Hundreds of people march in protest for a “Free Palestine" in downtown San Francisco on Saturday, Dec. 2, 2023. Organizers called for a permanent cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war.
Thanks to the tax deadline extension granted to residents of the Bay Area, I ended up paying my state and federal taxes in mid-October — timing that made me acutely sick to my stomach. Not because it was a lot of money (it wasn’t terrible) or because I hate paying into the social safety net (I don’t). But because, even at that point, it was clear that I was contributing to the $3.8 billion of American taxpayer funds that helped pay for the bombs, missiles and bullets that Israel was using to kill and immiserate the population of the Gaza Strip, nearly half of whom are children who had nothing to do with the horrific Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas on Israel.
You can even find out how much your city is paying into the U.S.’s annual contribution to the Israeli military with an online calculator from the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights. San Francisco’s share in 2020 was $13.2 million, equivalent to the salaries of 144 elementary school teachers.
So on Dec. 5, when San Francisco Supervisors Hilary Ronen and Dean Preston introduced a resolution calling for a cease-fire in Gaza, the release of hostages and the allowance of humanitarian aid into the region while also condemning both Islamophobia and antisemitism, the idea that a city 7,400 miles away from Israel would have anything to say about this made sense to me.
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It might be easy to pass this resolution off as a performative gesture that will achieve nothing — as a futile action by a city government that has its priorities out of whack. The resolution doesn’t call for a regime change, nor does it propose anything more than an end to aggression on all sides. But if approved, this carefully penned motion, as bare-minimum as it is, will represent one of the most powerful Democratic cities in the country sending a message to a Democrat president that it doesn’t support his funding of further bloodshed. There is no good reason to oppose it.
As it stands, this resolution is a chance to put forth an optimistic view of how Americans can and should engage with this conflict. We can step aside the facile and deeply cynical ideas that siding with victims means getting revenge; that mass death is ever justified; and that seeking peace through non-violent means means letting “bad guys” get off scot-free. We can put our faith in a democratic system that, thus far, has claimed to be on the side of freedom for all while funding the oppression of those it deems politically insignificant.
On Oct. 18, 2023, President Biden stated that his administration would be seeking an “unprecedented support package for Israel’s defense” from Congress to the tune of $14.5 billion — a nearly threefold increase from what we send over annually. On top of that, the administration has repeatedly bypassed Congressional approval to sell $150 million in tank shells to the Israeli military: artillery that may find its way into yet another Palestinian hospital, as reported by the Guardian, or once again in the midst of a group of journalists or a humanitarian convoy.
After Ronen and Preston’s ceasefire resolution was introduced, Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin referred it to the Rules Committee, which met on Monday to discuss it before bringing it to a full vote on Tuesday. The meeting drew an enormous audience that queued for hours to provide public comment. Some noted that in the time between the two meetings, the death toll has continued to climb, with about 30,000 people, or an estimated 1% of Gaza’s total population, either officially deceased or missing, buried under rubble. Several amendments proposed by Preston to the committee were updates to the numbers of people killed, wounded and displaced. According to the U.N., over half the population are now starving to death.
It’s never been more obvious that the people of the United States are directly funding an abject war of retribution against innocent people who have already been pushed to the brink of desperation and despair under decades of structural and explicit violence. It’s a slaughter that has increasingly been condemned by the global community, from South Africa charging Israel with genocide at the International Court of Justice to the 153 U.N. member nations that voted for a cease-fire. We San Franciscans are implicated in this conflict, and we have a right to protest our involvement.
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“I don’t even believe in the system and I’m here,” one public commenter said on Monday. It was, in my view, an incredibly earnest and relatable sentiment for this moment.
“This is an issue that’s touching the lives of thousands of San Francisco residents,” said Lara Kiswani, executive director of the Arab Resource and Organizing Center (AROC), who called me after giving public comment at the Rules Committee meeting. “The U.S. has the power to end this genocide — it could end today. If the Biden administration is failing to listen to the (nearly) 80% of Democratic voters calling for a cease-fire, of course we’ll look to local elected officials to show that San Francisco doesn’t support this.”
“Every life matters; every day matters,” she said. Since the cease-fire resolution was introduced on Dec. 6, Kiswani found out that she’d lost 40 family members in Gaza. “I can’t name one Palestinian in my life who hasn’t lost family in this war.”
Reach Soleil Ho (they/them): soleil@sfchronicle.com; Twitter: @hooleil
Why San Francisco’s Israel cease-fire resolution matters
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09.01.2024
Hundreds of people march in protest for a “Free Palestine" in downtown San Francisco on Saturday, Dec. 2, 2023. Organizers called for a permanent cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war.
Thanks to the tax deadline extension granted to residents of the Bay Area, I ended up paying my state and federal taxes in mid-October — timing that made me acutely sick to my stomach. Not because it was a lot of money (it wasn’t terrible) or because I hate paying into the social safety net (I don’t). But because, even at that point, it was clear that I was contributing to the $3.8 billion of American taxpayer funds that helped pay for the bombs, missiles and bullets that Israel was using to kill and immiserate the population of the Gaza Strip, nearly half of whom are children who had nothing to do with the horrific Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas on Israel.
You can even find out how much your city is paying into the U.S.’s annual contribution to the Israeli military with an online calculator from the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights. San Francisco’s share in 2020 was $13.2 million, equivalent to the salaries of 144 elementary school teachers.
So on Dec. 5, when San Francisco Supervisors Hilary Ronen and Dean Preston introduced a resolution calling for a cease-fire in Gaza, the release of hostages and the allowance of humanitarian aid into the region while also condemning both Islamophobia and antisemitism, the idea that........
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