Cambridge City Council and “Israel’s current genocide in Gaza”

by philg

Harvard students were urged via mailing lists to vote (today) for three candidates with a link to a letter that they wrote:

We are heartbroken by the ongoing conflict in Palestine and Israel. We send our deepest condolences to everyone affected by this tragic situation.

We condemn all forms of violence unequivocally. That includes the recent attacks from Hamas and Israel, and the ongoing Israeli occupation and apartheid of Palestinians for the past 75 years. What we are witnessing in Gaza is an evolving humanitarian atrocity, and we remind all that collective punishment is a war crime. We do not support U.S. funding of Israel’s current genocide in Gaza.

We must come together as a community in Cambridge to protect and hold each other as the situation continues to escalate. We denounce all doxxing, intimidation, hate speech and silencing of individuals in our city. We specifically call on Harvard University to protect its students from racist attacks and threats.

We urge everyone in our community to spread love, not hate, to treat each other with empathy and support, to acknowledge all the suffering that is happening overseas and locally and to lean on our shared humanity and desire for peace. We must all do what we can to alter the course of history toward peace, justice and freedom for Palestine.

Quinton Zondervan, Ayah Al-Zubi, Vernon K. Walker and Dan Totten

(Hamas did some bad stuff on one day; Israel has been doing bad stuff for 75 years.)

As I noted in Why won’t the people who say that Israel is committing genocide go to Gaza and fight?, it remains a mystery to me why people who have identified an ongoing “genocide” advocate doing almost nothing about it. Do these progressives propose sending in the lavishly funded U.S. military to stop the genocide? Do they say that they’re going to leave their comfortable Cambridge homes ($1,000/square foot or, if one refrains from working and gets through the waiting list, $0/sf in public housing) and go to Gaza to help the Islamic Resistance Movement (“Hamas”) and Palestinian Islamic Jihad stop the genocide? Do they demand war crime trials at the Hague for Israelis? Do they demand the expulsion of Israelis, the perpetrators of this genocide, from the U.S.? No, no, no, and no. The Righteous of Cambridge (TM) suggest a slight reduction in Israel’s financial resources.

Let’s meet the candidates for election…

Mr. Zondervan is an incumbent who isn’t running for reelection, but is hoping to pass the torch to these three new candidates. Quinton is an MIT graduate (he and his now-wife were on our floor in the old CS lab) and immigrant from Suriname:

Ayah Al-Zubi is a Harvard graduate in sociology and psychology who immigrated from Jordan:

Vernon Walker works on “the inseparable connection between climate justice and racial justice”:

Dan Totten is “a queer renter from Central Square and a democratic socialist”:

They’re all apparently content to be idle bystanders to an ongoing genocide so long as they think they aren’t directly funding it. Let’s see how these milquetoasts do in today’s election, which might be decided by people who can’t read English. Here are the language options from the city :

Update: The people have spoken (in at least 8 languages). None of the above candidates were successful (which means they’re all free to go to Gaza and help Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad stop occupation, apartheid, and genocide). All of the incumbents were reelected, including Mayor Sumbul Siddiqui (“the first Muslim mayor in Massachusetts”). Two insiders were elected, one a former councilor and one a school committee member. One outsider won, a bike lane advocate (of course, Cambridge does it in a mostly unsafe manner compared to Denmark).

12 thoughts on “Cambridge City Council and “Israel’s current genocide in Gaza””

  1. Mr. Zondervan is passionate about “protecting our natural environment” in a city whose only natural feature is a golf course, and a main priority as a City Councilor of a city with a hundred thousand people as to tackle (global) climate change.

    Ms. Al-Zubi identifies as many things, but not as an American.

    Mr. Walker desires to rule a city that he’s lived in for three whole years.

    Mr. Totten should probably move to a democratic socialist place like Venezuela or North Korea.

    Can we please get some normal people to run?

  2. I made someone mad because I told them I hoped the IDF delivers such a beating to Hamas that the Gaza Strippers stop acting like 1938 Germans and start acting like 1948 Germans.
    Obviously, I don’t want a lot of kids getting killed, hopefully both sides will work on that.

  3. Wonder how much debt she took on for her Harvard education that she wouldn’t have taken on in Jordan. Mortgage debt incoming. Someone needs to keep the machine fed.

  4. At least Romans renamed south historic east part of Israel and Judea to Palestine after Bar Kokhba rebellion almost 19 centuries ago even though there has been no independent state on that territory until 1848 nor significant population occupancy until late 19th century, even though all succeeding occupying empires (except anti-western Caliphate) called officially the area Palestine inheriting the toponym from Roman empire.
    State of Jordan is 77 years old, nobody called the area, once containing Israelite tribes, Moab, Edom and later , under Hasmonean kings who converted Edom to Judaism, western Judea, Jordan?
    Why Aya Al-Zubi is not fighting against 77 years of Jordanian occupation? I am sure she would like it but state of Jordan would not be kind to her.

  8. Philip the answer is right there in the letter: “We condemn all forms of violence unequivocally”

    An Allied private shooting a German soldier to liberate a concentration camp – this they would condemn.

    To quote that most famous lion of Zionist righteousness (Walter Sobchak from the Big Lebowski) – “I myself dabbled in pacifism. Not in ‘Nam, of course.”

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