NEW YORK, October 23, 2013 (WAFA) – United States human rights advocates said on Tuesday that the new Hollywood entertainment industry group, Creative Community for Peace (CCFP), is actually a right-wing group close to the Israeli government.
Adalah – New York said in a statement that CCFP campaigns against a cultural boycott of Israel and claims to oppose the politicization of art.
It said CCFP operates under the aegis of the long-established US nonprofit StandWithUs (SWU), which is “widely perceived as being on the far right of the pro-Israel spectrum,” in spite of attempts by its cofounder, music executive David Renzer, to distance the group from SWU.
Adalah said Renzer is married to the cofounder and president of SWU Esther Renzer. Another CCFP co-founder, Ran Geffen-Lifshitz, is on the board of StandWithUs Israel, CCFP’s Director Lana Melman appears to be based in the long-established SWU office in Los Angeles and CCFP and SWU held a strategizing session together with Israeli government officials to shape CCFP’s activities.
Still, SWU and CCFP have gone to lengths to camouflage their
interrelationship, even quietly registering StandWithUs and Creative Community
for Peace with the LA County Clerk in 2010 as “fictitious business names” for the
registered nonprofit Israel Emergency Alliance, said Adalah.
Phan Nguyen from Adalah-NY commented, 'Given CCFP's denial of the importance of Israeli settlements and military occupation, and CCFP’s claim that Israel simply lacks ‘a true peace partner,’ CCFP's repetition of the word peace, including in its own name, should be understood as a cynical rhetorical ploy. CCFP appears to use the word peace in the same manner that SWU instructs its trainees to do – ‘Always include the word ‘peace’ in your answer,’ ‘If the Israeli side says ‘peace’ more times than the Palestinian side says ‘peace,’ we will win the PR war.’”
M.S.
