MRAP (Movement against Racism and for Friendship among Peoples)

Profile

Country/TerritoryFrance
Websitewww.mrap.fr
Founded1949
In their own words“Not all alike, all equal”

Funding

  • MRAP does not publish financial information, reflecting a lack of transparency and accountability.1
  • Independent research shows that MRAP receives French government funding through different governmental bodies.
French Government BodyAmountYears(s)
Ile de France regional council€19,0402014
€19,0402013
French ministries and Reserve Parlementaire (grants from specific French Parliamentarians)€34,0642015
French ministries and Reserve Parlementaire (grants from specific French Parliamentarians)€18,4002014
French ministries and Reserve Parlementaire (grants from specific French Parliamentarians)€29,3642013

Activities

  • The Mouvement contre le Racisme, l’Antisémitisme et pour la Paix (Movement against Racism, Antisemitism and for Peace – MRAP) was established on May 22, 1949. In 1977, the organization changed its name to Mouvement contre le Racisme et pour l’Amitié entre les Peuples (Movement against Racism and for Friendship among Nations). The organization explains that it removed the word “antisemitism” since “the notion of racism de facto includes antisemitism.”

BDS Activities

  • In March 2022, MRAP was a signatory on a campaign to “call for sanctions on apartheid Israel.” The campaign called for: 
    • “Investigating Israeli apartheid and reactivating the UN mechanisms to combat apartheid to impose targeted sanctions on Israel, including military embargo.”
    • “governments to ban and shops and supermarkets to deshelve products from Israel’s illegal settlements and campaign to end contracts and investments in companies supporting these settlements, particularly those listed in the UN Database.”
    • “Holding institutions that promote our dispossesion, such as the so-called “Jewish National Fund” (JNF), accountable and join efforts to uncover their complicity with ethnic cleansing, illegal settlements and apartheid against the Palestinian people.” 
  • In February 2022, MRAP participated in a campaign titled “#StopTradeWithSettlements,” calling “for an EU law that will end trade with illegal settlements once and for all.”
  • In December 2020, MRAP was a signatory on a statement calling for France to “act for the immediate suspension of the EU-Israel association agreement and the bilateral security and military cooperation agreements” as “Isn’t it time to stop Israel from continuing colonization, annexation and its policy of apartheid?”
  • In September 2020, MRAP 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.”
  • Signatory to a 2017 statement marking the anniversaries of the 1917 Balfour declaration, the 1947 United Nations Partition Plan, and the Six Day War. The statement calls for “the suspension of the EU’s Association Agreement with Israel” and on the international community “to cease all complicity with continued settlement activity and the myriad of ways that Israel violates international law.” 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”; and 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 resolutions.”
  • In October 2014, MRAP called for sanctions against the state of Israel and the suspension of the European-Israeli Association Agreement.

Screenshot, http://ancien.mrap.fr/english/international/proche-et-moyen-orient/palestine, February 16, 2017
Translation: “Occupation is illegal. Don’t contribute to injustice against Palestinians. Don’t buy fruits and vegetables from the Israeli settlements. [The brands] Carmel-Jaffa-Jordan River.

  • In its article “Enough is enough: sanctions against the state of Israel!” MRAP describes Israeli actions during the 2014 Gaza war as “war crimes.”
  • During the 2014 Gaza war, demanded “dissuasive economic pressures on the state of Israel” and promoted a BDS campaign against Israeli products produced on “stolen Palestinian land.”
  • MRAP signed a statement by the organization Collectif National pour une Paix Juste et Durable entre Palestiniens et Israéliens (CNPJDPI), of which it is also a member, which “welcomed the historical decision of the UN General Assembly to admit Palestine as a ‘non-member observer state,’” and simultaneously asked the French government to implement “sanctions against Israel for all its violations of international Law,” to condemn “the illegal siege of Gaza,” and to refuse “to support any French investment, whether in the colonies or …serving the colonization.”
  • In 2012, MRAP denounced the cooperation between the European Union and Israel, describing it as supporting Israeli violations of UN resolutions. MRAP further called the cooperation a “crime towards the Palestinian people.”
  • In 2012, MRAP welcomed the South African government’s decision to label products produced in the West Bank.

Other Anti-Israel Activities

Partners

MRAP is member of La Plateforme des ONG Françaises pour la Palestine (a network-based organization made up of 40 French NGOs active in the Arab-Israeli conflict), Collectif National pour une Paix Juste et Durable entre Palestiniens et Israéliens (CNPJDPI).

Footnotes

  1. All translations in this document were done by NGO Monitor.

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