From:
To: City Council
Subject: Proposed ceasefire resolution
Date: Friday, February 16, 2024 1:10:27 PM
To the members of the City Council:
I am writing to urge you to take the proposed ceasefire resolution off of the consent calendar for Tuesday's meeting and move it to the regular agenda. While there are a number of communities that are impacted by the war between Hamas and Israel, the two that are most impacted would be the local Palestinian community and the local Jewish community.
The language of this resolution suggests that you have only heard from one of those two communities (or at least that you haven't heard from those who represent what is clearly the mainstream view of the Jewish community).We have seen in Oakland, San Francisco and elsewhere that resolutions written in such a fashion have led to increased antisemitism. As San Francisco Mayor London Breed put it, "Since the Board of Supervisors introduced their Gaza ceasefire resolution, and certainly since they passed it last week, our City has been angrier, more divided, and less safe. Sadly, that may have been the point. Their exercise was never about bringing people together; it was about choosing a side. And while late amendments mitigated this, the damage was already done."
While I'm sure that this is not your intent, we all know that the impact of both words and actions upon a minority community may be far different than the intent. Just as your intent in calling for a ceasefire may be solely to help civilians in the short term, but it would have the effect of leaving Hamas in power to steal international aid from civilians, to rebuild its forces and its tunnel network, and to carry out its promises to repeat the atrocities of October 7 over and over again. After all, there was a ceasefire in place on October 6.
Please move this item off the consent calendar, so that you can hear the opinions of a far wider community.
Michael Harris