Boston City Council tables any action on Israel, Hamas and Palestine

Ed. note: Video of the discussions on the two resolutions is at the bottom of the story.

Boston City Council President Ed Flynn sent two proposed resolutions on Israel and Palestine to a committee for further study and hearings.

The council's committee of the whole - basically, the entire council - will now schedule hearings on a resolution by Councilor Michael Flaherty (at large) to support Israel and condemn Hamas and a separate one by Councilor Tania Fernandes Anderson (Roxbury) calling for an immediate ceasefire in the region.

Fernandes Anderson said terrorists are terrorists and that she would equally condemn Muslims killing innocent civilians. But she called most of her colleagues "cowards" who have consistently refused to talk about decades, centuries of violence against Blacks, native Americans, aborigines and now Palestinians.

Flynn stopped most discussion on Flaherty's proposal after Councilor Gabriela Coletta (East Boston, Charlestown, North End) objected to an immediate vote - not because she condones terror attacks but because she wants a more detailed hearing. That is actually the normal process for measures coming before the council for the first time.

Coletta said she absolutely condemns Hamas's terror attack on Israel, but added "I also recognize what has transpired since, the immeasurable pain and suffering of Palestinians who have no connection to Hamas."

Flynn similarly halted any immediate action on Fernandes Anderson's resolution - which she co-sponsored with Councilor Julia Mejia (at large) - after Councilor Sharon Durkan (Beacon Hill, Back Bay, Fenway, Mission Hill) raised a similar objection.

Before Coletta rose to speak on Flaherty's proposal, Flaherty and Councilor Frank Baker (Dorchester) spoke and condemned Hamas.

Baker, who has a young daughter, described the horror of the music festival, where Hamas fighters drove in, killing men and kidnapping and raping women. "We need to condemn what Hamas did there, not the Palestinian people, Hamas," he said, adding, "That looked like Crystal Night to me."

Also speaking before Flynn cut off discussion was at-large Councilor Julia Mejia. Mejia said she would also support sending the matter to a committee first. She said that about a year ago, when some issue involving Cuba came up, she said she was told the City Council should be focusing on city business, not foreign affairs. Also, she said, a committee hearing would let more people - including councilors not present today - to speak. Councilors Brian Worrell (Dorchester), Kendra Lara (Jamaica Plain, West Roxbury), Ruthzee Louijeune (at large) and Ricardo Arroyo (Hyde Park, Mattapan, Roslindale) were absent today - Arroyo because he has tested positive for Covid-19.

Although she did not speak on the proposal, Councilor Erin Murphy made her feelings clear by using her slot for inviting a local clergy member to give an invocation to have Rabbi Yitzhak Korff open the council meeting with an invocation - roughly a month and a half after he last gave the invocation. Before giving the traditional benediction, Korff said he had been in Jerusalem the day of the attacks and described the horror of that day, including a couple getting a call from their daughter's phone number - only to hear a Hamas terrorist say he was about to rape her and wanted them to hear it.

Korff said Hamas had turned the Gaza Strip from a self-sufficient enclave when Israelis still lived there into a resource-short hellhole through its focus on making war. ""It could have been very different if the citizens of Palestine had not elected Hamas," he said.

After Flynn stopped discussion on the Flaherty resolution, Fernandes Anderson (Roxbury) raised a point of order, not on the matter itself, but on the issue of who Flynn appears to be favoring male councilors when things get heated. She said that when a woman councilor stands and speaks without recognition from the podium, Flynn admonishes them for talking out of turn, but that men sitting at their seats can just blurt out anything without fear of being told to be quiet.

She then pointed to Flaherty, who sits next to her: "I'm on the mic, he's talking," she said. Flynn told Flaherty to stop talking.

Fernandes Anderson later said she did not think Flynn was sexist, but that she's tired of the men on the council getting away with talking over her women colleagues, as she said happened when Coletta was speaking.

And then Fernandes Anderson rose to introduce her resolution for an immediate ceasefire on both sides of the border after what she said was a humanitarian crisis caused by bombardment and the cutoff of food, water and electricity by the Israeli "apartheid" regime and the destruction of more than 1 million homes after what her resolution called "military operations" by Hamas.

She said she condemned killing of innocent civilians by either side. "It's horrible," she said. "People are dying, let's just focus on the good that we can do" through a ceasefire.

Durkan, though, said the conflict is just too personal for her to support that proposal as written. She said her grandfather was a Spanish "converso" - a Jew who became Catholic to avoid persecution under the Franco regime, and that after talking with her predecessors Mike Ross and Josh Zakim , who are both Jewish, she knows that the left is using an outdated definition of colonialism to call for Israel's destruction in a "cruel dehumanizing view of Jews."

Although she recognized that all people in the region have the right to peace and freedom, she said that Israel itself is a place for refugees, from Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Russia, from the Holocaust, in a land Jews have lived for thousands of years, only they have no place to return to should Israel cease to exist.

Baker said he also could not support a call for a ceasefire without the return of Israeli and other hostages and derided calling what Hamas did a "military operation" because it was terrorism. He returned to that music festival. "Those little girls at that concert, that were having a fun time, they're being raped now," he said.

Flynn gave Fernandes Anderson a chance to respond before he closed the matter.

She said, fine, she's open to changing the language of her resolution. "If you're killing innocent children you're a terrorist, I'm not opposed to [adding] that," she said.

But she said she's tired of most of her colleagues being unwilling to deal with troublesome issues unless it involves their particular political agendas, which she said very much ignore Black and brown people and their histories, every bit as horrific as that of the Holocaust.

"Not everybody is born with bravery," she said. "I'm not judging you."

She continued, "I pray that God forgives you for your cowardice. As a human race, we've failed, we're in trouble."

She returned to the issue of children being slaughtered on both sides, and briefly broke down in tears.

"Oh, my God, it's disgusting," Fernandes Anderson said. We're talking about stop killing babies! Stop it on all levels."

Mejia rose and gave her a pat on the back.

"No Jew that is praying and faithful and righteous is killing children," Fernandes Anderson said. "No Muslim that is prayerful and faithful and righteous is killing children. these people are political animals!"

She closed by saying that, one day, her colleagues would learn to accept her truth.

"As much as you hate listening to me, as much as you disagree with me, it resonates with you because everything that is true comes from God and whether you reject it or not, it resonates deep in your bones," she said.

Discussion on Flaherty's resolution:

Discussion on Fernandes Anderson's resolution:

Korff's comments: