a signatory on a statement calling on the German Bundestag to revoke its joint resolution defining BDS campaigns against Israel as antisemitic.