Retrospective on Ceasefire, Part One
Friends,
On Monday, November 4th, the special resolution I authored condemning antisemitism, calling for a release of all hostages, Israeli and Palestinian, and supporting a ceasefire and weapons embargo in the war in Gaza, was removed procedurally from the Council agenda without coming to a vote.
This action from the Council was both deeply shameful in the face of current events, and a dark and worrying portent of the way constituents can expect their representatives to speak with them in the future.
I am not seeking to revive my ceasefire proposal - at supermajority levels, the Council has spoken loudly and clearly that they will not listen and will not accept this proposal, and as one person out of 25, I am unable to meaningfully move the resolution forward. I will continue to use my personal voice and power to call for an end to genocide. And in the meantime, I wanted to share with my readers both the reason for the resolution and the concerning way my peers on the Council responded to constituents.
I’ve taken the time since last Monday’s Council action to start composing my thoughts, and have decided to share my perspective in a two-part series.
Today, I share with you Part One, wherein I defend the concept of this special resolution and the action of bringing it for a vote at the Council.
Soon, I will share Part Two, which will detail the frankly antidemocratic tactics that the Council has engaged in when constituents sought to be heard on this issue.
Fo those of you not interested in this issue: please read this email and the next one regardless. Not because they are important to me, but because more of your neighbors reached out to the Indianapolis City County Council about this issue than any other all year. We must understand each other's deeply-held beliefs in order to protect democracy and ensure all voices are represented in government.
In love and solidarity,
Jesse
Part one: The Shame of Indianapolis
It is unspeakably shameful that the Indianapolis City Council refused to call for a ceasefire and weapons embargo - as 177 cities around the United States have already done.
In the last year, the Israeli government has killed tens of thousands of women and children in Gaza, in the West Bank, and in Lebanon. The UN special committee on Israel has said that Israel is running an apartheid system, is using starvation as a weapon of war, and is using military tactics consistent with a genocide. The International Court of Justice, in reviewing South Africa’s case for genocide, indicated in March that to avoid a genocide, Israel must halt an offensive in Rafah and provide emergency food aid - Israel simply refused.
Israel’s armed forces have killed at least 137 journalists in Gaza in the last year. That makes Gaza in the last year the most deadly time and place for journalists on Earth going back to 1992, when records were first kept. At least some of these journalists appear to have been deliberately targeted for extrajudicial killings. International aid workers and doctors have been targeted and killed in Gaza over and over again.
Israel’s armed forces have killed all of these people using bombs, drones, missiles, tank ammo, and artillery shells - including billions of dollars of weapons provided by the United States government. The United States accounts for over 65% of Israel’s weapons imports. The United States has a unique role in Israeli policy and foreign affairs: the US provides more aid to Israel than to any other country on earth, and has blocked over 50 UN resolutions calling for accountability from Israel.
Existing laws prevent the sale of weapons to regimes committing human rights abuses, yet the sales go on.
Massive protests in the United States have called for an end to weapons sales and calling for a ceasefire, yet the protestors have been jailed and silenced.
Strong majorities of Americans indicate they want a weapons embargo, yet the weapons continue to be shipped.
Four Americans, including a journalist and a member of the armed forces, self-immolated to express the sheer depth of their pleas, yet public discussion is still suppressed.
The current far-right government of the state of Israel is deeply unpopular among Israelis. Yet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refuses to change course. In the last few weeks, he fired his defense minister for making statements that the military had achieved its objectives and the government should seek a non-military peace arrangement. Netanyahu openly wanted Trump to win the American election, and used the war to show Democrats as weak and ineffectual.
The US federal government, led by Joe Biden, has refused to weigh in on the side of peace. This shows that Biden has less backbone and moral compass on this issue than President Ronald Reagan, who used US power and pressure to prevent Israeli aggression in previous decades.
The Indianapolis City County Council has proudly voted for special resolutions on foreign affairs and special resolutions in solidarity with protestors in the past.
In March of 2022, the Council passed a resolution condemning Russia for its invasion of Ukraine and “urging steadfast support for the Ukrainian people”.
In June of 2020, the Council voted to declare racism a public health crisis.
In June of 2023, the Council voted to issue a statement of support for transgender youth and to declare “Transgender Youth and Family Safety Day.”
Each of these proposals is at least as publicly contentious as calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. And unlike any of these proposals, constituents publicly gathered hundreds of signatures for a petition and came out in person to support the ceasefire proposal for months. Yet not a single Councilor cosponsored my very mild ceasefire resolution, and after months of advocacy, 23 Councilors voted to kill the proposal without even taking a vote.
When our children and grandchildren ask what we did to stop the genocide of Palestinians, the people of Indianapolis will need to look into the children’s eyes and tell them we chose to remain silent. We chose to use armed guards to prevent our neighbors from speaking out. We chose to serve the interests of the powerful and to keep the American bombs shipping overseas to be dropped on children.
And we will deserve that deep shame.