Council committee in Bridgeport approves Gaza ceasefire resolution

 

      BRIDGEPORT REPORT

     By Reginald Johnson 

 

    BRIDGEPORT --- A City Council committee has voted to approve a resolution calling on congressional representatives to pressure the Biden administration to facilitate a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war.

  The Miscellaneous Matters committee voted overwhelmingly with only one dissenting vote to approve the statement which will now be sent to the full council for a vote on January 2.

 If approved, Bridgeport will join a number of other cities around the country to pass such resolutions aimed at building support for ending the conflict in Gaza which has left 21,000 people dead and nearly 2 million people displaced.

  The proposed resolution states that the City Council of Bridgeport calls upon congressional representatives in both the House and Senate “to join us in urging the Biden administration to immediately call for and facilitate immediate de-escalation and a permanent cease-fire to urgently end the current violence in Gaza, Israel, and the Occupied West Bank” and facilitate the provision of humanitarian assistance to Gaza and the Occupied West Bank.

  The resolution makes note of the long and bloody history of the Israel/Palestinian conflict and then says, “Hundreds of thousands of lives are at imminent risk if a permanent cease-fire is not achieved and humanitarian aid is not delivered without delay.”

  It further states that “All members of the Bridgeport City Council have a duty and a responsibility to speak up in times of injustice and to also center the voices, experiences and realities of the most directly impacted in a given situation, including Bridgeport residents.”

  In arguing for the resolution, Council Member Jazmarie Melendez said “I think we’re setting a precedent in the City of Bridgeport for moving this forward and taking a stand…We have a responsibility. We do.”

  Normally, a City Council committee meeting would draw only a few observers but on this night there were 35 to 40 people in attendance who appeared to be supporters of the measure. When Melendez first proposed the resolution in early December at a City Council meeting the council chambers were packed with Palestinian-Americans and others who backed the proposal and a number of them spoke passionately in favor of the resolution.

  There was pushback, however, at the committee meeting to the proposal --- most notably from Council Member Maria Pereira, who ironically is from the same East End district as Melendez.

 Pereira said that the issue of policy related to the conflict in Gaza is a federal matter and it’s not something that is in the purview of the Bridgeport City Council.

  “This is not in our wheelhouse,” she said. “This is not what we’re elected for in a municipal government.”

 Pereira also said that “I’ve knocked on 2,000 doors in my district, and not one constituent raised the issue of Israel and Gaza.”

 She said that her constituents care about issues like public safety, road paving and schools.

 Pereira also maintained that the conflict in Palestine and Israel is a “complex issue” and city council members do not have the expertise to weigh in on it.

  Melendez responded that “when you’re saying that the people of Bridgeport don’t care about this, you’re completely ignoring the room full of people that are behind you” as well as the scores of people that attended the December 4 council meeting when the resolution was first proposed and what she said were the “countless signatures” of people in the city who signed an on-line petition calling for a cease-fire resolution.

 Melendez also commented that “You said this is a complex situation. It is not. This is not a legally binding document. We are speaking up and saying we are watching people die and that is not OK. ”

 

One of the persons attending the City Council committee meeting discussing the proposed ceasefire resolution for Gaza. More than 21,000 people have been killed in the Israel-Hamas conflict, mostly civilians. (Reginald Johnson photo)

The resolution proposal got support from Council Member Tyler Mack of the West Side who said that even though the Israel-Hamas war is an international issue local governmental bodies around the country “have been taking stands like this” and Bridgeport can do the same.

 The co-chair of the committee, AmyMarie Vizzo-Paniccia, sounded reluctant to go forward with the resolution and suggested to Melendez that as an alternative she put a letter together outlining her concerns and then gather signatures from other council members send it out to the appropriate congressional and federal officials to consider.

 But Melendez wouldn’t budge and said she wanted to proceed with the City Council resolution.

 Committee member Aidee Nieves, who is also president of the City Council, then indicated that she supported the resolution in general but had a problem with some of the language. She specifically suggested that the wording about the “targeting of civilians” and the violations of international humanitarian law was too harsh and should be taken out.

 A motion was passed to amend that wording as well as to make other small changes in the resolution.

 A motion was then made to pass the resolution proposal with amendments and send it on to the council. The motion passed with only Pereira voting no.

   Aziz Seyal, a board member of the Bridgeport Islamic Community Center, which has backed the resolution, said after the meeting that there’s no reason to object to the statement.

   “The resolution is so clear that it’s not favoring anybody. It’s in favor of bringing the peace back,” he said. “It’s part of humanity to stop the killing of innocent people.”

    Detroit, Atlanta and Oakland, California have approved ceasefire resolutions and New Haven is considering one.

  The City Council will take up the ceasefire resolution at its meeting on Tuesday, January 2, at 7 pm in the City Council chambers, City Hall, 45 Lyon Terrace. A public forum will precede the meeting at 6:30.

 

City panel to take up Gaza ceasefire resolution

 

   By Reginald Johnson

    BRIDGEPORT --- As the brutal Israel-Hamas War drags on --- with more than 18,000 people dead and 1.8 million people displaced --- more cities around the country are passing resolutions demanding the Biden administration support a ceasefire.

 Already, cities such as Oakland, California and Detroit, Michigan have passed resolutions calling for a ceasefire. Leaders in New Haven are considering one.

Now activists in Bridgeport are pushing the City Council to approve a resolution calling for an “Immediate de-escalation and permanent ceasefire in Israel, Gaza and the occupied West Bank.”  A number of pro-Palestinian supporters spoke at public forums prior to the last two city council meetings to urge passage of the statement.

 The council referred the proposed resolution, offered by Council Member Jazmarie Melendez, to the Miscellaneous Matters committee for review.

 The committee will take up the proposal at its meeting Tuesday, Dec. 26^th, at 6 p.m. in the Wheeler Room, City Hall, 45 Lyon Terrace.

  If the panel votes in favor of the resolution, it will go back to the full council for a vote.

  Melendez told fellow council members, “We cannot conduct business as usual here, because of what we are bearing witness to in Palestine….If we as a legislative body choose to remain silent, then we are complicit.”

  Peace activists in Bridgeport and elsewhere hope that passage of these resolutions will add to the pressure on both the Biden administration and members of Congress to take a stand and support a ceasefire.

 While officials in the Biden administration have recently been raising concerns about the level of civilian casualties in Gaza caused by the Israeli military, the administration is still pledging support for Israel and its continued military campaign against Hamas. Likewise, the vast majority of the members of Congress, both in the House and Senate, are backing Israel fully and have not signed on to the idea of a ceasefire.

  No one in Connecticut’s congressional delegation --- including five House members and two Senators --- is supporting a ceasefire.

The "antisemitism" cudgel

              (Joe Lombardo, the coordinator for the United National Anti-war Coalition, recently posted an excellent piece on Facebook in which he described how the charge of “anti-Semitism” is being used as a weapon to discredit the movement to bring about a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas War. He also says that while pro-Palestinian demonstrators are falsely attacked for advocating a genocide against Jews, it is the Palestinians who are suffering from an actual genocide at the hands of Israel. Joe’s full article is reprinted here.)  

   By Joe Lombardo

   The weaponization of antisemitism is simply an attempt to shut us up and allow the genocide to continue.

 The corporate media and western governments have been calling the massive Palestinian solidarity demonstrations “antisemitic,” if they report them at all. In the words of Malcolm X, they “Make the criminal look like the victim and make the victim look like the criminal.”

 On November 25, three Palestinian students were shot in Burlington, VT, while in Chicago a six-year-old Palestinian boy was stabbed 26 times and killed while his mother was also attacked and hospitalized. In California a car tried to run down several Muslim families and Muslim and Palestinian groups have reported a sharp upturn in incidences of attacks on Muslims and Palestinians. Yet there is no outcry from the corporate media or the government about these anti-Palestinian and racist attacks. But “antisemitism” is today a constant theme in the corporate media.

 Last week the president of the University of Pennsylvania, Elizabeth Magill, was forced out of her position because of her support for the right of freedom of speech on her campus. She was asked by right-wing congresswoman, Elise Stefanik if calls for genocide of Jews would be termed harassment under the schools’ codes of conduct.

 Magill had to speak carefully to let Stefanik know that she does not support calls for genocide but does support free speech. Similar questions were asked of the presidents of Harvard and MIT. This type of questioning is reminiscent of the McCarthy hearing in the 1950’s.

 It is the Palestinians in Gaza who are facing genocide, not Jews in Israel or the US. Why don’t they ask politicians and others if they support that genocide? If they did, they might get a response such as “I give full support to Israel” and they likely would vote for more money and weapons to Israel to kill more Palestinians. Or they might get an answer like that from Florida State representative Michelle Salzman when asked how many Palestinians should be killed, she answered “all of them.” But she has not been forced to step down.

 Today in the US we find that we not only have to fight for the right of Palestinians to live, but we have to fight for the right to even express that or say we are for a cease fire in Gaza.

 The slogan chanted on every Palestinian solidarity action, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” has especially been criticized as antisemitic by the corporate media and politicians. One wonders what part of Palestine they think should not be free. It should be clear from what is happening in Gaza right now that it is the Israelis who are trying to drive the Palestinian people into the sea or the desert, not the other way around.

 In fact, this slogan was first used by Zionists not Palestinians. It is in the founding document of the Likud Party, the party of Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu and they have used it in their political campaigns in the form of “between the sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty.” I don’t remember the corporate media or the politicians ever criticizing this as anti-Palestinian or racist.

 The campaign to characterize those of us who support Palestinian rights as being antisemitic is simply a campaign to shut us up so they can carry out their genocide against the Palestinian people without hinderance.

 When Palestinians and their supporters say “Palestine will be free,“ the politicians and corporate media try to deny that they are not free. But in their own land there is a separate set of laws for Palestinians and Jews. Palestinians can be arrested without charges and held indefinitely. Many children have been arrested in this manner.

 There are some roads that only Jewish people can drive on or walk on. Palestinian homes are often bulldozed so that illegal settlements for Israeli Jews can be built, or just for punishment. Sometime the Palestinians are only given minutes to leave. There are check points for Palestinians where they sometimes must wait for hours, just to move around in their own land. And there is so much more that can be said about the lack of freedom and equality for Palestinians in their own traditional land.

 Of course, it is far worse in Gaza. There, Israel controls who can leave and who cannot. In most cases people are not allowed to leave. Israel determines what gets into Gaza and what doesn’t. Construction material to rebuild the bombed buildings are often denied. They only allowed a certain amount of food into Gaza, limiting the number of calories per person per day. This they mockingly call the Palestinian diet. This is why Gaza is referred to as an open-air prison. But it is much worse than a prison because prisoners don’t routinely get bombed and shot or have their electricity or water turned off.

  This is why Palestinians want to be free in their own land. “From the River to the sea, Palestine will be free!” That is not antisemitic, it expresses a reality that all Palestine must be free for Palestinians to survive. Those who claim it is antisemitic are only showing their racism and anti-Palestinian sentiment and are themselves being complicit with the genocide against the Palestinians.

Israel’s stated goal in Gaza is to wipe out Hamas. This is impossible. To end resistance from the Palestinians, you must end their repression. Instead, the Israelis are increasing the repression. Even if every member of Hamas was killed, each bomb the Israelis drop and each Palestinian they kill just creates more anger towards the Zionist state and will cause more and more resistance until Zionism is ended. The next generation of Palestinian freedom fighters are being born amid the rubble of Gaza.

 

 

City leaders pressed to back Gaza ceasefire

   

BRIDGEPORT REPORT 

  By Reginald Johnson

      BRIDGEPORT ---- The City Council here voted to take under consideration a resolution calling for a cease-fire in the Gaza War and a de-escalation of the conflict, after hearing several speakers at a public forum demand that Israel stop its attack on the Palestinian people and end the carnage.

  The council chambers were packed with pro-Palestinian supporters for its Monday meeting and a number of them spoke passionately about the devastation that the Gaza war has created for residents there and said it was imperative that elected representatives in Bridgeport take a stand and follow the lead of other cities and call for an end to the conflict.

  “We call on the Bridgeport City Council to support a resolution conveyed to Connecticut representatives, Congress, and the administration to advocate for a cease-fire, allowing humanitarian aid to Gaza, and only issue responsible, balanced, and constructive public messages,” said Khaled Elleithy, president of the Bridgeport Islamic Community Center.

 . He added, “We demand that the Biden administration immediately stop Israel’s massive bombardment of Gaza. Should the White House once again fail to act to restrain Israel and to provide authentic leadership in the search for peace this tragedy will continue to grow. Palestinian suffering and bitterness will deepen, Israelis will remain insecure, and extremism will be further fueled by anti-American anger.”

   Jazmarie Melendez, a member of the City Council from the East End, proposed the resolution for council consideration.

  “We cannot conduct business as usual here, because of what we are bearing witness to in Palestine --- a death toll of 15,600 civilians, 6,600 of them children,” Melendez told her fellow council members.

 In the face of this mass killing, she said, “If we as a legislative body choose to remain silent, then we are complicit.”

 A young Palestinian-American boy testified at the public forum that he had attended major rallies on behalf of the Palestinians in both Bridgeport and in Washington DC. He said there were people of all faiths at these rallies --- Christians. Jews and Muslims.

 “You don’t have to be a Muslim to know that what is happening in Palestine is wrong, you just have to be human,” he said.

 The boy continued, “There is a genocide of the Palestinian people going on in both Gaza and the West Bank.”

               

Hanan Abdulwahid holds up a photo of her cousin, who she said was shot and killed in the West Bank without provocation by an Israeli soldier. (Photo by Reginald Johnson) 

  Lou Biafore, a resident of Lafayette Street in Bridgeport said she was not only deeply concerned about stopping the catastrophe in Palestine but also redirecting the nation’s priorities away from war spending and towards domestic needs.

 “Since the beginning of the year, I’ve paid $4,781 in federal taxes. Roughly 20% of that has gone into the defense budget and millions of that have gone to fund the Israeli military in this conflict and $966 of my taxes have gone towards that funding,” she said.

 “That money could have paid for one month’s rent or for a loan forgiveness, or used for  healthcare or for the municipal education budget. But it isn’t.”

  Prior to the forum, Hanan Abdulwahid stood and held a sign aloft which showed the picture of a boy in Palestine, Emad, who was killed by Israeli forces.

  Above the photos, the poster said, “For what sin was he killed?”

 Hanan said Emad, who was her cousin, was 16 and a sophomore in high school. “A regular teen-ager,” she said.

 On October 8, a day after Hamas attacked an Israeli town in southern Israel and killed 1300 people, the boy went outside for a walk with a friend in a town in the West Bank. Suddenly, she said, he was shot by an IDF soldier. Hanan said Emad was not engaging in any kind of protest at the time.

 “What was the purpose of this? There is no Hamas in the West Bank. I don’t know what the reason was,” she said.

 “He was shot in cold blood for no reason.”

 The cease-fire resolution was referred to the council’s miscellaneous matters committee which will review the proposal in the near future and if approved, will send it on to the full council for a vote.

  If approved, Bridgeport will be the latest city to pass a cease-fire resolution on the Gaza War. The resolutions are aimed at putting pressure on local congressional delegations and the Biden administration to work towards a cease-fire and stop funding for Israel’s war machine. Detroit, Michigan, Oakland, California and Atlanta Georgia have adopted these resolutions while New Haven is considering one.