Foundation for Middle East Peace (FMEP)

Activities

• According to its website, Foundation for Middle East Peace (FMEP) provides grants to a number of highly biased and politicized NGOs, including: +972, Adalah, Al-Shabaka, B’Tselem, Breaking the Silence, Bimkom, Defense for Children International – Palestine (DCI-P), IfNotNow, Ir Amim, Jewish Voice for Peace, Military Court Watch, Just Vision, Palestine Legal, Churches for Middle East Peace, Social TV, Gisha, and Yesh Din. Some of these organizations promote BDS campaigns and antisemitic rhetoric. (See chart below for detailed funding information.)

Political Advocacy

• Foundation for Middle East Peace’s (FMEP) rhetoric includes accusation of “apartheid,” “collective punishment,” and “war crimes.”
• Provides on its website data titled “The Stealth Campaign to Support Settlements” that tracks States and Congressional resolutions regarding anti-BDS and settlements legislations that “giv[e] unprecedented legitimacy and recognition to Israeli settlements by, in effect, making it U.S. policy to treat them as part of Israel.” According to FMEP, “much of this legislation is patently unconstitutional, amounting to laws designed to gag free speech.”
• Regularly publishes a “Weekly Settlement Report,” covering “what is happening this week related to Israeli settlement activity…for the explicit purpose of dispossessing Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem of land and resources, and depriving them of the very possibility of self-determination in their own state with borders based on the 1967 lines.”
• In January 2023, FMEP featured on its podcast UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967 Francesca Albanese  for a discussion on “A War Crime in the Making…Ethnic Cleansing in the South Hebron Hills.”
  • Albanese has an extreme anti-Israel bias and has used antisemitic themes and imagery to demonize the Jewish people and the state of Israel.
• In August 2022, FMEP signed a joint statement condemning the decision by the Israeli Ministry to designate six Palestinian NGOs as terrorist organizations. The statement called for the international community to “take effective measures to end all other actions that deny Palestinians their inalienable human rights” and to “their support and increase funding to the organizations and engage with financial institutions to ensure the transfer of funds to the organizations.”
• In March 2022, FMEP held a podcast titled “The Double Standard on BDS – Russia/Ukraine vs. Israel/Palestine.” The webinar discussed “how the near global embrace of boycotts, divestment, and sanctions against Russia in response to its military assault on Ukraine contrasts to longstanding, far-reaching efforts to delegitimize, quash, and even criminalize these same tactics as a response to Israel’s systematic violence against Palestinians and violations of Palestinian rights.”
• In March 2022, FMEP held a webinar titled “Israeli Apartheid & the Climate Crisis,” discussing the “realities of apartheid in Israel/Palestine, and additionally Israel’s siege and recurring bombardment of Gaza, affect Palestinians’ access to clean water, sustainable land, consistent electricity, and food security.”
• In November 2021, FMEP President Lara Friedman hosted a podcast with Bisan Center Director Ubai Aboudi, alleging that Israel was “Terrorizing Palestinian Human Rights Defenders.”
  • Aboudi was arrested by Israeli authorities in November 2019. In June 2020, Aboudi was sentenced to 12-months in prison. According to his conviction, Aboudi “was convicted of being a member and an activist of the Popular Front organization during the period starting from 2016 and ending in July 2019.” Specifically, Aboudi “was responsible for recruiting additional activists to the organization from young people and students, as well as strengthening the organization’s infrastructure in the area” (on file with NGO Monitor).
  • On October 22, 2021, the Israeli Ministry of Defense declared Bisan a “terror organization” because it is part of “a network of organizations” that operates “on behalf of the ‘Popular Front’.”
• In November 2021, FMEP held a webinar titled “The Nakba and its Generational Impact on Palestinian lives: Memory, Identity, and a Future rooted in Justice” that included “the personal stories of those who survived the ethnic cleansing of their cities and villages, and learn from them and their descendants how the trauma of the Nakba and Israel’s ongoing policies of erasure have shaped their lives.”
• In October 2021, FMEP published an article “Challenging the IHRA Definition of Antisemitism.” According to FMEP, “in practice this ‘double standard’ language has paved the way for attacking virtually all criticism of Israel as prima facie antisemitic, based on the simplistic argument that focusing criticism on Israel, when other nations are guilty of similarly bad behavior, can only reflect animus against Jews.”
  • The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism, adopted by nearly 30 countries and counting, represents the international consensus definition of antisemitism, as well as how to distinguish between legitimate criticism of Israel and antisemitism. An example of the latter includes denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.
• In April 2021, FMEP hosted in a webinar titled “Medical Apartheid”: COVID Vaccinations Under Occupation.” During the webinar, the panellists falsely claimed that Israel has “legal obligations” to provide vaccines to the Palestinians while altogether ignoring that Palestinians residing in Jerusalem are part of the Israeli health care system, that under the Oslo Accords the PA is responsible for health care of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, and that the PA has adopted its own vaccine policyfor its population.
• In January 2021, FMEP held a webinar titled “Calling the Thing by its Proper Name: ‘Apartheid’ Between the Jordan River & the Mediterranean Sea.”
• In June 2020, FMEP held a webinar titled “A Travesty of Justice: Palestinian Child Prisoners and Israeli Military Justice” that discussed the “role and impact of military justice on Palestinians and its function in Israel’s occupation.” The webinar contained multiple distortions and omissions. See the NGO Campaign to Exploit Children’s Rights for more information.
  • The webinar featured Farah Bayadsi (Addameer), Smadar Ben-Natan (B’Tselem), Nadia Daqqa (HaMoked), and Rachel Stroumsa (Public Committee Against Torture in Israel).
• On April 13, 2020, FMEP hosted a webinar on “Israel-Palestine at the International Criminal Court,” featuring speakers from Human Rights Watch(HRW), Al-Haq, Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), and B’Tselem. The webinar advanced the NGOs’ long-standing campaign to pressure the International Criminal Court (ICC) to open an investigation of Israelis over alleged war crimes.
• In April 2020, FMEP held a webinar with Yesh Din titled “COVID-19 and the Settlements.” During the webinar, Yesh Din referred to Israel as an “apartheid regime” and emphasized that there was an Israeli “ideological purpose to take over these [Palestinian] lands and do whatever you need to do to do it.” Yesh Din’s executive director also claimed, without providing further details, that COVID-19 policies for Israelis are different than those for Palestinians.
• In May 2019, FMEP posted an article by Peter Beinart stating that “It’s Time to End America’s Blank Check Military Aid to Israel.” The article discusses “specific Israeli practices that the United States should refuse to fund because they serve no legitimate security goal and produce immense suffering.”
• In June 2018, FMEP President Lara Friedman participated in a Churches for Middle East Peace conference in Washington, sponsored by Defense for Children International – Palestine (DCI-P).  The conference also featured representatives from American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) and B’Tselem.
  • Numerous individuals with alleged ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a terrorist organization designated as such by the US, EU, Canada, and Israel, have been employed and appointed as board members at DCI-P. For more information on DCI-P’s PFLP ties, read NGO Monitor’s report “Defense for Children International – Palestine’s Ties to the PFLP Terror Group.”
• In May 2018, during the violence on the Gaza border, FMEP President Lara Friedman stated that “The humanitarian situation there is genuinely turning catastrophic. We have to remember this is not an earthquake zone. This is an entirely man made catastrophe…These are people who are inside Gaza, these are not people who have invaded Israel and are threatening to take the town, this is shooting into Gaza.” Friedman ignored the violent nature of the protests, which have consisted of an organized armed attack on the Israeli border and IDF positions, attempts to destroy and breach the border fence, and sustained arson, rocket, and mortar attacks on Israeli civilian communities.
• In February 2017, Friedman wrote an op-ed in The Huffington Post that Americans need to pay attention to Israel’s “expanding settlements” and its goal of “securing permanent Israeli control over territory occupied by Israel in 1967” as “the same “Greater Israel” agenda that has eroded Israeli society is today poisoning America’s democracy… many Americans who today are vociferously opposing Trump’s illiberal policies may awaken soon to find that their support for Israel and concerns about anti-Semitism have been abused, and that they have allowed themselves to become the cat’s paw in a broader assault on American democracy” (emphasis added).
• In December 2016, following John Kerry’s speech “outlining his vision for an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” FMEP “applaud[ed]” and “commend[ed]…the decision last week to allow passage of a resolution at the United Nations Security Council declaring Israeli settlements inconsistent with international law and calling for freezing all settlement construction as well as an end to incitement and attacks on civilians in the region.”
• Until 2014, “in view of the growing threat of Israeli settlements to peace, the Foundation introduced the bimonthly Report on Israeli Settlements in the Occupied Territories,” which presents an entirely distorted view of the Arab-Israeli conflict based solely on the Palestinian narrative of victimization and Israeli aggression. The March-April 2014installment claims that the U.S. policy insisting that all issues must be resolved through negotiations, rather than encouraging the Palestinians to “resort to international law and the UN,” “is egregiously unfair and self-defeating.” The report goes on ask: “Must Palestinians waive their rights forever, while Israel continues to abuse these rights unilaterally?”
  • It concludes with a statement from Archbishop Desmond Tutu who alleges that the “systematic humiliation of Palestinian[s]” is “familiar to all black South Africans who were corralled and harassed and insulted and assaulted by the security forces of the apartheid government.” Tutu goes on to urge nations worldwide to “reverse decades-long support for the apartheid regime” and support BDS against Israel.

Staff

• Lara Friedman
  • Lara Friedman, FMEP President, was the Director of Policy and Government Relations Director for Americans for Peace Now, and has “work[ed] closely” with Daniel Seidmann, founder of Terrestrial Jerusalem.
  • She has used “apartheid” rhetoric, and in October 2016, called on the UN Security Council  to “send a message to Israel and to end” its policy in the settlement as “Israeli policy in the settlements is ending the chance for peace.”
• Matthew Duss
  • Former President Matthew Duss previously worked for Center for American Progress.
  • While at FMEP, Duss compared Israel’s security policies to the racist “segregated South.” Duss’ tweets include: Israel “treats Palestinian rights as worthless”; “A better option for dealing with stone-throwing Palestinian protesters might be to stop stealing their land and end the occupation”; “Leveling the charge of anti-Semitism simply becomes another means for those on the right to stifle legitimate debate over US policy”; “1-sided resolutions showing no understanding of the conflict are only allowed if they’re pro-Israel.” He also retweeted a statement accusing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of being a “warmonger.”
  • In an August 4, 2015 article, Duss used “apartheid” rhetoric and accused Israel of maintaining a “system of radical institutionalized inequality that affirms and empowers Jewish extremists while containing Palestinians within a series of disconnected, impoverished cantons.”
  • In July 2015, Duss provided Congressional testimony on the impact of BDS, arguing for the need to “draw a distinction” between Israeli settlements and pre-1967 Israeli areas. Duss claimed that “[e]fforts to blur that distinction are just as dangerous to Israel’s existence as a Jewish and democratic state as attacks on Israel’s legitimacy itself.”  He further argued that the “main reason” for the BDS movement’s continued growth is the “[f]ailure to end the occupation that began in 1967 and achieve Palestinian national liberation and sovereignty,” thereby failing to recognize Palestinian terrorism, rejectionism, and incitement against Israel.
• Mitchell Plitnick
  • Plitnick, former Vice President of FMEP, previously worked as Director of the US Office of Israeli NGO B’Tselem, as well as the Director of Education and Policy/Co-Director at Jewish Voice for Peace.
  • Plitnick has compared Israel’s security barrier to a “ghetto.” His tweets include: “Using administrative detention & punitive home demolitions in rare cases vs Jews will legitimize use vs Palestinians”; “BDS has no stronger supporter than Netanyahu who has done more to strengthen the movement than anyone.”
  • Plitnick published a February 4, 2015 blog post, “Toward a New Two-State Solution,” maintaining that while there “is no magical formula for resolving the Israel-Palestine conflict,” it is necessary to “[b]ring in more voices” to the dialogue, particularly “those who support a single democratic and/or bi-national state.” Any such approach would effectually mean the elimination of Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people.
  • While at JVP, Plitnick promoted “selective and targeted divestment that is aimed exclusively at the occupation, not at Israel itself.”