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After Hamas Executes Berkeley Native, City’s Peace and Justice Commission to Debate Cease-Fire Resolution
Hersh Goldberg-Polin was executed by Hamas terrorists who kidnapped him almost one year ago from the Nova music festival in southern Israel.
Weeks after Berkeley, Calif., native Hersh Goldberg-Polin’s body was recovered from Gaza, the progressive city’s Peace and Justice commission will debate and vote on a resolution calling for an “immediate and permanent” cease-fire in Gaza and “support for Palestinian self-determination.”
The September 30 vote was initially scheduled for Tuesday, just one day after Israeli-American Hersh Goldberg-Polin, 23, was buried, but was pushed back due to a “noticing error.” The Israeli military found Goldberg-Polin’s body during a rescue operation late last week, and determined that the Berkeley native was executed by Hamas terrorists who kidnapped him almost one year ago from the Nova music festival in southern Israel. Hundreds of people gathered at Berkeley’s Congregation Beth Israel, the Goldberg-Polin family’s former synagogue, this past weekend to mourn the slain hostage.
Berkeley’s progressive anti-Israel contingent hasn’t taken a break from its activism in the wake of Hersh’s murder.
The city’s Peace and Justice commission — which is appointed by city council members and advises the council and school board on “issues of peace and social justice” — wrote in a resolution that it is “our moral obligation, as a city, is to speak out against the industry of militarism that precipitates thousands of deaths of innocents while eroding our ability to educate, house, and uplift our local communities.”
“Thank you to our community for taking action and our allies in City Hall for centering the indecency of a vote days after hostages were murdered,” the Jewish Community Relations Council Bay Area said on social media. “This was an extreme resolution that included false and misleading descriptions of the situation on the ground and neither mentioned nor condemned Hamas and the atrocities of October 7.”
The measure up for debate resolves “that it is not too late to halt and reverse the cycle of war, destruction, and dispossession that have plagued Palestine for more than a century. The Council recalls its statement in founding the Peace and Justice Commission in 1986 that ‘it is the responsibility of one and all to labor hard for peace and justice in forums of appropriate scale.'”
The meeting will first open with a land acknowledgement before commissioners read the proposal, which mentions the “thousands of people killed before, on, and after October 7, 2023, including almost 45,000 people killed by military action — 2% of the total population — and as many as 186,0007 [sic] additionally killed due to famine and disease in Gaza, and 1,200 in Israel, the majority of all these being civilians.”
The document goes on to lament the destruction of universities, health, and education facilities in Gaza, many of which are usually targeted by the Israeli military because they are Hamas outposts. The resolution also fails to blame Hamas for inciting violence on October 7, when terrorists stormed into Israel, killing, raping, and kidnapping civilians from their homes, a music festival, and military bases.
The resolution also does not name Hersh. It does, however, say that the destruction of cities like Rafah — where Hersh’s body was found — “wounds cities like ours as well, both morally and financially.”
“The Council states that as U.S. citizens and residents, the most effective way we can contribute to peace with justice in Israel and Palestine is to press our own government to end the sale of weapons and tools that enable devastation. As with a raging wildfire, the withdrawal of such fuel can only promote the reduction of violence, and in so doing create the conditions for peace with justice,” the resolution states.
One anti-Israel Berkeley-based group posted an appeal on social media asking the community to “allow the Peace and Justice Commission to do their job unencumbered,” after, they claimed, that “zionists mobilized to get the resolution killed.”
“This is shameful!” Yalla Berkeley posted on Instagram. “Eleven months of genocide and these corrupt officials are trying to kill a resolution affirming human rights!”