AN OPEN LETTER TO THE MAYOR AND COUNCIL REGARDING THE CEASEFIRE RESOLUTION SCHEDULED FOR APRIL 9, 2024
There has been much clamor regarding the proposed resolution before the Mayor and Council in calling for a permanent ceasefire in the U.S./Israeli bombardment of Gaza. Tucson’s citizens, both for the resolution and against, have written numerous letters to the editor and spoken out in recent city “calls to the audience,” with the item supposedly set for the council meeting on Tuesday, April 9th. Those who oppose the ceasefire resolution have raised some objections that should be addressed.
Ceasefire opponents assert that our local city council should not be involving itself in world issues but stick to only local ones. But there is no unusual precedent being set here: past councils have adopted resolutions in support of South African human rights and against apartheid, adopting the Sullivan Principles. A few years later the City of Tucson endorsed the MacBride Principles in opposing investments in companies guilty of discrimination against Irish Catholics in the north of Ireland (a Celtic BDS movement!). It is impossible to think that any council-member who voted in favor of these past resolutions ever came to regret their decision considering the incredible positive changes that have transpired in both of these countries since then. Interestingly, both Ireland and South Africa have played leading roles in opposition to Israeli policies in Palestine. No doubt someday, people in the near future will look back at how we reacted today and wonder: how can anyone have opposed a ceasefire to the slaughter in Gaza?
As Aaron Bushnell, the U.S. serviceman who, in protest to U.S./Israeli policies, self-immolated in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington D.C., stated before sacrificing his life in opposition to genocide:
“Many of us like to ask ourselves: ‘What would I do if I was alive during slavery? Or the Jim Crow South? Or apartheid? What would I do if my country was committing genocide?’ The answer is, you’re doing it.Right now.”
One only has to look at the narrowly averted closure here of Las Alitas refugee center due to lack of federal funds to see how terrible international decisions can directly affect us locally. The Pima County Administrator cautioned that without the last minute Federal reprieve — that is still, hopefully, coming — our citizens should expect to experience “homelessness on steroids,” — as if our current homeless problem is not bad enough!Yet we continue to spend billions of our U.S. tax dollars in support of a criminal war against the Palestinian people.
The first priorities of the U.S. government always seem to be for more weapons and war, while the massive needs for adequate health care, decent education, affordable housing, and crucial infrastructure improvements in our country go mostly unmet. There is clearly a non-partisan agreement by both main political parties to try and out-war-hawk each other with the expected financial support of more campaign dollars from military contractors, AIPAC, or other lobbyists.
As the insightfully humorous George Carlin once noted: “The word bipartisan usually means some larger-than-usual deception is being carried out.”
This has never been so true as today.
For war, our rulers will readily, if ironically, slide the U.S. economy into multi-generation debt to China and others as we continue to outspend everyone else many times over in funding the military-industrial mega-machine. To promote more war, we see the Democrats willing to sell out long-standing principles on a humane immigration policy to try to ensure enough votes for more arms to a losing war in Ukraine and an immoral one in Palestine. The Republicans seem even more ready to supplant our national interests for foreign ones (hoping, perhaps, to see a move of our U. S. Capitol over to Jerusalem in preparation for their galloping aspirations for Armageddon?). And woe to those who question such madness.
During the anti-draft movement in the 60s (of which I remember well) many young men were being unjustly snagged and ceremoniously dumped into the far-off jungles of Vietnam, lessons from a loss which we have obviously yet to learn. At the time there was a critical anti-war slogan: “War is good business — invest your son!” These days it should be updated to read “war is good business — gamble with your future.” This is because, as we continue to play nuclear chicken with our nuclear armed adversaries while trying to scare our citizens into governmental compliance, crucial decisions are also now being made that will have huge consequences for future generations. These ramifications get worse every day the murderous U.S./Israeli ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Palestinians continues.
Some who oppose this genocide are being called “anti-semites” or terrorist sympathizers. In spite of the trigger name-calling mechanism employed, the stark humanitarian horror that is being inflicted on millions of innocent men, women, and children of Palestine is a defining moral moment for our country and the world. The responsibility for this murderous assault on a virtually defenseless people should NOT be laid solely on the despicable (if always supported) Bibi Netanyahu: for it is U.S. taxpayer money and U.S. governmental policy that has enabled these multiple violations of international law, violations that have been ongoing in the region for many decades.
The war against the Palestinian people did not begin last October 7th, and it is not going to end with shipping out more 2,000-pound bombs to be rained on the poor of Gaza, one of the most densely populated communities in the world. The war will only come to an end when the Palestinians are given their rights, their land, and their own national state, run by people who they themselves select to represent them. Without freedom for the people the resistance to occupation and repression will continue, no matter what formal name it takes: Hamas, Hezbollah, the PLO, or the Boy Scouts. Resistance by any other name is still resistance, and it is part of our human DNA to strive for freedom: and to support those who do.
What is the alternative? Perhaps we could continue funding and fostering war and division while keeping Raytheon and Boeing and their ilk all fat and happy. If the blowback to American adventurism means deploying even more U.S. troops to Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Yemen (maybe even Israel), with more American lives lost in more endless war, are we expected to swallow that it’s all just part of the “cost of freedom”? Freedom for whom? Obviously, somebody other than the millions of Palestinians living under a long and brutal occupation. How does such support for massacre enhance our freedom? As the war continues and expands regionally and increases the likelihood of more direct U.S. involvement, we can all rest assured that the working class families who make the ultimate sacrifices for the benefit of corporate profits will get our sincere “thoughts and prayers” when their loved ones are returned in a box.
What is the justification for opposing a ceasefire after the mass killing of over 32,000 Palestinians (including over 12,000 children)? The answer we are given is that Israel has to “defend itself!” Really?
The largest military in the region needs to defend itself by bombing hospitals, universities, and even the “safe zones” that people were directed to go by the very Israeli Defense Forces that then bomb them there? We are to believe that Israeli security will somehow be secured by displacing almost two million of their neighbors through the indiscriminate carpet bombing of the Palestinian neighborhoods? This is really the only way a nuclear power can defend itself against a poor and imprisoned citizenry with no army, navy, or air force, but only a few rockets (that are easily shot down)? Really?
We are to believe that intentionally shooting starving people on line for flour is but a precautionary defensive operation? We are supposed to accept that prohibiting medical supplies (including anesthesia) for a beaten and battered people subjected to saturation bombardment is somehow protecting Israelis’ security? Does anyone really believe that by cutting off electricity at hospitals, killing babies on incubators and those dependent on medical devices, is a measured and appropriate response to Hamas? Are we to give any credence to the necessity for imposing a forced famine on a literally starving an already traumatized, displaced population? We are supposed to accept that these vicious actions are somehow protecting Israeli national interests? I mean really: who believes this nonsense?
For those of us asking such questions, we have been called anti-semitic or even holocaust deniers (I have the emails!). This is because, when one side can’t refute the obvious facts on the ground, they then revert to smearing their opponents to deflect attention from the reality. These are the same tactics that have been used for all the wars waged, where truth is always the first casualty. With the rise of social media (and its concentration of power in the control of the few) the U.S. government has been especially adept at “manufacturing consent” of the governed as needed for any acts of aggression against others.
It’s the same tired old pattern. Those who didn’t support the war of aggression against the Vietnamese people were considered unpatriotic (until they weren’t). If you questioned the rush to war in Iraq and the bogus evidence of weapons of mass destruction, they said we were being duped by Saddam Hussein who, we were again falsely told by our government and the “great” N.Y. Times, was somehow involved in the 911 attack. If you questioned why for 20 years we needed to be blasting Afghanistan back to the Stone Age for the 911 terrorist attacks NOT committed by them, you were called a conspiracist (or maybe prayed to the Koran?).
If anyone raises a concern today over the wisdom of engaging in a proxy war in Ukraine with the world’s other big nuclear power, they are labeled a “Putin puppet.” If you would rather see collaboration rather than confrontation with China, you are—a what? A Maoist? (or worse: a pacifist?).
And if we question the use of American tax dollars to promote, encourage, and financially enable the outright genocide of the Palestinian people, we are labeled despicable jew-hating anti-Semitic racists. Or it’s slanderously suggested that we support the rape of young Jewish concert goers when questioning why they were having a little Woodstock-like event held near the barbed wire gates of the world’s largest open-air prison, containing the longest incarcerated people in history. I mean, what could possibly go wrong? But to question the official US/IDF narrative, one must not only hate Jews but rock ‘n roll as well, no?
We were told by our media (and, shamefully, our President) of decapitation and babies were burned in ovens and that there was widespread systematic rape on October 7th. There has been no concrete evidence of this and even the N.Y. Times is starting to pull back on the fanciful narrative they once published. Legitimate questions by real journalists (i.e. those without a history of serving in the IDF) have been raised as to the veracity of these “reports” issued by the Israeli military. But the image has already been implanted in our minds. The Palestinians are all depicted as despicable “animals” and “vermin” as Israeli government officials have pronounced, in justification for Palestinians being treated as the subhumans. When it comes out later that these tales are outright lies or highly hyped up exaggerations, then — just like the “weapons of mass deception” in Iraq — it won’t matter. The initial outrage in response has been weaponized and the damage is done. And when the truth comes out, there will be no correction to the public record and no public apology by the U.S. to the people of Palestine — just as there has been none to the people of Iraq or Libya or Afghanistan or Vietnam, or anyone else we have so unceremoniously killed over false pretenses.
The question has rightfully been raised: does the slogan “never forget!” mean you forget about mass murder when it applies to anyone other than the Jews that were so horrifically murdered by the Nazis? Does the attempted extermination of a people, a culture, a society, become abhorrent only when it applies to self-proclaimed “chosen ones” who our leaders demand should always be exempt from any criticism? Are some semites — as Palestinians are a semitic people as well — to be judged more “equal” than others?
Charlie Chaplin, considered one of the greatest popular entertainers of his time, was run out of America in 1952 because of his “pre-mature” anti-fascist beliefs, which became unfashionable after WWII when our trusted Soviet ally suddenly became our existential threat and greatest enemy. Before exiled, Chaplin made a movie called “The Great Dictator,” which devastatingly mocked Adolf Hitler and the system that supported him. It ended with a speech warning about the rise and acceptance of totalitarianism in the “democratic” countries. As Chaplin remarked:
“One doesn’t have to be a Jew to be anti-Nazi… all one has to be is a normal decent human being.”
Likewise, one doesn’t have to be a Palestinian to oppose the attempted extermination of Palestinians. Indeed, many courageous Jewish organizations like Jewish Voices for Peace, IfNotNow, and Breaking the Silence all work for peace and justice for Palestinians. They are joined by a coalition of more than 70 interfaith and nongovernmental organizations calling for a ceasefire, including the American Baptists, the Unitarian Universalists, the Evangelical Lutherans, the Presbyterian and Episcopal Churches, the Mennonite’s, the National Council of Churches, theCatholic Maryknoll organization, the American Friends Service Committee, and the Catholic Worker Movement. They are joined by Amnesty International, Justice Democrats, the Working Families Party, Sojourners, and many others.
The Mayor and Council should vote as Charlie Chaplin would want you to — as normal decent human beings. This means you should vote against the mass slaughter of innocents, the intentional starvation of a defenseless people, the willful infanticide inflicted on the most vulnerable, the planned and continuous ethnic cleansing, the blatant and unrelenting war crimes, the massive land theft and documented violations of international law, the promotion of racial supremacism of settlers and the corresponding dehumanization of a colonized people, the calculated and purposeful destruction of a once civil society, and the forced displacement of men, women, and (especially) children.
The Mayor and Council should vote against this outright genocide of an oppressed people. Please vote in favor of the ceasefire resolution.
Sincerely,
Scott D. Egan
Barrio Hollywood
PS: Just as I was getting ready to send this, three additional horrific events have just occurred, continuing the victimization of innocents by the U.S./Israeli forces:
- The destruction of Gaza’s largest Hospital (al-Shifa) by the IDF, “ripping out the heart of the enclaves healthcare system.
- The IDF targeted murder of seven International food charity workers (including one American) while in three separate convoys for the World Central Kitchen.
3. The IDF bombing of the Iranian Embassy in Damascus, violating all international norms and further endangering the prospects for a wide-spread regional war.
from the bog 