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 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

• Referring to the murder of four teenagers in 2014 (three Israeli and one Palestinian), MRAP authored a post titled “Israel, a rogue state, responsible for these four murders.” According to MRAP, “all four are the victims of a colonialist policy led by the Israeli state that flouts the rights of the Palestinian people.”
• Described the murder of four Israelis in a synagogue in the Har Nof neighborhood of Jerusalem by a Palestinian terrorist as being a result of a policy of the “rogue state” [Israel] that aims at “…transforming the political conflict around the status of Jerusalem to a religious conflict.”
• Calls for the “liberation of all Palestinian political prisoners,” omitting the context of violence under which arrests take place.
• As a member of CNPJDPI, MRAP hosted an event supporting Palestinian prisoners. The event’s advertisement described the conviction of Ameer Makhoul (whose wife was one of the speakers at the event) as being “without any evidence other than the confessions extorted under torture.” Makhoul is the former head of the organization Ittijah and was sentenced in 2010 to nine years in prison for spying for Hezbollah during the 2006 Lebanon war.
• Referring to the arrest of those onboard a boat headed to Gaza in 2011 that attempted to break the legal blockade around Gaza, MRAP “condemned with severity the attack of the Israeli commando” and described it a “piracy act” in which “the passengers have been kidnapped.”
• MRAP was “offended” when French President François Hollande stated his support for direct negotiations without preconditions between Israelis and Palestinians, instead of “seeking a solution at the General Assembly of the United Nations.”
• Described Magav, the border police unit of the IDF, as “the armed wing of a colonial, racist, and segregationist system.”
• In 2016, a lawyer from MRAP aided in representing the mayor of the French city of Montreuil during his trial for affixing a banner in support of Marwan Barghouti that stated, “Palestinian political activist, unanimously described as the Palestinian ‘Mandela’.” Barghouti has been referred to as the “chief of staff of the Intifada,” for his role in attacks during the second intifada.
• In October 2015, MRAP accused Prime Minister Netanyahu of being a “negationist” and declared that “This negation of history by…the colonialist state, and the fact of transferring to the Palestinians the burden of the genocide…falls within the will to subdue the Palestinian people to realize the Great Israel, to which the racist hawks never renounced.”