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U.S. Campaign For Palestinian Rights
The U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR) — formerly the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation (ETO) — is a coalition of American-based anti-Israel organizations that lobbies the U.S. Congress to adopt anti-Israel policies and end government support for Israel.
Included in the coalition are groups such as Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), National Lawyers Guild, Palestine Legal, American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), CODEPINK, US Campaign for Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI), Christian Peacemakers Teams (CPT), Israel Palestine Mission Network – Presbyterian Church (U.S.A) and Friends of Sabeel North America (FOSNA), as well as various chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP).
USCPR is a major promoter of the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.
USCPR claims to provide (p.14) “online and in-person trainings, workshops, one-on-one strategic support, and other mentorship to more than 100 organizations nationwide, including campus groups, faith-based organizations, and broad coalitions.”
The coalition was founded in 2001 by anti-Israel activists, including Josh Ruebner.
Josh Ruebner — the co-founder and former Executive Director of Jews for Peace in Palestine and Israel (JPPI), an organization which merged into JVP — is the Policy Director for USCPR.
In a March 4, 2013 article, Ruebner described supporters of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) as “Israel-first citizen lobbyists.”
In May 2012, Yousef Munayyer, the Executive Director of USCPR, wrote an op-ed titled “Not All Israeli Citizens Are Equal,” which claimed that Israel discriminates against its non-Jewish citizens. Munayyer made the unsupported allegation that “more than 35 laws in ostensibly democratic Israel discriminate against Palestinians who are Israeli citizens.”
Ramah Kudaimi, the Director of Grassroots Organizing for USCPR, has promoted incitement to violence against Israelis, urged platforms to include Holocaust deniers among mainstream voices, and, on July 16, 2016, called for the destruction of Israel — tweeting: “F**k Israel every day until the fall of the zionist regime.” Kudaimi, who previously worked for CODEPINK and the Arab American Action Network (AAAN) — was one of five USCPR delegates denied entry into Israel in July 17, 2016, for security reasons, and banned from entering the country for the next 10 years.
The National Organizer of USCPR Anna Baltzer is heavily involved in church divestment campaigns and travels the world promoting these and other BDS causes. Baltzer has reportedly propagated unsourced claims which she later recanted. In a July 25, 2014 interview during Operation Protective Edge (OPE), Baltzer denied that Hamas used Palestinian civilians as human shields, despite Hamas openly admitting to the practice several weeks earlier. (0:18). Baltzer also referred to Hamas as a “red herring” when asked about how Israel should respond to Hamas provocations (2:00).
USCPR demonizes pro-Israel Americans by accusing them of improperly influencing U.S. politicians to support their political agenda — USCPR wrote (p.8) in its annual 2015 report — “of course the Israel lobby doesn’t limit its advocacy efforts to the federal level. Politicians at the state and even municipal levels are treated to all-expense-paid propaganda trips to Israel, and city and state politicians are pressured to support anti-Palestinian legislation.”
In March 2015, USCPR uploaded a short video to YouTube titled “Bibi’s Bad Advice.” The video called to “#SkipTheSpeech” — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to both houses, critiquing the nuclear deal with Iran. The video insinuated that Americans were duped into going to war with Iraq by Netanyahu’s claims that Saddam Hussein was seeking to develop nuclear weapons.
On September 19-21, 2014, at the USCPR’s 13th Annual National Organizers' Conference, Northeastern University student and SJP member Max Geller presented a workshop titled: “1% & State of Israel’s Agenda to Silence Criticism of Israel & Promote Anti-Muslim and Anti-Arab Racism.” Geller listed major Jewish organizations in the U.S. and claimed that they were “vehicles for the 1% to have even more influence over the Israeli-Palestinian conversation in this country,” in order to protect their financial interests in weapons and oil.
At the same conference, Professor Rabab Abdulhadi served as a panelist and accused the AMCHA Initiative of a “smear campaign” against her. Abdulhadi also claimed that American Jewish organizations, including the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), Simon Wiesenthal Center and American Jewish thinkers, like Professor Alan Dershowitz and late Holocaust survivor Elie Weisel were “engaged in a campaign of repression.”
Per its 2015 Annual Report, then-ETO provides (p.16) “one-on-one support... resources, letters, networking, action technology, financial support, and more -- to students leading powerful boycott and divestment campaigns on more than 25 campuses.”
In the lead up to a divestment resolution in the summer of 2014, ETO provided (p.13) “comprehensive, intensive strategic support to member group UCC Palestine Israel Network (PIN) for six months leading up to” a vote by the United Church of Christ (UCC) General Synod to divest from companies doing business in Israel. ETO supported proponents of the resolution by providing “one-on-one consultations, campaign infrastructure, and organized grassroots support to strengthen PIN and the campaign.”
USCPR campaigns to pressure artists to cancel performances in Israel.
On June 29, 2016, USCPR Policy Director Josh Ruebner tweeted a video calling for the musician Santana to cancel his scheduled performance in Israel. Santana responded in his own video ignoring the pressure and said — “We look forward to seeing you at Park Hayarkon. Shalom and salam alaykum. Peace.”
In 2016, USCPR initiated a campaign urging actors and directors nominated for Academy Awards to reject an all-expenses-paid trip to Israel to see Israel for themselves, first-hand.
USCPR coordinated (p.10) a divestment campaign to boycott the Israeli company, SodaStream. 500 Palestinians eventually lost their jobs when SodaStream moved its factory from the West Bank to southern Israel. Although SodaStream denied that BDS had an impact on its decision to relocate, the BDS movement took credit for the factory’s closure.
USCPR started (p.13) a petition “to ‘Say No to Faithwashing’” writing an “open letter calling on Muslim Americans to eschew any participation in or legitimization of the Muslim Leadership Initiative of the Shalom Hartman Institute.”
The Muslim Leadership Initiative (MLI) project, sponsored by the Shalom Hartman Institute (Hartman’s), was founded by Imam Abdullah Antepli, the first Muslim chaplain at Duke University. MLI is an educational program geared to assisting Muslim Americans “understand why Jews believe what they believe, how Jews see their history, why Jews are so attached to this contested strip of land (Israel) — and thus to better engage with American Jews.” According to Antepli, “MLI aims to put mainstream North American Jewry in conversation with their Muslim counterparts.”
USCPR is a key promoter of Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) and organizes programs on college campuses throughout the U.S. claiming to “raise awareness about Israel’s ongoing settler-colonial project and apartheid policies over the Palestinian people” and “mobilize… BDS campaigns.” USCPR offers resources and ideas for how anti-Israel agitators can execute IAW on campus.
In 2008, to mark the 60th anniversary of the Nakba (“Catastrophe,” in Arabic), USCPR produced and distributed propaganda materials about Israel’s War of Independence. In a “Fact Sheet,” USPCR claimed that a non-binding UN General Assembly resolution (194) — addressing “refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours” — made an unqualified, immediate “right of return” a “part of international law.” USPCR also made the counterfeit claim that “Palestinians are specifically guaranteed” that right “by UN Resolution 194.”
In 2015, USCPR served (p.8) on the Rasmea Odeh Defense Committee in support of the convicted terrorist. USCPR claimed that Odeh was subject to “government attacks,” “trumped up immigration charges” and a “ U.S. government attempt to stifle Palestine organizing.”
Odeh was a military operative with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), an internationally designated terrorist organization. In 1969, she masterminded a bombing that killed two university students in a Jerusalem supermarket. Odeh also attempted to bomb the British consulate.
Odeh confessed, in a highly detailed account, the day following her arrest. In a 2004 documentary, one of Odeh’s co-conspirators directly implicated her as the mastermind.
In 1970, an Israeli court tried and convicted Odeh for her involvement in both bombings and sentenced her to life imprisonment. However, Odeh was released 10 years later, in a prisoner swap and emigrated to the United States.
In November 2014, a Michigan federal jury convicted Odeh of immigration fraud because she failed to disclose her prior conviction and life sentence on her immigration application. Odeh was then sentenced to 18 months in federal prison, fined and ordered to be deported following her prison term.
USCPR promoted (p.8) the “National Week of Action to Free Rasmea,” after Odeh was found guilty.
