On October 13, after 1,900 Palestinians had been slaughtered in Gaza, six of us, Jewish community members in Seattle, refused to leave Senator Patty Murray’s office until she spoke with us on the phone and called for a ceasefire. She did neither. Now, more than 100 days later, the death toll has increased more than ten-fold: The Israeli military has murdered more than 23,700 people (likely a vast undercount), including 9,600 children.
Today, half of us who were arrested on October 13 are being arraigned in Federal Court. We recently learned through court documents that we were arrested at the direction of Senator Murray’s staff. We have yet to hear from Senator Murray directly, and she has yet to join the call for a ceasefire in the Senate.
Over the last hundred days, alongside mass protests across the globe, Senator Murray’s constituents have demanded in every way possible that she call for a ceasefire. Jewish Voice for Peace-Seattle alone has organized over a dozen protests—shutting down the Federal Building, the Space Needle, and the University Bridge. Palestinian-led protests have drawn thousands every Saturday for months. Seattle, Bellingham, Olympia, Bothell, and San Juan County have all passed resolutions supporting a ceasefire and calling on Senator Murray to support a ceasefire. National polling shows that 66% of Americans and 80% of Democrats (overwhelmingly her base) support a ceasefire.
Our local UFCW 3000 initiated a letter calling for ceasefire, which now over 100 labor organizations have signed—including our local educators in the Seattle Educators Association and AFT 1789, as well as the national presidents of both of the largest education unions in the country.
Moreover, workers at Starbucks Workers United have boldly condemned the genocide of Palestinians despite not even having the protection of a contract, and they are now being sued by Starbucks for daring to speak out. In Olympia, the Thurston-Lewis-Mason Central Labor Council voted unanimously for a resolution against being complicit in weapons production and called for the AFL-CIO to reverse its position and also to publicly support an immediate ceasefire.
Senator Murray’s working-class constituents have made their voices clear, and thousands more have called her office, requested meetings, and written letters.
And yet, she has been silent and has even continued to push for additional billions in military funding for Israel, unconditionally. Senator Murray most recently voted against Senator Bernie Sanders’s bill, which would have simply required a report from the State Department on Israel’s human rights practices. This vote is confusing, to say the least, given that she called for a ceasefire in Gaza in 2021, was vocal in her opposition to the Iraq war, and has sponsored a resolution demanding accountability for the Rhoyinga genocide. As a mother, preschool teacher, and self-proclaimed advocate for women and children, Murray has remained silent as 7,200 women and over 9,600 children have been murdered in Gaza. This is unconscionable.
Between 1990 and 2024, Senator Murray received over $680,000 from pro-Israel PACs, and between 2019 and 2024 she received $119,450 from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) alone. AIPAC is a pro-Israel lobbying group that has consistently supported far-right candidates, including supporters of the “great-replacement theory” and QAnon. AIPAC was her third-largest donor after the University of Washington and Microsoft. Slate recently reported that AIPAC is expected to spend at least $100 million in the Democratic primaries in an effort to knock out the seven “Squad” members—all Black and brown members of Congress who have been vocal critics of Israel’s war on Gaza.
Why is Senator Murray choosing to ally herself with a group with such abhorrent politics? Senator Murray is representing her donors, not her constituents. Tens of thousands have died as a result.
So we call on you, Senator Murray: Stop taking money from AIPAC, and stop allowing money to interfere with what you know is moral, ethical and what your constituents across the state want. Call for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza. Refuse to provide military aid to a country being accused of genocide in the highest court in the world.
Eliana Horn is an Ashkenazi Jewish and Queer organizer and policy analyst, descendant of Holocaust survivors, and proud member of Jewish Voice for Peace for 12 years.
Jesse Roth contributed writing and editing to this piece but was not amongst those who were arrested; she is a writer, theater artist, and Press Coordinator for Jewish Voice for Peace-Seattle.
Matt Weiner is a musician, lives in White Center and has been a member of Jewish Voice for Peace for 10 years.
Jonathan Rosenblum is a member of Kadima Jewish Community, the National Writers Union, and Workers Strike Back.
Zimyl Adler is a queer Ashkenazi Jewish food justice organizer and klezmer musician, member of Kadima, and long-time member of Jewish Voice for Peace.
Rebekah Harris Liebermann is a lifelong member of the Seattle Jewish community who grew up at Temple Beth Am and JDS and is active with Jewish Voice for Peace and Democratic Socialists of America.
James Whitney Kahn is a children’s book author and proud Jewish educator at Seattle Public Schools and a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, the Seattle Education Association, and Jewish Voice for Peace.
Has Hamas surrendered and released all the hostages?
There’s your answer
What JVP & DSA want is a unilateral ceasefire.
US Senators cannot make that happen. The US President cannot make that happen. Cutting off aid won’t make that happen.
Ceasefires must be mutual and negotiated. There was one in place; Hamas broke it by killing Israelis at a bus stop.
All Biden can do is try to mitigate the worst excesses of Israel’s RW. Murray flipping her position would do exactly jack shit, just like Sanders and Warren’s ceasefire calls are doing.
This is misleading. Americans support a ceasefire if Hamas releases hostages and recognizes Israels right to exist. If you were to ask Americans if they support a ceasefire where Hamas retains control of Gaza, continues to use the hostages as bargaining chips and is allowed to rearm and resume attacking Israel I think the answer would be overwhelmingly to continue the current course of action. Murray’s office ignores you because you do not represent her constituents. I’m glad to hear you are being arraigned in Federal Court. I can only hope your fellow protestors who continue to inflict harm on people just trying to go about their day by shutting down major thoroughfares or attacking places of business face the same consequences. By the way, your fellow comrades who felt the need to ridicule and shout at cancer patients in a New York hospital over the weekend are horrible, awful people and further demonstrate why you are on the wrong side of history.
Who knew that peace in the Middle East could be achieved by some American activists staging a sit-in? I wonder why it hasn’t been tried before.
Because she understands that her opinions mean nothing to the Israelis. (And most anyone else)
Apparently she disagrees with you. Get over it.
Move on to trying to convince someone influential who hasn’t made up their minds.
Bonus Tip: consider a strategy of persuasion instead of pissing people off.
Gosh, I wish these people cared as much about the future of the free world, or about our own democracy.
What’s happening in Gaza is a tragedy. It’s also a distraction from the war in Ukraine, which is the front line now in the global conflict between democracy and authoritarianism. And it’s a distraction from the GOP’s efforts to undermine our own democracy. The way the House Republicans are trying to hold Ukraine funding hostage to a border security deal that they have no interest in reaching is a win-win on both fronts. It’s a win for Putin and Xi. It’s a win for Trump and for chaos. It’s like we’re seeing the 1930s all over again, and these полезный идиот (look it up) going after Patty Murray of all people are self-righteously whistling past the graveyard.
The way these activists are framing their demands–that the United States call for a ceasefire rather than that we stop funding the Israeli military suggests that they care less about doing anything than they do about simply making the Democrats look bad. Kinda the same bad faith as Mike Johnson and his chaos caucus. It’s almost like they’re acting on behalf of the GOP and the Trump campaign.
Sure, these people are entitled to care about whatever they care about. Let’s just get it straight that they don’t care about whether Putin and Xi succeed in spreading authoritarianism across the world. Let’s just get it straight that they don’t care if Donald Trump gets elected and spreads his own brand of authoritarianism here. They’ll gladly sacrifice the free world for their own quixotic Naderite crusade.
Just because someone isn’t doing exactly what you want them to do doesn’t mean they’re not listening.
Sen. Murray and others heard you. They don’t agree with you. Grow up and get over it.
No one of consequence gives a rat’s ass what The Stranger thinks.
Literally everyone would like an immediate permanent cease fire. But they differ greatly on the acceptable terms for such a ceasefire. So what’s your point?
They should clarify what they actually want. The Stranger and those demanding a statement from Patty Murray have no interest in a permanent ceasefire. They actually are demanding only a brief pause to allow rearmament of Hamas. At which point they will again cheer the resumption of attacks on Israel from Gaza.
@13 I think most Palestinians would also accept a cease fire and gladly return the hostages (Israelis also I guess). And that would be a great step.
But the Palestinians also want peace. For that they need the right of return (or some agreement about it) and that settlers immediately stop shooting and killing them and taking more of their country and that settlements be dismantled in the West Bank.
Doesn’t sound too unreasonable to most.
Hamas would have a lot less support if the Palestinians saw some sign of reasonableness in the Israelis.
But I am guessing there is a lot of pressure from the hard-right in Israel to demonize all Palestinians right now and refuse to even treat them as humans, let alone address their legitimate concerns.
Let the trolling begin!
@2 @3
What we want our president, senators, and Congresspeople to do is to call for a ceasefire, and tell Israel that all US aid will be paused until there is a ceasefire. I recognize that there really isn’t anything the US can do to stop Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people. We can and should insist that we don’t pay for even a part of is. The only rational reactions to Netanyahu’s Likud party are boycotts, divestment, and sanctions. The United States should make regime change in Israel our primary foreign policy objective in the region. Israel and the Palestinians were on the path to peace, until Likud assassinated Yitzhak Rabin and reversed course.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/labor-chief-michaeli-rabin-was-assassinated-with-netanyahus-cooperation/
@15 – “What we want our president, senators, and Congresspeople to do is to call for a ceasefire, and tell Israel that all US aid will be paused until there is a ceasefire.”
And you think sitting-in, blocking traffic, and otherwise making annoyance of yourself is a persuasive strategy?
@14. Right of return? To where? Where their great great grandfather lived in 1946? That’s kind of insane. Should that apply to everyone else in the world. Half of America should have a right to return to Europe, Cuba, Vietnam and the dozens of other countries their ancestors might have been driven out of? That’s not realistic.
@18: and yet that is a logical endpoint for modern “decolonize” rhetoric.
@16 Yes, history shows that the vast majority of Americans are so wrapped up in surviving, because our masters work us to death, that the only way to get mass support for an issue is to make it personal for the individual. This is especially true with right-wing nut-jobs who will never support a just cause otherwise. At the very least, it gets people talking about the issue. Besides, the Left is morally superior, and we always have a duty to The People to make the more regressive elements in society suffer.
“National polling shows
that 66% of Americans and
80% of Democrats (overwhelm-
ingly her base) support a ceasefire.”
by Gum
you’d Never
Know It by tS’s
Commentariati.
“We can
and should
insist that we
don’t pay for even
a part of is. The only
rational reactions to Netan-
yahu’s Likud party are boycotts,
divestment, and sanctions. The United
States should make regime change in Israel
our primary foreign policy objective in the region.”
THANK YOU!
Greenwood Bob.
“… [Palestinians] need the right of return
(or some agreement about it) and that
settlers immediately stop shooting
and killing them and taking more
of their country and that settle-
ments be dismantled
in the West Bank.
Doesn’t sound
too unreason-
able to most.”
Bingo.
what If
it was Us?
& thank you
angryone!
tho you don’t seem
very Angry to me
‘Why
Hasn’t Senator
Patty Murray Called
for a Ceasefire in Gaza? AIPAC.’
if it’s Thee
Very LAST Thing
you Do for your Electorate
we’d Appreciate
if You’d Help
Bring Down
“Citizens
United”
then future
Senators wouldn’t
Be so BEHOLDEN to
BIG damn! MONEY.
that your Successors
might be Able to
Vote with their
Consciences
thank
you for
your Service!
Thank YOU
Senator!
(you gonna get
your Tennys
Bronzed?)
@20: “At the very least, it gets people talking about the issue.”
Most people are “talking about the issue” only in the context of “why are those assholes protesting on the freeway.”
You’re falling for the fallacy that “there’s no such thing as bad publicity” and doing your cause no good in the process.
‘I watch the ripples change their size
But never leave the stream of
warm impermanence and
so the days float through
my eyes . but still the
days seem the same
and these children that you spit on
as they try to change their worlds
are Immune to your Consultations
They’re quite aware
of what they’re
going through.’
–David Bowie; Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes
WE
Didn’t
Start the Fire
billy joel:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFTLKWw542g
Ceasefire? You mean Israel should surrender to more Hamas atrocities? Thank goodness our senator is not as ill-informed (or worse) as these “as-a-Jews.”
one reader’s comment on nyt’s
Netanyahu Is Turning Against Biden
Thomas L. Friedman; Jan. 19, 2024
“Netanyahu, fighting for his political survival,
is engaged in an irrational, ghastly endeavor in
decimating the people and infrastructure of Gaza.
His actions
have gone way past
any sense of proportionality or justification.
Biden MUST terminate his support
of this campaign as it is very likely
to cost him the election
in November.
People are absolutely fed up
with seeing their tax dollars fund
this immoral campaign and though they may
not vote for Trump, they are likely to not vote at all.”
–JFP; NYC
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/19/opinion/israel-war-netanyahu.html#commentsContainer
end the
Madness:
Shut. It.
DOWN.
So a group of Jewish activists are accusing their senator of [checks notes] being controlled by Jews.
It’s so weird watching Jewish Voice for Peace activists bend the knee to antisemitic rhetoric.
Sure people can disagree on things. But Patty Murray is the putative representative of her constituents, whose overwhelming viewpoint she is worse than ignoring, she is actively contradicting their wishes.
Now it is demonstrated once again that “democracy” in the United States is merely for show. The priorities of the financial elites and of empire, which are one and the same, are the only priorities that actually matter to our national leaders.
The fact that these individuals have proven themselves faithful servants of those priorities, and that fact alone, is why they are national leaders. The will of the public is 100% irrelevant.
@30: “But Patty Murray is the putative representative of her constituents, whose overwhelming viewpoint…”
This post cited one national poll, which (as @4 noted) consisted entirely of one misleadingly vague question. That’s hardly proof of an “overwhelming viewpoint” of Washington state’s citizens.
For months now, Sen. Murray has continued to pursue policy contrary to the repeatedly-expressed wishes of these activists, which suggests they might want to try something else.
yeah:
they could
just Join the
Pro-Genocide Klub.
“problem”
Solved!
@31
Besides:
they don’t Work
from the
Needling:
Local Civil Disobedience Expert
Confirms Waving Tiny Flag at Home
Way More Effective Than Shutting Down Traffic
“Blocking traffic just isn’t the way to win hearts and minds,” said [“Hanging” Chad] Henry. “If you really want to make an impact and finally convince people that our country spending billions to slaughter tens of thousands of innocent civilians is a bad thing, there’s nothing quite like doing something quietly in your own home that doesn’t bother or inconvenience anyone.”
At press time, Henry was re-posting as many Martin Luther King Jr. quotes about peace on social media as possible, reminding everyone that there’s always a better way to protest things than leading a march because they totally have never helped lead to things like the passage of a voting rights or civil rights bill or something.
much more, ridiculously:
https://theneedling.com/2023/12/07/local-civil-disobedience-expert-confirms-waving-tiny-flag-at-home-way-more-effective-than-shutting-down-traffic/
perhaps
it’s Time
we Listened
To an Expert.