NEW YORK, September 3, 2014 – (WAFA) – The Los Angeles group
Creative Community for Peace (CCFP) conceal right-wing identity from Hollywood
celebs and media, said the New York Campaign for the Boycott of Israel
(Adalah-NY) in a press release issued Tuesday.
In a press release
titled Did LA pro-Israel group conceal right-wing identity from
Hollywood celebs and media?, Adalah-NY
said that on August 23, the Los Angeles group Creative Community for Peace
(CCFP) released a widely reported on statement in Billboard
Magazine - “200 Hollywood Heavyweights Support
Israel.” What was not reported is that CCFP is a “creative” front group for the
right-wing, pro Israeli settler nonprofit StandWithUs, that has a close
relationship with the Israeli government. Though CCFP carefully avoids
explaining this on their website and materials, CCFP is the same
legally-registered nonprofit as StandWithUs (SWU), and, as of October 2013,
operated from within SWU’s LA office.
Felice
Gelman from Adalah-NY commented: “We wonder if CCFP explained to the Hollywood
luminaries who signed its statement, like Ziggy Marley and Sarah Silverman,
that its apolitical message of ‘art building bridges for peace’ is actually a
sanitizing front for the right-wing, pro-settler organization StandWithUs, that
has deep ties to the Israeli government? We are also concerned that US media
covering the statement did not report on who CCFP really is.”
The
statement on Gaza is as misleading as its hidden identity and the politics of
its sponsor SWU. Nerdeen Kiswani, a student activist with Students for Justice
in Palestine, explained, “CCFP begins and ends its statement with apolitical, and
essentially deceptive invocations of peace. But the core argument reflects
typical SWU talking points and Israeli government right-wing spin, that
Palestinians themselves are somehow entirely to blame for Israel’s slaughter of
over 2000 Palestinians and the destruction of thousands of homes and entire
villages in Gaza.”
Since the
statement was first published, at
least one celebrity ‘signatory’, Moroccan filmmaker Sanaa Hamri, has had her
name removed, saying she never agreed to
sign on.
SWU,
which was originally created and registered in 2001 as
Israel Emergency Alliance, states on its website that “StandWithUs,
known as the Israel Emergency Alliance, is a 501(c)(3)
organization.” CCFP, created in 2010, also states on its donation page that it is “a 501(c)(3) organization, dba [doing business
as] Israel Emergency Alliance.” Upon creation, CCFP was simply integrated into
the existing legally registered organization Israel Emergency Alliance/StandWithUs.
As The Jewish Daily Forward reported in October 2013, CCFP is
not actually a nonprofit, but rather it operates under the aegis of the
long-established nonprofit StandWithUs, which
is “widely perceived to be on the far right of the pro-Israel spectrum.”
SWU
regularly touts congratulations and endo
Exposing
CCFP’s similarity to SWU, The Forward reported in October 2013 that CCFP “takes
positions that appear to be held by only a narrow spectrum among Jews who
support Israel,” disputing that Israeli settlements are a primary obstacle to
peace, and that Israel holds Palestinians under military occupation. The Forward article showed
that CCFP is in lockstep with Israel’s right-wing government, quoting David
Siegel, Israel’s Consul General in Los Angeles, lavishing praise on CCFP, and
saying “they are effective because they work from inside the industry.”
CCFP’s cofounder, music executive David Renzer, has
attempted to distance CCFP from SWU, telling The Forward that
CCFP has “always operated independently,” and asserting “there is no day-to-day
relationship” with SWU. The facts belie this. On top of CCFP’s legal status as
part of SWU, David Renzer is married to the SWU’s cofounder and
president, Esther Renzer. Another
CCFP co-founder, Ran Geffen-Lifshitz, is on the board of StandWithUs Israel,
and CCFP and SWU held a strategy session together
with Israeli government officials to shape CCFP’s activities.
SWU
and CCFP have gone to lengths to camouflage their interrelationship, even
registering StandWithUs and Creative Community for Peace with the LA County Clerk in 2010 as “fictitious
business names” for Israel Emergency Alliance (documents viewable in this expose). Though CCFP
asserted to The Forward last year that it was only working
under SWU while “awaiting the processing of its application” as “a tax-exempt
charity,” current online searches of IRS and California state records
for Creative Community for Peace continue to come up empty.
Despite
the fact that CCFP operates within SWU/Israel Emergency Alliance, the most
current publicly available 990 tax form for SWU/Israel Emergency Alliance from
2012 makes no mention whatsoever of CCFP. The 2012 990 demonstrates that
the organization is managed by SWU, noting the salaries and titles of six “Key
Employees,” each of whom is an SWU staff member, with no one listed from CCFP.
The
2012 990 also lists Steven Rosen of Silver Spring, Maryland as
a “Strategic Adviser.” SWU’s 2011 and 2010 990s also show that Rosen was
paid $120,000 and $127,000 from SWU in that same role. For 23 years Rosen was a
top official at AIPAC, the right-wing Israel lobby group. He served as
AIPAC’s Director of Foreign Policy until he was indicted for alleged
violations of the Espionage Act, though the charges were later dropped. A New
Yorker expose on AIPAC
last week noted that Rosen “was fond of telling people that he could take out a
napkin at any Senate hangout and get signatures of support for one issue or
another from scores of senators.” One of Rosen’s favorite quotes during
his years with AIPAC was, “A lobby is like a night flower: it thrives in the
dark and dies in the sun.”
K.F./T.R.
