‘They’re Being Played’: Far-Left City Governments Pass Wave of Anti-Israel Cease-Fire Resolutions in Propaganda Win for Hamas

Near the end of the Minneapolis City Council’s first meeting of the year, Councilwoman Linea Palmisano had a radical idea: In the name of “peace, decency, and love,” the board could encourage unity among its residents with a brief statement in support of “humanity.”

The idea was to recognize and to help heal divisions among city residents on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And then, she suggested, the council should get back to “focusing on matters we have the authority to address as a city.”

And for that, she was resoundingly booed by the raucous gathering of pro-Palestinian activists who had packed the room urging the council to support a cease-fire in Gaza. Among other things, the proposed resolution, which far-left backers have claimed would be the most progressive in the country, accuses Israel of “engaging in collective punishment of Palestinian civilians” and calls for the U.S. to end all military funding to its Middle East ally.

During Palmisano’s brief comments, the activists spoke over her and held cellphones in her face with graphic images. They chastised her for having “privilege” and shamed her for saying that Israel was engaged in a war — in their mind, Israel is engaged in nothing less than genocide.

With nothing but a folding table between her and an “angry mob,” Palmisano said she contemplated an exit strategy if things went sideways. She ended up receiving a police escort out of the building, she told National Review when reached on her cellphone.

Palmisano, a Democrat, called the proposed resolution, and others like it that have been promoted and passed in Democratic-led cities across the country, “divisive.” Pushing the measures, she said, is hurtful to many and is “inviting in chaos.”

“It’s going to seek to apportion blame,” Palmisano said of the proposed Minneapolis resolution. “It’s going to raise antisemitism in our city. It’s going to raise Islamophobia in our city. It’s going to raise really sore, visceral, hard emotions about this.”

To the dismay of the activists, the council during its January 8 meeting — which was only an organizational meeting to approve calendars and committee assignments — agreed to punt the resolution to a committee. The council is expected to vote on a final version on Thursday.

If the Minneapolis council does approve its cease-fire resolution, which appears likely, it will join dozens of other cities that have already passed resolutions of their own, including Atlanta; Detroit; San Francisco; Oakland; St. Louis; Seattle; Madison, Wis.; and Akron, Ohio.

And it’s not just city councils getting in on cease-fire action. While the city council in Berkeley, Calif., rejected a resolution in December, the far-left city’s rent-stabilization board passed one. The school board in Ann Arbor, Mich., just passed one, too, according to the New York Times.

In November, the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers union got into hot water when it voted to support a cease-fire resolution that accused Israel of engaging in “occupation and apartheid,” and endorsed a boycott of the country as “a peaceful and powerful way to affect lasting, positive change.” The union backtracked and apologized when some parents expressed outrage.

Critics of the cease-fire resolutions say that at best they’re meaningless efforts at virtue-signaling by municipal leaders who typically have little or no foreign-policy expertise.

“This is the city council for the city of Minneapolis in the state of Minnesota, which I’m fairly sure most people in Israel or Gaza have never heard of, unless you explained, ‘Oh, that’s where Prince is from,’” said Ethan Roberts, deputy director of the Jewish Community Relations Council Minnesota & the Dakotas, an opponent of the Minneapolis proposal.

But the effort in Minneapolis has already taken up too much of the council’s time and pushed other priorities to the backburner, Palmisano said. Without clear committee assignments, the city’s staff members haven’t been fully able to engage with actual priorities, she said.

“It does have a real-world staff impact,” she said.

At worst, critics say, the resolutions unnecessarily enflame community divisions, and they embolden Hamas terrorists who have vowed to continue to murder Jews and to attack Israel. Last month, Ghazi Hamad, a senior Hamas leader, said the terrorist group welcomes cease-fire resolutions passed by western governments, and considers them a step “in the right direction toward isolation of the fascist Israeli government globally.”

“These people, I think, they’re being played,” Roberts said of some city leaders.

The resolutions appear to be part of a broad effort by far-left, anti-Israel activists whose efforts to weaken Israel have been stymied by a national consensus that is still generally supportive of the country’s efforts to root out Hamas in the wake of the terrorist group’s slaughter of Israeli civilians on October 7. By building support in blue cities, the activists aim to put pressure on the Biden administration to change its position ahead of the 2024 presidential election.

In Minneapolis, the resolution is being championed by far-left radicals with a group called the MN Anti-War Committee. In addition to advocating for Minnesota to divest from companies that “profit from their complicity with apartheid Israel,” the “women- and queer-led” organization says it also supports the Black Lives Matter movement, supports “an end to racist police violence,” and walks “with workers on the picket lines and support the struggles for economic justice at home and abroad.”

See more

TELL MPLS CITY COUNCIL: PASS THE CEASEFIRE RESOLUTION!

The resolution could be the most progressive in the country. Council members are hearing from the zionists—they need to hear from us: End aid to Israel! Divest MN! No false equivalencies!

More info: https://t.co/HueDbxCyTv pic.twitter.com/NINC0KdsrP

— MN Anti-War Committee (@AntiwarMN) January 18, 2024

The cease-fire resolutions are often pushed by far-left city leaders. In San Francisco, for example, its cease-fire resolution was initially introduced by city supervisor Dean Preston, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. Seattle’s resolution was introduced by Kshama Sawant, a socialist councilmember who left office this month.

The resolutions vary in their anti-Israel intensity and willingness to excuse Hamas atrocities.

In Richmond, a Bay Area city north of San Francisco, the city council passed a resolution in October accusing Israel of war crimes and engaging in a “campaign of ethnic cleansing and collective punishment” in Gaza. Richmond was the first U.S. city to pass a cease-fire resolution.

Critics of a resolution in Detroit spoke out against it because it failed to condemn Hamas for targeting civilians on October 7 and for not backing a two-state solution.

Chicago alderman Debra Silverstein, writing in the Chicago Sun-Times, criticized a cease-fire resolution unanimously passed by the city’s far-left Committee on Health and Human Relations for failing to demand the release of Israeli hostages or to condemn Hamas’s attack.

“The innocent Palestinian civilians in Gaza deserve to live in peace,” she wrote, adding that they deserve food, fuel medicine, safety, and self-determination.

“But they will never achieve any of that while Hamas steals their humanitarian aid, embeds its terrorist tunnels and weapons in schools, hospitals, mosques and churches, and purposely uses the civilian population as human shields,” she wrote.

San Francisco supervisor Matt Dorsey refused to back a resolution that he didn’t believe came close to capturing the gravity of what Hamas did on October 7 and of Israel’s response.

Dorsey proposed an amended version that noted that the October 7 attack was “the deadliest, most horrific attack on Jewish people since the Holocaust,” and that quoted a New York Times investigation that found that Hamas terrorists engaged in “a pattern of rape, mutilation and extreme brutality against women.” His version also supported a two-state solution, called for Hamas to surrender, and noted concerns by President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken about Israel’s management of the war effort.

He, too, was booed in council chambers.

Dorsey told National Review that some opponents of his amendments accused him of lying about Hamas’s atrocities and refusing to “condemn a genocide,” and they falsely claimed that the Times had retracted its investigation. Their claims mirrored those made by some anti-Israel protesters in Oakland who defended Hamas during a cease-fire-resolution debate and spouted conspiracy theories, falsely claiming that Israel murdered its own people on October 7.

“This orchestrated campaign of denialism is to me unworthy of the city of Saint Francis and unworthy of the Board of Supervisors,” Dorsey said. “What bothers me about the language that was ultimately adopted is that I think the optics are that the Board of Supervisors was cowed into silence about one of the most horrific terrorist acts against Jewish people for being Jewish people since Adolf Hitler walked the Earth.”

“To me,” he said, “this was not a hard decision. No resolution is better than a divisive resolution. And I think the resolution that passed is profoundly divisive.”

San Francisco mayor London Breed has condemned the resolution, saying it doesn’t represent the city — which has a sister-city relationship with Haifa, Israel’s third-largest city — and the process to adopt it “inflamed division and hurt,” the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

Breed refused to sign the resolution, but she did not veto it.

When asked why he thought the city of San Francisco should weigh in on a foreign-policy issue at all, Dorsey joked that it’s crazy to “suggest that the world isn’t waiting on guidance from the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.” He noted that San Francisco is a diverse city, that the board regularly makes symbolic resolutions, often on mundane subjects, and that many people in the city have been personally impacted by the war. He doesn’t want to dishonor them.

“As a legislative body, we have to walk and chew gum at the same time,” he said.

During the January 8 meeting in Minneapolis, activists flooded the room, some holding antisemitic signs saying that Israel is “thirsty” for blood, and “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” They chanted “cease-fire now,” like it was a political rally.

Far-left councilwoman Robin Wonsley egged on the crowd, thanked her “comrades” for their support, and commended them, and herself, for having “the courage it takes to stand up for Palestinian human rights” and for being “morally correct.”

Wonsley didn’t support the resolution at the time because it didn’t condemn “genocide” in Gaza.

“Not calling this genocide, not recognizing the ethnic cleansing sanitizes the horror that is being experienced by Palestinians, and it erases their humanity,” she said to cheers.

Wonsley didn’t respond to emails and phone calls from National Review seeking comment.

A spokesman for Councilwoman Aisha Chughtai, the primary author of the resolution, said in an email that “her schedule doesn’t allow her to accommodate” a request for an interview.

When reached on her cellphone, Councilwoman Aurin Chowdhury, a coauthor of the resolution, declined to discuss it. “For on-the-record conversation, I don’t have preparation or time for that,” she said. She said she would prefer to collect her thoughts and give “thoughtful” answers later “if I’m interested.” She didn’t respond to requests to discuss it later.

Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey, who is Jewish, said no one consulted him about the resolution.

In an op-ed in the Star Tribune, Councilwoman LaTrisha Vetaw, one of the few councilmembers speaking against the cease-fire effort, accused her colleagues of “spending their time on revolutionary cosplay and performative stunts.” She said they “seem blind to the violence happening right here in our own city.”

The conflict in Gaza is “profoundly complicated,” she wrote, adding that “we should stay in our lane, and this is not even close to our lane.”

She wrote that the pro-Palestinian activists “threatened Jewish audience members” and made city staff feel “unsafe.” Palmisano agreed.

While councilmembers can leave the meeting if they feel threatened, city staff cannot.

“They absolutely do not feel safe,” she said. “They absolutely are compelled to be there, and we’re making them work under these conditions of duress, and it’s not fair.”

Palmisano said she’s heard from “hundreds of constituents” — “They’re not all Jewish. Most of them aren’t” — and they’re about ten-to-one opposed to the resolution.

She said the council could have done something positive to bring people together, maybe an interfaith conversation with respected religious and community leaders.

“I’m not trying to ignore what is going on or saying it doesn’t affect people’s daily lives here,” Palmisano said. “It certainly does. I see how personal this is.”

Instead, she said, the resolution has created division and “absolutely has taken up almost all of the oxygen in the room this past couple of weeks.”

Roberts, the Jewish Council leader, said activists would be “furious” if the council proposed a more general cease-fire resolution that “doesn’t bash Israel.”

Already, the inflammatory nature of the resolution has had a chilling effect on councilmembers, Roberts said, and it’s led to concerns among some Jewish residents about speaking out. He worries that by passing the resolution, glossing over Hamas’s atrocities, and by engaging in inflammatory rhetoric that dehumanizes Israelis and Jews, councilmembers “normalize hate.”

He said members of his organization are having conversations with city leaders, who often are not well-versed in the history and the complexity of the conflict.

“The problem isn’t that they don’t know these things,” Roberts said. “The problem is knowing that they don’t know these things, they’re still persisting on wading into one of the most complicated conflicts of our time.”