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Prior to the 9-2 vote, hundreds of Somerville residents rallied in support and packed the council chambers
On January 25, the Somerville City Council voted overwhelmingly in favor of a resolution calling on the Biden administration to work toward an immediate and enduring ceasefire in Gaza. The 9 to 2 vote makes Somerville the first city in Massachusetts to call for a ceasefire, following mere hours after the Minneapolis City Council passed their own ceasefire resolution.
The months-long effort to bring forward the resolution brought many in the community out. Nearly 500 supporters rallied outside Somerville City Hall, then packed the Council Chamber and two overflow rooms, to listen to the three hours of deliberation. While emotions ran high, pro-ceasefire community members respectfully engaged with the Council, and waited patiently for hours as the resolution was debated, amended, and passed. The grassroots turnout was organized by Somerville for Palestine, a newly formed inter-faith, intergenerational, interracial group of Somerville residents standing in solidarity with the Palestinian people and demanding an immediate and lasting ceasefire. About 10 people opposed to the resolution attended as well.
Council President Ben Ewen-Campen introduced the resolution, saying that “for the last 100-plus days, we have seen a military campaign that has been the most devastating bombing campaign in our generation, killing tens of thousands of people, huge numbers of them innocent children. Something like 2 million people are now homeless and hungry, on the brink of starvation, being denied basic humanitarian aid. I am one of the many, many people in our community and beyond who believes that this needs to end, and it needs to end now.” Explaining that he struggled for many months with the decision to bring forward this resolution, he said “the truth is that this is an issue that is coming from the bottom of my heart. My moral convictions compelled me to draft this resolution, pure and simple.” Councilor Ewen-Campen’s full statement can be read here.
Councilor Ewen-Campen and other councilors supportive of the resolution sponsored Somerville residents to speak about why this resolution was meaningful to them.
Jamal Halawa, a Somerville High Teacher and Palestinian American resident who has lived in the city for over twenty years, testified before the council urging them to support the ceasefire resolution. “Simply put, voting for a ceasefire signal to Palestinian and Arab Americans and Muslims in Somerville that our lives matter,” Halawa said. Halawa’s full speech can be found here.
Carina Kurban, the granddaughter of a Palestinian refugee who was ethnically cleansed from Haifa in 1948, shared the stories of direct brutality her family has faced at the hands of Israel, including when their home in Southern Lebanon was commandeered by the Israeli military for nearly two decades. As a 20 year old college student, Kurban told the council, she was stopped at Ben Gurion airport while traveling to the West Bank, “interrogated and humiliated for 8 hours, denied entry, strip searched, jailed, sexually harassed, assaulted, deported in handcuffs, and banned from the country indefinitely – and I was given no reason other than ‘terrorism’.” Kurban said, “We need a permanent ceasefire, and for Israel to be held accountable. Because without both, the situation will go back to what scholars like Noam Chomsky have called ‘an incremental genocide’ rather than an accelerated one.” Kurban’s full speech can be found here.
Councilor Willie Burnley Jr. was also supportive of the resolution, having spoken previously at Somerville for Palestine rallies about his efforts to pressure the federal partners to call for a ceasefire and his experiences in Palestine. “For 110 days, the Apartheid State of Israel has dropped tens of thousands of bombs on Gaza, destroying more than 70% of homes, killing more than 25,000 people (the vast majority of which are women and children). We have a duty to listen to our constituents, to demand that our elected leaders put pressure on President Biden, and to end this genocide before it is too late!” Councilor Burnley Jr’s full speech can be found here.
Long time Somerville resident Alain Jehlen, the son of a Holocaust survivor and husband of State Senator Pat Jehlen, urged Somerville Councilors to vote in favor of the Ceasefire Resolution. “It makes me furious that the Israeli government is using Holocaust victims like my family as a reason to slaughter Palestinians. Mass bombing, the systematic demolition of homes, and depriving everyone of food and water have nothing to do with defending Jews… The lesson for us from centuries of oppression capped by the murder of millions is that nobody should ever go through that again. Not just Jews, but nobody. Every human life is equal.” Jehlen’s full comments can be found here.
Somerville for Palestine has been circulating a public letter to Senators Markey and Warren calling for a ceasefire and solidarity with Palestinians, with over 800 signatures from Somerville residents. Somerville for Palestine organizer Sara Halawa stated, “I’m so incredibly proud of my city for being the first in Massachusetts to call for a ceasefire. Like our SHS fight song says, ‘Somerville leads the way’!”
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Including explicit reference to Israel’s supposed right to self defense, which under international law literally does not exist in occupied territories, but no mention of Palestinians right for the same, which international law is extremely explicit that they and all occupied people do have a right to. And not only do occupied people have a right to self defense they have a legal right to resist. This part of the resolution despite alluding to international law clearly does not understand the basics of it.
Likewise even if Israel did have a right to self defense in the territories it occupies (again it explicitly does not), it still is not carrying that out in accordance with international law. This is clear in the ICJ ruling that Israel is plausibly carrying out a genocide and that they must cease doing so and punish the politicians responsible. Israel’s response has been “The Hague cannot stop us” which sounds so much like a super villain it almost sounds fake.
Which gets into another profound problem with this resolution. It explicitly condemns 10/7 which is not itself an issue. But it becomes a glaring problem when explicitly coupled with acknowledging Israel’s supposed but legally non-existent right to self defense in the occupied territories (with no acknowledgment of Palestinians very explicit right to resist) as this serves as Israel’s stated justification for their genocidal onslaught on Gaza, and because there is no condemnation of that genocidal campaign.
Choosing to acknowledge the right of self defense for those plausibly carrying out a genocide in the eyes of the ICJ, but not those targeted by a genocidal campaign, and choosing to condemn only the violence faced by those now carrying out a genocide but not those who are now suffering from one is taking the side of the Genocidaires even in the context of a nominal call for peace.
Hey Slaw
All your legal citations are oh so impressive – and highly misleading. But let’s get real here. You are dancing around it…but it’s very obvious where you are coming from…so why not own up to it?
You clearly think the Hamas massacre of 1,200 (mostly Jews) on Oct 7 was some sort of righteous act of resistance. Do you really think that what you wrote doesn’t tip your hand about this?! The people who read the Somerville Times may not be experts on international law, but most of us, at least, can read between the lines.
So come on now say it! “Long live Oct 7 in the annals of anti-imperialist resistance”….right Slaw?
I am not dancing around anything. I said what I meant and I said it explicitly.
I’ll say it again “ It explicitly condemns 10/7 which is not itself an issue. But it becomes a glaring problem when explicitly coupled with acknowledging Israel’s supposed but legally non-existent right to self defense in the occupied territories (with no acknowledgment of Palestinians very explicit right to resist) as this serves as Israel’s stated justification for their genocidal onslaught on Gaza, and because there is no condemnation of that genocidal campaign.”
You are the one dancing around your point here which is that you clearly believe genocide to be a reasonable response to 10/7. Genocide is not a reasonable response to anything, and your attempt to place massacres at my feet while you are implicitly supporting a genocide is vile and hypocritical to the nth degree. You don’t need to be experts in international law to see such blatant hypocrisy, and more and more people are waking up to it.
So come on now say it “Gaza should be wiped out, flattened, and parceled off by Israeli real estate agents” wait you don’t have to because Israeli politicians are already saying that for you, so instead you spend your time making bad faith smears of anyone who dares to oppose a genocide.
Also if anything I said was actually misleading (it’s not all of these points are very easily verified if one bothers to look) you would have been able to say how they are misleading. But they aren’t and you can’t so, you simply assert they are without evidence and move on to attempt to smear me for something else. You are basically doing DARVO for a genocide. Truly gross.
Slaw
This will be my last note to you because as a lifelong leftist, I am more than a little familiar with dogmatists like you who do nothing more than to help give the Left a bad name!…And it is a waste of time to spend a lot of energy in a back and forth with people of your ilk. I posted my comment for the benefit of other readers of the Somerville Times to help them see this situation with greater clarity and to expose political idiots like you for what you are all about.
As for my views…which you took the liberty to expound upon without having any clue about how I see things.. they are as follows: 1) I support a two state solution in which, of course, by definition, Palestinians would have their own free and independent state.
2) I have been deeply troubled by the ways in which Israel has been fighting the war in Gaza. Far too many innocent civilians have been killed by Israel’s targeting policies. Israel needs to do a LOT more to minimize the toll this war is inflicting on the civilian population of Gaza. Similarly, Israel needs to be MUCH more willing to fully cooperate in getting a LOT more food, water, medicine, and fuel into Gaza.
3) Based on what Israel has and hasn’t done regarding its military tactics and efforts to get desperately needed humanitarian supplies into Gaza, I believe that Israel has committed war crimes. And as a proud American Jew, it deeply pains me to say that.
4) But at the same time, I believe Israel’s war against Hamas is a fully justifiable one. After Hamas’ massacre of approx 1,200 innocent people on Oct 7, and its taking over 200 hostages, Israel has both the right and the obligation to do its best to disarm Hamas and in doing so, prevent any future attacks against the Israeli people. But it does need to fight this war with much greater regard for the civilian population in the Gaza Strip.
5) As for the incessant accusations of “genocide,” nearly every media outlet in the world is, as of today, citing the figure of approx 26,000 Palestinians having been killed by Israel’s armed forces. What is nothing less than astounding is that hardly anyone either notes or acknowledges that approx 8-9,000 of them have been Hamas fighters!! So, in reality, a much more meaningful count of the # of non-combatants who have been killed is 17-18,000. Given that the population of Gaza is approx 2.3 million, how anyone can say with a straight face that inadvertently (and tragically) killing 17-18,000 people out of a population of 2.3 million constitutes genocide is beyond me.
6) Why isn’t accusing Israel of committing a war crime, or even mass murder, if you will, …why isn’t that enough? Perhaps because accusing any nation of committing “genocide” is the ultimate way to demonize a country. And Israel has been unfairly demonized for decades.
7) So Slaw…go for it, you can have the “last word” …but, in doing so, how about putting all your cards on the table? Tell us in plain English why you believe that the Hamas massacre of 1,200 innocent people on Oct 7 was a justifiable act of “resistance.” And then go take a good look at yourself in the mirror!