Extra

The Peace and Justice Commission will meet and vote on a Ceasefire Resolution Monday, September 30, 2024 at 7 pm at the NORTH Berkeley Senior Center at 1901 Hearst. This is not the normal meeting place for the Peace and Justice Commission, but they are expecting large attendance.

Please show up for peace and a ceasefire.

We can expect the Jewish Community Relations Council of San Francisco (JCRC) will be putting out their call for their community to show up in opposition. The JCRC of San Francisco celebrated on their Facebook page the cancellation of the Peace and Justice Commission meeting that was supposed to take place the day after Labor Day, Tuesday, September 3^rd. https://www.facebook.com/sfjcrc 

There were over 100 of us who gathered the evening of the Peace and Justice meeting cancellation to hear speakers and stand in solidarity for a permanent ceasefire. 

Dr. Feroze Sidwa MD, came from Stockton to describe his experience as a trauma surgeon in Gaza. 

Dr. Sidwa is one of the many physicians that volunteer to go into war zones. There is a consistency in how the returning physicians describe the injuries and conditions in Gaza, it is, never have they seen such deliberately horrific scenes, children shot in the head, children with terrible painful injuries, a shortage of medicines to relieve their suffering, not even soap to wash their hands, children with loss of muscle and body fat from starvation, body burns, missing arms and legs, destroyed infrastructure and the imprisonment and torture of colleagues. 

Biden the talking heads would like us to start history on October 7, 2023 ignoring the occupation, imprisonments, detentions, deliberate disabling injuries, torture and murder of Palestinians that preceded that day and continue. We are to see Israel as the victim and the expanding Israeli aggression into Lebanon and the West Bank as Israel defending itself. 

The war continues with expanding aggression that could not happen without the complicity of the United States furnishing the bombs and munitions. The new military aid package to Israel approved by Biden totals $8.7 billion. A no from Biden to furnish more aid to Israel would bring this escalating war to a close, but Biden has not used the power he possess and has publicly called himself a Zionist. 

The statements from Biden and his administration that they are working tirelessly day and night to bring a ceasefire and the lack of success is because of the intractable resistance of Hamas rings hollow when Netanyahu, the Knesset block ceasefire agreements and with their base of extremists call for the erasure of Palestine and the Palestinians and the flow of arms continues. 

How can anyone think the hostages are going to survive while buildings are being blown up everywhere around them, there is no safe water and famine is setting in? 

Harris has expressed recognizing the suffering of the Palestinians, but framing what much of the world including myself call a genocide as Israeli’s right to defend itself will not bring back the voters who are horrified by the bombing, killing, maiming of Palestinians in Gaza. It may well cost Harris and us the election. 

Harris is the product of a JCRC sponsored trip to Israel. JCRC let out the secret on their website a little over a week ago, the same time they posted about Mayor Arreguin’s trip and declared in their myth and fact that the JCRC trips are balanced with multiple voices and that saying the trips are anything other than balanced with multiple narratives is “textbook antisemitism”. 

If sponsoring trips for elected officials didn’t carry with them influence on future actions then how likely is it that organizations and individuals would spend thousands and thousands of dollars on them? 

I am still voting for the Harris Walz ticket, because of Walz and a third party vote is a wasted vote. Protest votes are for the primary. When it comes to state and local elections, I / we have other choices in November. 

At any other time, there would not even be a question of whether the posting error by the Peace and Justice Commission Secretary Okeya Vance-Dozier causing the meeting cancellation was deliberate or just a mistake.  

Usually, this kind of mistake where the day of the week and the date don’t match is handled with reposting the agenda with the correct day, date and time and the meeting goes on not cancelled, but according to the article in the DailyCal the error was not caught until the morning of the meeting. The meeting was posted as Wednesday, September 3, 2024. September 3, 2024 was Tuesday. 

Many of us have made posting mistakes. I’ve made them myself in what is now nearly a decade of emailing the summary of city meetings to make it easier to engage in local politics. In my case, there are always alert readers who see the error and email me within hours I need to send a correction. 

At the rally in support of the Ceasefire Resolution, we learned Peace and Justice commissioner Diana Bohn was removed by Igor Tregub who was recently elected as Councilmember District 4. I had a chance to speak to Bohn, who said that Igor’s statements that she refused his request to insert language about Hamas into the resolution was a lie. She said she agreed to bring his requests forward. 

It is up to the commissioners to accept or reject resolution change requests. 

I expect there will be changes to the posted ceasefire resolution if there is a commitment among the commissioners to work together, but we shall see if that is the intention of the new and replacement appointees or whether they were appointed to block and obstruct any action. 

After observing Igor at city meetings for nearly ten years and hearing from others their experiences, I know who I believe in the supposed disagreement – Diana Bohn. I told a friend who was all in on working on Tregub’s campaign and told me that she received his promise he supported a ceasefire resolution, that no matter what he said or promised she would learn like others. 

Tregub has been great on environmental issues and it could easily be argued that the assault on Gaza is an environmental catastrophe too, but replacing commissioner Bohn on the Peace and Justice Commission on August 29, 2024, days before the important meeting on a ceasefire resolution is another extension of the pattern I’ve seen over the last ten years. 

There are lives in the balance. The count of dead and maimed Palestinians grows daily. In just five days, the Israeli escalation into Lebanon has killed over 740, the number of Palestinians killed in Gaza is over 41,000 and in the West Bank it is over 600. 

What Berkeley does actually matters. Berkeley’s history in movements for free speech, against apartheid to name two of many has put this city on the world stage. But this is 2024 and here we are with Mayor Arreguin and councilmembers Hahn and Wengraf steadfastly opposed to a ceasefire resolution. 

Councilmembers Bartlett and Taplin who posted draft ceasefire resolutions on Twitter months ago quickly fell in line and withdrew them, never bringing them before full council for a vote. Taplin and Bartlett are both running for reelection to council. 

Councilmember Lunaparra who ran for her seat on supporting a ceasefire resolution has fallen in line too. 

When I went through the JCRC of San Francisco Facebook photo posts there was a smiling Tregub. I guess now that he is an elected official he will be eligible for one of the JCRC trips to Israel to rub shoulders with other Bay Area elected officials to solidify relationships, friendships and support. 

I suspect the cozy JCRC sponsored trip to Israel in March 2023 is how Hank Levy, Alameda County Treasurer landed on the Sophie Hahn for Mayor mailer paid for by Sophie Hahn for Mayor 2024. Anyone who is a property owner in Alameda County addresses their property tax payment to Henry C. Levy aka Hank Levy. Hahn and Levy were on the same JCRC trip to Israel together along with Jenny Wong, City Auditor and Dan Kalb, Oakland Councilmember. 

You won’t find a paper trail for Hahn’s participation in the JCRC trip as it is said she paid for the JCRC trip to Israel herself while still taking advantage of all the connections with elected officials. In the JCRC trip picture, Hahn stands behind a much taller man exposing a little less than half of her face. Wong also stands behind a taller person. 

Wong’s trip was paid for by the JCRC. Wong completed the California Form 700 listing $4,743 for the trip to Israel and $175 for the extension, but you have to go to the state of California FPPC website to find the 700s, not the City of Berkeley conflict of interest filings where they should also be. The FPPC website is where you will also find Arreguin’s 700 forms for his sponsored trip. 

Just because Arreguin and Wong filled out the proper 700 forms with the State of California, doesn’t mean the trip didn’t achieve influence. If a pro-Israel organization didn’t find that sponsored trips to support their pro-Israel cause weren’t beneficial then would they be paying for them? 

The declaration of the JCRC trips being balanced made me think of the description of Harriet Martineau’s trip to the United Sates in 1834 in our September book club choice Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey From Slavery to Freedom by Lyon Woo. Martineau traveled to the United States determined to come with an open mind to view slavery first hand. Friends in Kentucky insisted she see the Saturday evening market run by cheerful slaves selling handicrafts and fruit, but Martineau found the other market where people were sold by auction and seeing that agony is what shaped her. (Put this book on your reading list) 

We’ve had multiple scandals of late on sponsored trips from Clarence Thomas Supreme Court Justice to the indictment of Mayor Eric Adams New York City Mayor just this week. 

There are posts on the JCRC of SF Facebook to activate JCRC members to oppose the ceasefire resolutions. 

We can’t blame Dan Kalb’s third place finish in the State Senate primary in March behind Jovanka Beckles to his signing the Oakland City Council resolution for a ceasefire. Kalb didn’t have a strong campaign, but in reading the Marin’s Newsletter on elected officials and Jenny Wong to the end there should be concerns about elected officials’ participation in these sponsored trips. https://marincountyconfidential.substack.com/p/what-a-berkeley-elected-officials?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&triedRedirect=true 

With the rise of Trump, the racism and constant attacks on minorities this is an ugly time. 

Anti-Semitism exists, it is real like Islamophobia, the call for mass deportations, the attacks on the Haitians. 

The labeling of anyone who criticizes Israel as anti-Semitic brings up another book and another time in our history. 

My plans to finish off all the partially read ebooks on my iPad while sitting in airports and on airplanes went down the drain when I picked up Betty Medsger's The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover’s Secret FBI published in 2014 about the break-in to the Media, Pennsylvania FBI office by eight Vietnam War resisters on March 8, 1971 the night of the Muhammad Ali versus Joe Frazier II fight. 

The Burglary is the story of eight ordinary people who risked everything to confront the spying on of Americans and the use of violence, harassment, fabrication, demonization and defamation by the FBI, to suppress and silence dissent to the Vietnam War. 

In many ways the tactics used by the FBI against the Vietnam war resisters are not so different from the name calling, accusations and attacks on Pro-Palestinian students. The students have been accused of being under the influence and monetized by the Russians and other foreign and subversive entities, ill-informed, misguided and anti-Semitic. They have been kicked out of colleges, denied their graduation degrees, had job offers withdrawn, doxed, threatened and beaten. 

The attacks don’t end with students. 

Today I sent my email to ovance-dozier@cityofberkeley.info for the Monday, September 30, 2024 Peace and Justice Commission meeting. 

Dear Peace and Justice Commissioners, Thank you for bringing forward the Ceasefire Resolution. Please note my strong support. I expect there may be some wordsmithing, additional statements and possible subtraction of statements made to the resolution as it is currently posted in the agenda. It is my deepest hope and request that through working together you can reach an agreement on a resolution that you all can support. The escalation that is occurring as I write threatens tragedy for the entire Middle East region. Berkeley’s previous resolutions has put us on the world stage. What Berkeley does matters. We must not be silent. Kelly Hammargren