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: The New York Campaign for the Boycott of Israel 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.”
Posted on: Thu, 04 Sep 2014 15:05:29 +0000
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