Shame on the Asheville City Council for refusing to even consider a cease-fire resolution for Gaza. In the midst of a genocide, it could not muster the moral courage to simply issue a call for peace.
It wasn’t like it was being asked for the full measure of justice for Palestinians: an end to the siege; an end to the brutal apartheid and occupation; the right to return home; equal human rights.
No, the Council was just being asked to take a stance, largely symbolic, for an end to the killing.
Here is what it was being asked to state as a resolution: “That the City of Asheville declares its support for an immediate and durable cease-fire, the immediate delivery of ample and lifesaving humanitarian aid to Palestinian civilians, for freeing of all hostages and for an end to antisemitic, anti-Palestinian, Islamophobic and all xenophobic rhetoric and attacks across our country.”
Council members weren’t being asked to take a side. They were just being asked to express some humanity on behalf of our community.
But this they could not do.
What an abdication of civic leadership. Pathetic.
— Ken Jones
Swannanoa
Speaking of pathetic
you and yours are absolutely ridiculous… in every sense of the word. You just are completely unable to accept that the Israeli/ Palestinian/ Gaza conflict is way beyond the purview of the city council. Is it any wonder absolutely everyone tunes you out the moment your little tribe starts up [again] with your usual antics. Or maybe we should just call it what it is… your inevitable and oh so predictable tantrums dressed up as “reasonable” statements of support are demands plain and simple. Honestly, you give peace a bad name…. who ever thought that would be even remotely possible? sigh.
Clearly, this kind of “activism” is intended to provide more of an ego trip for its proponents, and to make them feel good and superior, rather than produce any meaningful political result.
Moreover, the disingenuous and politically dishonest framing of this initiative as the city, “just being asked to express some humanity on behalf of our community,” strikes me as similar to those red-baiters from the 50s, who would ask fellow citizens to take loyalty oaths, because after all, people were, “just being asked to express some support for the nation.”
Such initiatives, presented in this self-righteous manner, are always about much more than than their proponents will acknowledge. Throwing the word “anti-semitism” into its text, almost as an afterthought, fools no one.
Hamas has a long history of breaking cease-fires. Why do these activists think this time will be any different?
The incessant letter writer should focus on his home town and not mine, where he neither lives nor pays taxes.
Cease fire when Hamas and their Palestinian accomplices and supporters cease to exist in our civilized society.