From: J
To: City Council
Subject: Resolution for Ceasefire
Date: Thursday, March 28, 2024 7:09:26 AM
Dear Sebastopol City Council,
I am requesting that at your upcoming meeting you please include on the agenda and approve the Ceasefire Resolution that you did not have time for at your past meeting.
On the same night of your past meeting, on March 19th, the City of Sacramento passed a Resolution calling for a ceasefire in a 6-1 vote a few minutes before midnight. Yesterday, the Santa Rosa City Schools Board of Education approved a Resolution Supporting a Ceasefire in Gaza. Last Thursday, the Hawaii Senate voted 24-1 to approve a Resolution in support of an immediate and
permanent ceasefire in Gaza. Also last Thursday, Governor Newsom joined those calling for a ceasefire and issued an open letter that included this statement:
None of us should be able to witness the deaths of thousands upon thousands of civilians in Gaza without our hearts
breaking. The scale of suffering in Gaza is so vast that it seems few Palestinians across the world have been spared personal loss. Here in California, one leader in the Palestinian American community told me of his work counseling
community members who have lost family members—but
now, after losing 23 of his family members, he is left
searching for his own counselor. Others have shared similar devastation with me. I have spoken publicly about a close friend of mine who has lost nine of her family members. I’ve listened to stories of entire families in Gaza killed and multiple generations wiped out. These losses are staggering. And now burgeoning disease and starvation threaten to deepen the devastation, especially among children. This is unacceptable.
With each ongoing day there have been devastating tragedies.
The Guardian newspaper reports the following from the past 48 hours:
The southern Gaza Strip came under intense Israeli
bombardment overnight in the Palestinian territory where famine is looming. According to AFP, a fireball lit up the night sky in the southern city of Rafah, while the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said early on Wednesday that 66 people had been killed overnight.
The sound of explosions was also heard and smoke was seen rising in Gaza City in the north, reported AFP, where Israeli troops have been attacking the city’s largest hospital for more than a week.
11 Palestinian civilians were killed and others were injured in an Israeli airstrike targeting a house of the Dhair family in the city of Rafah on Wednesday, reported the Palestinian news agency Wafa. It also said that an Israeli fighter jet targeted another house in the same city, resulting in several injuries to its residents.
Wafa also reported that two people were critically injured when Israeli tanks stationed near the Kuwait roundabout area in Gaza City, north of the Strip, “opened a barrage of gunfire towards a group of civilians while they were waiting for humanitarian aid” on Wednesday.
A spokesperson for the UN child welfare agency warned on Tuesday that the mental suffering of Gaza’s children is so deep that some hope to die quickly to escape the “nightmare” said Unicef spokesperson James Elder, who is in the territory.
He told AFP that several teenagers said they were “so
desperate for this nightmare to end that they hoped to be killed”.
Israeli forces surrounded two hospitals in Khan Younis, where the health ministry said 12 people, including some children, were killed in an Israeli strike on a camp for the displaced.
The Palestinian Red Crescent warned that thousands were trapped in the Nasser hospital in Khan Younis and said “their lives are in danger”.
An Israeli airstrike after midnight on Tuesday hit an office of the Islamic Emergency and Relief Corps killing seven
volunteers, according to the Lebanese Ambulance
Association.
Al-Amal hospital in Khan Younis was “taken out of service”, said the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) in a statement on Tuesday. It said that the hospital “stopped working
completely after the occupation forces forced the hospital’s crews and the wounded to evacuate it and closed its
entrances with dirt barriers”.
People are tremendously suffering in this crisis in Gaza.
UN Secretary General António Guterres has said "Palestinians in Gaza are enduring horrifying levels of hunger and suffering." He stated "this is the highest number of people facing catastrophic hunger ever recorded by the Integrated Food Security
Classification system – anywhere, anytime.” He added “this is an entirely man-made disaster, and the report makes clear that it can be halted,” expressing the need for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire.
Please take action to adopt the Resolution for a Ceasefire.
Thank you for your consideration,
June Brashares
Sebastopol, 95472