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With council vote, Somerville doubles down on effort to divest from Israel
Councilor Willie Burnley Jr. said it’s “the will of our community to do all that we can to ensure that our municipal funds … are serving the values of our community.”
After a nonbinding ballot question won a decisive victory at the polls earlier this month, Somerville officials have vowed to work toward divesting the city from companies that support Israel’s actions in Palestinian territories.
The City Council on Tuesday committed to working over the next year toward passing an ordinance that would fulfill Ballot Question 3’s directive. The resolution passed by a vote of nine to two, with councilors Kristen Strezo and Emily Hardt voting no.
Councilor Willie Burnley Jr., the resolution’s sponsor, acknowledged many of his colleagues may feel “uncomfortable” discussing and voting on the matter in question.
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“It has been called ‘divisive’ by some,” Burnley said. “And yet, this question received more votes than the vast majority of us around this horseshoe. It received more of a mandate from our constituents than many of us did. It is, in my view based on the results, the will of our community to do all that we can to ensure that our municipal funds … are serving the values of our community.”
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He tapped two Somerville residents to address the council, Mo Katz-Christy and Sara Halawa.
“Liberation is a shared Jewish value,” said Katz-Christy, who grew up in Somerville’s Jewish community. “Somerville Jews from both Somerville congregations and countless minyanim and local Jewish organizations have been publicly, bravely announcing their support of divestment, along with our rabbis.”
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Halawa, a Muslim resident whose husband and children are Palestinian-American, urged councilors to vote “yes” and told them they have “the opportunity to speak against injustice and commit to act against it, too.”
But Sam Gechter, founder of Shalom Somerville and a self-identified Zionist, urged the council to shoot down the resolution and “focus on Somerville.”
Backers of the divestment movement “will not be satisfied until all of Israel — an ‘ethnostate,’ as they call it — is replaced by a new, different ethnostate. A Palestinian one,” Gechter said, adding, “We see support for a boycott as clear support for the end of a Jewish state of Israel.”
Question 3, which came amid Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza, specifically asked whether city officials should be instructed to cut business ties with companies that “engage in business that sustains Israel’s apartheid, genocide, and illegal occupation of Palestine.” The ballot question passed with 11,599 votes, or 55.7%, in the Nov. 4 race.
Councilor Wilfred N. Mbah said it’s the council’s responsibility as elected officials to honor the will of the voters. Over scattered guffaws from the crowd, Somerville resident Kate Auspitz disagreed and opined that the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, or BDS, amounts to “political theater.”
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“Divestment will not achieve anything; Question 3 will not achieve anything,” Auspitz said. “It will not bring peace to the Middle East, but it will bring bitter division to Somerville.”
Strezo likewise called the resolution “divisive” and said it “focuses on a global quandary that has nothing to do with our Somerville.”
Hardt, who is newly elected to the council, explained she’s not fully up to speed on some of the resolution’s “many facets” and voted no because she was not able to abstain.
Councilor Matthew McLaughlin left room for uncertainty. The council is voting to work on something voters passed “and do it in a practical and legally feasible way,” he noted, adding, “I don’t know if that’s possible; we’ll see.”
However, he returned to an earlier speaker’s comments about the city investing in companies that manufacture weapons.
“I may draw a pension some day from this city,” McLaughlin said. “And I would not want my hard-earned retirement money going towards weapons anywhere, against anybody.”
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