My response to the resolution on Antisemitism and Pro-Palestinian Activism

These are the remarks I delivered at the regular meeting on April 8th, 2024 in response to Councilor Scarpelli’s “Resolution Encouraging Peace, Unity, and Constructive Dialogue on the Israel-Palestine Conflict and Condemning Antisemitism.”

I remember that the very first resolution I ever sponsored, after becoming Medford’s first Jewish City Councilor, was about condemning antisemitism, because it was in the wake of an unintentional but still real and painful antisemitic event that occurred in Medford in December of 2021.

I know the Councilor’s intention was just to make Jewish residents, or at least certain Jewish residents, feel supported.

But this resolution makes omissions that imply that supporting Jews is contingent on ignoring, erasing, and minimizing the genocide in Palestine. As a Jew, I find that offensive, unhelpful, and unacceptable.

This City Council has already passed a resolution about Israel and Palestine in March of 2024. Frankly, on that one, I think we got it right. Jewish, Arab, and Muslim residents and allies came together and we collaboratively crafted a statement that did not receive universal support, but earned hours of impassioned support from community members, many of whom had never been inside these Council Chambers before. In that statement, we condemned the murder of Israelis by terrorists on October 7th and the taking of hostages. We did not fail to condemn the murder of Palestinians by the IDF for every single month since then, the taking of political prisoners, terrorism in the West Bank by Israeli settler extremists, and Israel war crimes.

To name one but not the other, however unintentionally, sends a strong message. And that message is, some pain is more real and more important than other pain.

To specifically mourn the 1,200 Israelis murdered by Hamas on October 7, 2023, but with no acknowledgement of the over 62,000 Palestinians murdered since then in Gaza by the IDF – which, according to the Lancet Medical Journal, could be under-counted by up to 40% – and does not even include the over 100,000 people who have died of starvation and disease in Gaza, and does not include Palestinians murdered by extremist Israeli settler terrorism in the West Bank – that is participating in the dehumanization that allows this genocide to continue unchecked.

And to affirm Israel’s right to exist while failing to mention Palestine’s right to exist is offensive to Palestinians in our community and perpetuates a false, unhelpful, right-wing ideology. It is incredibly radical to suggest, as this resolution does, that the Palestinians “lack a permanent homeland.” The City of Medford cannot be in the business of normalizing this objectively fringe and right-wing opinion.

If the Council is going to be bold enough to weigh in on Israel and Palestine, we should be bold enough to call things what they are. What’s happening in Palestine is not “hardship.” It’s not “difficulty.” It’s not “complexity.” It is war crimes. It is genocide. It is apartheid.

Supporting Jews is not contingent on erasing the genocide of Palestinians. Supporting Jews is not contingent on erasing the solidarity, pain and outrage that so many Jews share with Palestinian victims of genocide.

Personally, I will never support any language that clearly does not dare to weight all human life as equal, knowing that as a Jew, I am supposed to read this with gratitude.

Further, I find it really irresponsible to force antisemitism and Israel and Palestine together into one topic. The implication is that it’s antisemitic to criticize Israel. That is false. That is a false premise that we must not entertain.  

Right now, we are in a moment where many people, including many people in our community, including many Jews like me in our community, are actively exercising their free speech to criticize Israeli genocide, Israeli war crimes, Israeli terrorism.

And in response, across America, conservative movements are weaponizing the language of Jewish safety and weaponizing accusations of antisemitism, in a coordinated effort to delegitimize criticism of Israel.

They see clearly, that a good way to shut people up, is by suggesting that they are being antisemitic.

That is why we cannot afford to entertain this false premise – anywhere. Even here at Medford City Hall, we cannot entertain this. It is dangerous. It is corrosive. It stifles free speech and it silences Jews. 

Again, I want to be clear. I appreciate any opportunity to reaffirm our commitment to ending antisemitism. Antisemitism is real and deadly, which is why we should not allow it to be twisted into a tool for stifling pro-Palestinian activism. 

It does not make Jews safer when we cheapen a real phenomenon with irrelevant and politicized conflations.

It does not help Jews when we reaffirm right-wing messaging that ignores or legitimizes the genocide and the war crimes that occur every day with our tax dollars. When we legitimize false claims about the dangers of peace activism.

It really makes me wonder: How weak does a person have to think Jews are, that our safety is contingent not only on the eradication of Palestinians, but on that genocide also going unmentioned and unprotested?

At best, this premise treats Jews like children. At worst, it allows us to be used like pawns.

If we want to pass a different resolution that aligns with that language that we passed last year, that would be fine with me. But this isn’t it.

This language takes more issue with certain forms of protest, than it does with a historic genocide that is directly affecting members of our community who have family in or are displaced from Palestine.

And I have no idea why we would entertain the notion that the City of Medford should weigh in on how its residents should or should not exercise their constitutional right to protest. We’re Councilors, not parents. It is not our job to tell people how to use their free speech! It is condescending, and we should not pretend that it is anything other than irrelevant to the goal of supporting and protecting Jews.

I know there are people who will agree with what I’ve said tonight and those who won’t. That’s fine. There is, obviously, a difference of opinion on this, within and outside the Jewish community. Anyone who pretends otherwise is lying.

But that doesn’t make it okay for this Council to normalize, however unintentionally, right-wing messaging that uses Jewish identities as an excuse for stifling free speech and protest. It doesn’t make it okay for this Council to conspicuously fail to stand equally strongly against anti-Palestinian hate and anti-Palestinian rhetoric, as we continue to condemn the poison of antisemitism.

And it certainly isn’t for anyone outside of the Jewish community to tell any Jews how we should feel about it.