Counterpoint: Minneapolis City Council didn’t create division over Palestine — Israeli apartheid did

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So much for Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey’s claim that he would “focus on city business” rather than weigh in on Palestine. Despite the City Council’s cease-fire resolution passing by a 9-3-1 supermajority, Frey opted last week to prolong the debate for at least another week by vetoing it anyway. His stated reasons for doing so — much like those outlined in a Jan. 28 Star Tribune editorial (“Mpls. resolution on Gaza deserves a veto”) — put him at odds with the facts.

Frey and the Star Tribune Editorial Board call the resolution “one-sided” and “divisive.” This is a common, backward refrain throughout history issued by those opposed to calls for justice.

That the world is a complicated place, not easily divided into good and evil, is a self-evident platitude. But, sadly, the reality in Gaza is one-sided.

One side is a high-tech military that’s spent the last four months destroying most of the infrastructure in a place where over 2 million people lived (now minus the more than 27,000 killed in the bombings, mostly civilians). The other side is not.

Moreover, the power imbalance between an occupying power and an occupied population is by definition one-sided. One side, Israel, has occupied and illegally settled another nation’s land, and abused, humiliated and displaced its people for decades, in what major human rights organizations like Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and B’Tselem characterize as apartheid. The other side has not.

The International Court of Justice’s recent ruling — despite the Star Tribune editorial’s attempts to downplay it — has enormous implications. The court found that South Africa’s allegation of genocide carried out by Israel is plausible, and that Palestinians are a protected group under the Genocide Convention. The court then ordered Israel to immediately stop killing Palestinians.

Apartheid and genocide are inherently “divisive” — if merely calling it that even suffices. It requires a profound level of division for one group to attempt to subjugate and ethnically cleanse another. The mayor’s platitudes against “choosing sides” is a denial of this reality. It was not the Minneapolis City Council supermajority that created division in Palestine — it was Israel’s apartheid system, and U.S. support for it. We applaud the council’s bravery for identifying this, with more clarity than perhaps any other elected body in this country, despite the obvious political risks.

When municipalities, states, universities and other institutions took stands against South African apartheid in the 1980s, their opponents made similar complaints that local entities should not get involved in foreign policy or could not realistically affect the situation. Yet it was the willingness of many grassroots groups and local institutions to take principled stands — when the federal government refused to do so — that initiated the fall of apartheid in South Africa.

Certainly, being divided in standing for justice is infinitely more important than being united in complicity.

Ultimately, the mayor and the Star Tribune editors opt for disingenuous hand-wringing about “division” instead of actually refuting the clauses of the resolution, because they can’t. By calling the clauses one-sided without actually disputing their validity, Frey concedes our point — the devastation in Gaza is terribly asymmetrical. The resolution cites credible human rights organizations for every fact. We encourage readers to actually engage with these facts, rather than ignore them for political expediency.

Denying reality is ultimately what the mayor has chosen with his veto, but he does so at his own political peril. A massive shift in public opinion on Palestine is underway, especially among young voters, driven not only by sympathy for Palestinians but also by disgust for the billions spent on wars when public institutions are languishing. We urge the council supermajority to vote again to override Frey’s veto, and in doing so, send a powerful message from the grassroots that we want our tax dollars divested from genocide and apartheid.

Wyatt Miller is a member of the Minnesota Anti-War Committee. Sana Wazwaz is chapter lead of American Muslims for Palestine-Minnesota. Omari Hoover is an organizer with the Minneapolis-based Free Palestine Coalition.