About 30 demonstrators interrupted a 4th Ward meeting Tuesday night, chanting “cease fire now.” Some of the protesters also shouted at Ald. Jonathan Nieuwsma, and at a meeting attendee.
After standing in front of the Robert Crown Center where the ward meeting was held, the protesters went inside the small meeting room and stood along the back and along a wall.
Nieuwsma asked them to hold off until after the session, but one of the protesters jammed a copy of a Gaza cease-fire resolution they want City Council to pass into Nieuwsma’s hands, claiming that he had been avoiding them, something he has denied.
After singing “cease-fire now” for several minutes, the protesters left, but not before one of them shouted “people are dying” at a ward resident who told the demonstrators it was wrong of them to interrupt the meeting. A security guard had told the demonstrators to leave.
After the session, Nieuwsma told Evanston Now that he was “devastated by the Oct. 7th Hamas attack on Israel,” as well as being “sympathetic to the Palestinian people” and the concerns of the demonstrators.
Personally, Nieuwsma said he was for a cease fire to help bring a “non-violent solution” to the Israel/Gaza crisis. But that’s his personal opinion, not something he thinks city council should bring to the floor.
The alder said it would “make no sense for the city to weigh in on this issue,” when council has so many major items to consider regarding Evanston, and a cease fire is so divisive.
He said that council has passed certain resolutions about events outside Evanston before, “but that was when there was broad, unanimous consensus.”
“That is not the case now,” he added, “when the question is so divisive.”
This is at least the second time cease-fire and/or pro-Palestinian activists have disrupted a city government meeting, the last one being a city council session in December.
Before that, the city’s Equity and Empowerment Commission introduced a cease-fire resolution, but never voted on it because the city’s legal staff said the issue was outside the scope of the panel’s Evanston-specific mission.
That resolution was criticized by some as being highly one-sided, with 18 “whereas” clauses criticizing Israel and describing Palestinian suffering, but with only indirect reference to the Oct. 7 terror attack, which led to the Israeli retaliation.
The latest proposed resolution is more balanced, but would still have the city involve itself in an international issue which city council has so far declined to do. There is currently no cease-fire call on the agenda.
Before the meeting, protesters outside Crown peacefully distributed leaflets. One of the demonstrators, Mollie Hartenstein, said “we’re here to raise awareness” about being on “the right side of history,” and came to the center specifically because of the ward meeting.
Approximately 1,200 Israelis were killed in the Hamas terror attack. The Gaza Health Ministry has said more than 27,000 have been killed in Gaza. The ministry does not differentiate between civilian and combatant deaths, but has said the majority were not involved in the fight.
About 100 of the initial 240 hostages kidnapped by Hamas have been released, but the New York Times is reporting that at least 30 of the remaining captives are now dead.
Two of the released hostages, Judith Raanan of Evanston and her teenage daughter Natalie, recently filed a lawsuit against a crypto-currency exchange for allegedly helping Hamas.
Yep, Netanyahu and Hamas get up every morning to see what Evanston’s City Council has to say. And President Biden doesn’t make any foreign policy decision without polling our Council first. We’re so darn important to world affairs that it’s worth ignoring local issues and dividing our community! Evanston, Evanston, Uber Alles!
…Sounds silly, but so is wasting time and energy on this resolution instead of serving the people of Evanston.