La Cimade

Activities

• Although La Cimade claims that it acts in “the framework of peace construction,” its activities include support for BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanctions) campaigns against Israel and other delegitimization efforts.
• La Cimade has accused Israel of apartheid, affirming that “The word apartheid is not just a description of what happened in South Africa…the state of oppression imposed on the Palestinians by the State of Israel, within its national territory and in the occupied territories, meets this legal definition.”
• La Cimade supports the World Council of Church’s (WCC) Ecumenical Accompaniment Program in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI).
  • 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 October 2022, as part of a campaign that began in 2017, La Cimade 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.”
• In August 2022, La Cimade published a press release condemning the decision by the Israeli Ministry to designate six Palestinian NGOs as terrorist organizations. According to the press release, “France and the European Union must take strong measures, such as banning trade in settlement products, failing which the Israeli government will silence Palestinian civil society and all voices defending international law.”
• In May 2021, La Cimade issued a press release calling for President of France Emmanuel Macron to “Support the initiative of the International Criminal Court to investigate crimes committed in the occupied Palestinian territory.” The press release further called for France to “Suspend all military and security cooperation with Israel.”
• In December 2020, La Cimade, alongside a number of Israeli, Palestinian, and international organizations, declared that “Israel must provide necessary vaccines to Palestinian health care systems.” The NGOs falsely claim that Israel has “legal obligations” to “ensure that quality vaccines be provided to Palestinians living under Israeli occupation and control,” while altogether ignoring that Palestinians residing in Jerusalem are part of the Israeli health care system; that under the Oslo Accords the PA is responsible for health care of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza; and that the PA had adopted its own vaccine policy for its population.
• In December 2020, La Cimade held a conference on “Impunity: The urgent need to change course” featuring lectures titled “Apartheid, Human Rights Violations and Institutionalized Impunity against the Palestinian People” and “The BDS, Boycott-Divestment-Sanctions Campaign: The Challenges of Mobilizing against State Impunity.”
• In October 2018, La Cimade was a signatory on a letter to French President Macron calling to “recognize the state of Palestine.”
• In July 2017, during the violence on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount that included the murder of two Israeli police officers, La Cimade denounced “the restrictions imposed on the population of the Occupied Palestinian Territory in East Jerusalem, in violation of international law, and asks the French government to intervene with the Israeli authorities to remove the detectors immediately.” According to La Cimade, “This provocation is part of the overall policy of the Israeli authorities in power in Tel Aviv, who do not hide their willingness to end the ancestral presence of Palestinians in Jerusalem, and who try to give a religious dimension to what is a colonial occupation.” La Cimade ignored that Palestinian rioters “began hurling rocks at security forces” and “some stones fell at the Western Wall plaza below,” forcing the evacuation of groups of Jews praying there.
• On February 7, 2017, La Cimade was a signatory on a statement marking the anniversaries of the 1917 Balfour declaration, the 1947 United Nations Partition Plan, and the “beginning of Israel’s occupation in 1967.” The statement calls for “the suspension of the EU’s Association Agreement with Israel.” The statement condemns the 1947 UN partition plan, claiming it “resulted in the 1948 Nakba, the demolition of more than 530 Palestinian villages and the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians from their homeland, and is thus a process of ethnic cleansing.” It also claims that European countries “made Palestine carry the consequences of the monstrous genocide of the European Jews by the Nazis; and subsequently they did nothing to require that Israel respect UN resolution.”
• In June 2015, La Cimade presented its report titled “Israël-Palestine: l’avenir muré par l’occupation” (The Occupation is walling up the future) to the French Senate. The report quotes many politicized Israeli and Palestinian NGO sources and refers to meetings held with representatives from Addameer, Al-Haq, and Alternative Information Center (AIC). These three NGOs have alleged ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a terrorist organization designated as such by the US, EU, Canada, and Israel.
  • La Cimade’s report recommends that France “recognize the legitimacy of….BDS…and put a stop to all legal action against BDS activists in France”; “Denounce the ethnic- nationalist policy…” of the State of Israel; and recommends that the European Union “Suspend all economic aid or cooperation agreements between the EU and the State of Israel contributing directly or indirectly to the maintenance or development of settlements in the occupied territories and in Jerusalem.”
  • One of the report’s co-writers, Alain Bosc, took part in the 2011 Freedom Flotilla, which attempted to break the blockade around Gaza and instigate a confrontation with the Israeli Navy. Referring to the Greece government’s decision to prevent the boats from leaving port, La Cimade stated that “…orders come directly from Tel-Aviv and the world conforms to them.”
  • The report was originally published in June 2014 following a “mission of La Cimade to Israel and Palestine” earlier that year.  Up to €5,000 of the budget of the mission was funded by French senator Claudine Lepage (see Dotation d’action parlementaire (Sénat) 2014, line 4,623).
• La Cimade takes part in campaigns advocating for Palestinian prisoners convicted of terror offenses, referring to them as “political” prisoners and altogether omitting the context of violence.
  • La Cimade supports the “Palestine: la case prison” campaign, a “Documentary showing the systematic use of the prison by the Israeli army as a repression weapon against the Palestinian struggle for their rights and for the creation of a viable and independent Palestinian state. Palestinians are imprisoned for political motives. ”
• Describes the local committees of the Palestinian Popular Struggle Coordination Committee (PSCC) as “non partisans that resist peacefully,” when in reality PSCC organizes violent protests. (See video of PSCC protests in Hebron, Kfer Qaddum, Nilin, Nabi Saleh and Beituniya that show protestors hurling rocks, throwing sharp objects, trying to destroy the security barrier, and committing arson.)

BDS Activities

• Promotes BDS campaigns against Israel, despite the illegality of such campaigns under French law.
• In November 2009, the National Council of La Cimade passed a motion stating that “La Cimade, with its continuous positioning alongside Palestinians and Israelis working for peace, declares its support for the call of Palestinian civil society BDS and the positioning of the Platform of French NGOs for Palestine on Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions.”
• Supports the “Made in Illegality” campaign in France, which calls upon France to end its economic relations with Israeli settlements. The campaign’s demands include banning French import of all “settlement products,” discouraging French companies “from investing in settlements,” and preparing information for travelers “to ensure that they avoid supporting companies and tourist sites that are located in the settlements.”
• In February 2022, La Cimade participated in a campaign titled “#StopTradeWithSettlements” calling “for an EU law that will end trade with illegal settlements once and for all.”
• In May 2021, La Cimade was a signatory on a statement calling on the European Union to “suspend the European Union Israel association agreement” and “Support the initiatives of European countries to exclude from the European market products and services from the colonies.”
• In September 2020, La Cimade 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 April 2018, La Cimade called to end “EU funding for the Israeli military industry.” According to La Cimade, “The EU must stop contributing to the militarization and profits from human rights violations in the occupied Palestinian territories.”