Burlington, Vermont’s city council was scheduled to vote on a resolution endorsing the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS) this week, but the sponsor sent the measure back to committee after backlash from pro-Israel groups.
Burlington City Council member Ali Dieng had introduced the resolution in response a campaign waged by Vermonters for Justice in Palestine (VTJP), the same organization that helped pressure Ben & Jerry’s to stop selling its ice cream in illegal Israeli settlements.
The resolution was opposed by national organizations like the Israeli-American Civic Action Network and local pro-Israel political groups like Jewish Communities of Vermont (JCVT). Yoram Samets, a member of JCVT’s antisemitism task group committee, told the Jewish Insider that he believes measures like this have been in the works for years. “In Vermont, we have a Vermont peace and justice group, and this is rooted with them,” he said. “And they’re strident anti-Israel activists for years and years. This is the first time they’ve actually been able to get the city council to take on such a resolution. But they’ve been behind this type of activity for a long time.”
The resolution was also opposed by Burlington mayor Miro Weinberger and rabbis from the city’s four synagogues, who wrote a letter explaining their opposition. “Why would Burlington support such a movement?,” it reads. “Why would Burlington choose to be the only city in the country that demonizes Israel.”
Burlington City Council member Karen Paul claimed that the city’s government had received 2,000 emails arguing against the measure. These efforts were enough to get Dieng to retreat. “It needs further discussion and further input from the community,” the council member told The Forward. “There are elements of this resolution that I feel like are a little bit strong, basically.”
Dieng also said that he would like to visit Israel now.
Dieng originally brought the resolution to the city council’s racial equity committee and that’s where he will send the measure back. An activist who helped push the resolution told Mondoweiss that this became a preferable option after the city council was bombarded with pro-Israel emails, as they were looking to permanently kill the measure via vote. They said that the progressives on the council all supported the resolution, and expressed no concerns that it was antisemitic before the coordinated onslaught.
The resolution was introduced during the Jewish High Holidays prompting people, like Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt, to claim that BDS activists were purposely introducing measures during Jewish holidays to alienate Jews from the political process.
The activist connected to the resolution rejected these claims, pointing out the date of the vote was dictated by the parliamentarian rules of the committee and that many people in the local Jewish community supported the measure.
Jewish Communities of Vermont director Rabbi Tobie Weisman, who opposed the resolution, admitted that the Jewish community was not unified on the issue and said that might be the reason more Jewish leaders didn’t make statements against it. “It is a hard thing for synagogues to do because they feel that their congregants might be in support of this,” Weisman told The Forward. “It’s not 100% that we have the Jewish community, 100% behind opposing this.”
“Dieng also said that he would like to visit Israel now.”
Really. A proponent of BDS. Do you think they’d let him in? Though the Israelis don’t actually know everything about all of us, although they want us to think they do.
I remember a piece in Mondoweiss, years ago, about one of your editors at Ben Gurion airport, where the official said one word to him: his last name. Meaning: You’re Jewish, you’re in. This was shortly before I went there, with Christian Peacemaker Teams (you don’t have to be a Christian). People asked if I might be denied entry. I said if they didn’t know who he was, they wouldn’t know who the hell I am. And they didn’t.
Anti apartheid and anti-Zionism is NOT anti-semitic!!!!!! To all Vermonters: Don’t be duped! Stick to your guns!!!!!!
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We Anti-Zionists Speak for a Quarter of U.S. Jews – New Politics
New Politics, by Stanley Heller, Sept. 13/21
“We Anti-Zionists Speak for a Quarter of U.S. Jews”
EXCERPT:
“They may not call themselves anti-Zionists, but the newest poll numbers show that a quarter of U.S. Jews fundamentally oppose the Zionist project. They reject the Zionist movement’s goals for Jews to take over the land of Palestine & to make the resulting country a Jewish-supremacist state. American Jews are becoming less inward looking, less white, less religious, & thus increasingly different politically than Israeli Jews. That’s all to the good.
“In July the results of a poll were released that had been commissioned by the by the Jewish Electorate Institute, which Haaretz says is a group led by prominent Jewish Democrats. The results were shocking to anyone who has been looking at these kinds of polls over the years. A quarter of U.S. Jews agreed with the statement that Israel was an “apartheid state”. 22 percent agreed that ‘Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians’. On another question, ‘34 percent‘ agreed that ‘Israel’s treatment of Palestinians is similar to racism in the United States’. According to Haaretz, ’20 percent said they preferred establishing one state that is neither Jewish nor Palestinian’ encompassing Israel, the West Bank & Gaza. In the Jerusalem Post a furious Rabbi Pruzansky wrote, ‘A whopping 38% of American Jews felt no ‘emotional attachment’ to Israel’.
“Anti-Zionism is doing even better among younger people. Ron Kampeas in Haaretz wrote, ‘A third of younger voters agreed that Israel is committing genocide,…more than a third agreed that Israel is an apartheid state. Realize young American Jews are turning more democratic & critical of Zionist practices while the trend in Israel is the reverse, with young people moving to the fascist right, & fast.” (cont’d)
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“The Haaretz podcast discussed the matter on July 19. Interviewer Simon Spungin, spoke to Alon Pinkas , a former Israeli consul general and semi-retired Haaretz columnist Bradley Burston. They agreed the results of the poll were ‘startling’. Yet they weren’t totally surprised. Pinkas said that there was a ‘growing disconnect’ between a ‘majority’ of US Jews and Israel. Asked about whether Jewish organizations had failed, Pinkas said all the big establishment Jewish organization were ‘no longer relevant to American Jews.’ Spungin noted a recent Pew survey in which the top concern for American Jews was ‘climate change’. Pinkas said that in election exit polls with self-defined Jews when asked what issues influenced their vote ‘Israel never figures in the top 5 and seldom in the top 10.’ Burston said, Israel is seen as a ‘burden to many American Jews’ and ‘not as a source of pride anymore.'”
At some point, Mondoweiss might want to publicize the movement at Ann Arbor City Council (in Michigan) for a resolution against military aid to Israel.
Two links: https://www.change.org/p/ann-arbor-michigan-city-council-ann-arbor-city-council-resolution-against-military-aid-to-israel
and also https://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/2019/12/anti-israel-activist-and-environmentalist-running-for-ann-arbor-council.html