After weeks of protest that included a person soaked in faux blood pretending to die on the ground of Metropolis Corridor, the Ojai Metropolis Council this week handed a decision calling for a cease-fire between Israel and the militant group Hamas.
The symbolic measure handed on a 3-1 vote, with one councilwoman absent, throughout a particular assembly Monday devoted solely to the decision.
The little city of Ojai, inhabitants 7,500, joins about 70 U.S. cities which have weighed in on the almost 5-month-old conflict, in accordance with a Reuters evaluation of municipal information. Greater than 50 of them have handed resolutions calling for a halt to Israel’s Gaza bombardment or advocating extra broadly for peace, and not less than 20 have condemned the Oct. 7 Hamas assault on Israel that sparked the counteroffensive, the info present.
Ojai’s two-page decision requires Congress to demand “a right away and everlasting” cease-fire, for the U.S. to “stop unconditional navy support to Israel,” for Hamas to “launch all hostages in Gaza in change for an agreed variety of political prisoners in Israel” and for “the restoration of meals, water, electrical energy and medical provides to Gaza,” in addition to unrestricted entry for humanitarian support.
“I imagine that it’s our ethical obligation and accountability as people to do every part that we will to cut back struggling of all beings with whom we share this planet,” Mayor Betsy Stix stated. Stix voted to cross the measure regardless of having requested attendees at earlier council conferences to restrict their feedback to native points.
Well being authorities within the Gaza Strip say that almost 30,000 folks, largely ladies and kids, have been killed throughout Israel’s months-long bombardment. In response to the Israeli authorities, about 1,200 Israelis have been killed and an estimated 240 others kidnapped when Hamas launched its shock assault on Israeli cities close to the Gaza border on Oct. 7.
In latest weeks, Metropolis Council conferences in Ojai — a city that has declared itself an “worldwide metropolis of peace” — have been dominated by scores of impassioned audio system, most of them pro-Palestinian, weighing in on the conflict.
In December, a particular council assembly dedicated to dialogue of a cease-fire decision was shut down — with no vote — after members of the viewers received out of their seats to argue with each other.
On Feb. 13, a daily council assembly was halted by a “die-in” protest by pro-Palestinian activists. Cyrus Mayer, a 29-year-old Ojai resident and landscaper, burst into the room carrying a kaffiyeh head scarf and coated in faux blood. He collapsed to the ground whereas a girl learn names of useless kids in Gaza. Police dragged him from the room.
Dozens of individuals spoke in the course of the 3½-hour assembly Monday, which in some ways become a painful back-and-forth on the legacy of struggling that has resulted from antisemitism and Islamophobia.
Aviva Bernat, a resident, stated that the decision wouldn’t defend Israelis or Palestinians and that it was creating solely dangerous rifts in Ojai.
“There may be a lot concern,” stated Bernat, who’s Jewish. “You will have introduced hurt [with] these resolutions and these conferences. We aren’t sleeping. We aren’t effectively. Hear this: We’re your Jews. … Once we say we’re quaking, that we’re not secure, that we’ve a proper to outlive, I imply it.”
Jody Lewis, a 12-year resident who stated she was married to a Jewish man and raised three Jewish kids in Ojai, got here ahead to help the decision, saying she stood “with so many, together with these in Ojai’s Muslim inhabitants who’ve been threatened and really feel, frankly, too afraid for his or her households to seem in public in your chambers.”
Her coronary heart broke, she stated, “for the tens of 1000’s of individuals killed” because the December council assembly, when it was final thought-about.
Sheila Cohn, an Ojai resident since 1996, stated council members “have wasted quite a few hours” and needs to be doing their job. “Say no to a decision proposal at present and say sure to a decision to thoughts your personal enterprise and maintain the individuals who have put their religion in you,” she stated.
A highschool pupil spoke of her craving for a world at peace and for youngsters in Gaza to really feel pleasure about their future.
Councilman Andrew Whitman, the only real vote in opposition to the decision, known as it divisive, particularly as a result of the Israeli neighborhood considers “cease-fire” to be “a set off phrase” and “the equal of claiming, ‘Lay down your arms and die.’”
Councilwoman Suza Francina stated she additionally had heard “cease-fire” described as a set off phrase, in addition to folks blaming the decision for contributing to antisemitism. She known as that “backward considering.”
“I believe {that a} cease-fire is one of the simplest ways to cease or scale back antisemitism,” she stated. “The reality is that violence begets violence.”
