Gainesville City Commission directs Mayor to send the President a letter asking for a ceasefire in Gaza

BY JENNIFER CABRERA

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – Following the General Public Comment period at today’s Gainesville City Commission, the Commission voted unanimously to ask Mayor Harvey Ward to write a letter to President Biden, Rep. Cammack, and Florida’s Senators, requesting humanitarian treatment of all and a ceasefire in Gaza.

Sixteen people spoke during General Public Comment, asking the Commission to introduce and pass a resolution for a ceasefire in Gaza. Several people said Israel and the United States are guilty of “genocide” and have “blood on our hands.” Others said Israel is “slaughtering innocent people.”

Some of those who spoke represented Jewish Voices for Peace and also supported an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. They made the argument that opposing Israel’s actions in Gaza is not antisemitism. One representative of that group said, “It is particularly confusing for many to weigh in, when Jewish identity has been instrumentalized to further Western hegemonic agenda in the Middle East, and, by design, any critical questioning of Israel’s actions is met with allegations of antisemitism.”

Sample resolution

Abigail Fletcher referred to the sample resolution she had sent to Commissioners; that resolution states that the City “(1) Urges the Biden administration to immediately call for and facilitate de-escalation and a ceasefire to urgently end the current violence; and (2) Calls upon the Biden administration to ensure the provision of humanitarian aid, and enable reliable access to clean water, electricity and other human necessities for people in Gaza.”

A letter in lieu of a resolution

Following the public comment session, Ward said, “Traditionally–and I’m not inclined to break tradition, because then we’ll be doing it all the time–we don’t add resolutions at the last minute. There are other avenues to follow.” He suggested that since the Commission’s next meeting is three weeks away, the Commission may want to direct him to “send a letter on our behalf in lieu of a resolution… I believe, as Gandhi told us, an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. That’s real. There are people who feel as passionately who are not here today.”

“This is about peace, and I don’t have a problem with sending a letter saying, ‘Please stop shooting each other.'” – Mayor Harvey Ward

Ward said he didn’t want to get into a pattern where one group shows up at one meeting, then another group shows up at the next meeting to oppose the previous group. He continued, “This should not be about that. It’s about human life. This is about peace, and I don’t have a problem with sending a letter saying, ‘Please stop shooting each other.'”

Commissioner Casey Willits pointed out that there is a large Jewish community at the University of Florida and that one of Gainesville’s sister cities is in Israel near the border. Referring to the October 7 attacks on Israeli civilians, he said, “It seems like some of our sister communities could have been in the crosshairs of the violence.”

Willits: “What happened on October 7 was horrendous”

Willits said he had received “dozens and dozens” of emails “talking about the apartheid of Palestinians within Israel and Palestine… And I’m gonna say very clearly how disappointed I was… that none of them mentioned Hamas, none of them mentioned the children of Israel that were killed.” He said he was glad that some of the people who had spoken today acknowledged that “what happened on October 7 was horrendous, and it’s a massacre and immoral and against probably every single person’s value system.” Willets said he saw value to a “humanitarian pause… I think there’s a real window… Ending this military action, I think, rightly, is the best thing for Israel, for Israelis, and for Jews across the world.”

“Ending this military action, I think, rightly, is the best thing for Israel, for Israelis, and for Jews across the world.” – Commissioner Casey Willits

Commissioner Bryan Eastman said, “It hits all of us a little bit harder when you see an image of a three-, four-, or five-year-old that has been harmed both during the initial attack from Hamas and then all the horrible photos coming out of Palestine.” He deferred to Commissioner Reina Saco for “some ideas on how to move forward with this, but… we need these things to stop.”

Saco makes the motion to write a letter

Saco said she was previously placed on a watch list for Canary Mission “because I had spoken out, because I was a member of SJP [Students for Justice in Palestine], and I had spoken out against the last bombing of Gaza and the last time children were being murdered. And that had me put on a watch list as an antisemite, because I said we shouldn’t bomb children.” She acknowledged that it wasn’t a good idea to pass a resolution the same day, so she made a motion “that the City Commission authorize the Mayor to write a letter requesting humanitarian treatment of all and a ceasefire; I will leave the rest to [the Mayor].”

Ward said the letter will go out tomorrow to the President, to Rep. Kat Cammack, and to Senators Rick Scott and Marco Rubio; he added, “I would hope, despite my experience, that we all value human life and that peace should be an objective and a ceasefire would be palatable. And I’m happy to be directed to do that.”

Commissioner Ed Book said the way “we make a difference in the worldwide landscape is what we do and how we treat each other locally… I feel like that’s where we set our goals, as a local elected official… The efforts that we do as City elected officials say that everybody matters.”

Ward thanked the public for the “respectful manner in which you approached us today.”

The motion passed unanimously, with Commissioner Cynthia Chestnut and Desmon Duncan-Walker absent.