A Change of Pace...

Despite the upcoming gubernatorial election, many other things will come into question this Election Day. For one small Massachusetts town, Somerville, their districts attitude about the Middle East Conflict is one such thing. This is the third time that the Somerville Divestment Project, or SDP, has tried to pass two ballot questions concerning the Middle East Conflict. The first calls for a non-binding statement in support refugees, specifically Palestinian refugees, “right of return.” The second questions is whether to instruct the State Representative from the 27th district in Somerville to vote for resolutions requiring the government of Massachusetts to divest, or no longer invest in or support Israeli bonds or companies that sell military equipment to Israel. However, it should be noted that the term ‘military equipment’ is loosely defined, as the SDP website complains about CAT selling tractors to Israel as well.

Most noticeably, however, SDP is a little off the deep end. They blatantly quote figures that are not correct, and throw around incredibly offensive terms like ‘ethnic cleansing,’ which for the record, they use incorrectly repeatedly. Their press release makes no attempts to hide their complete and utter anti-Israel point of view, and this latest attempt (the third such) to put such a question on the ballot is seen by many as pointless, since these questions are non-binding (which is how it got on the ballot, non-binding questions require only 200 signatures, not the regular 10% of the population).

In response to the SDP, an organization called Somerville Peace has sprung up, claiming that these seemingly pointless votes are actually the beginning of something far more dangerous. “In 2004 and 2005, they tried and failed to get Somerville to become the first city in the country to support divestment from Israel, hoping to use that as the basis of a campaign for municipal divestment across the country. The two resolutions on this year's ballot are part of a broader effort to urge boycott, divestment and sanctions to isolate and punish the Jewish state and a "test drive" to see if this type of misleading language can be effective in an electoral campaign strategy. “

The issue is clearly a heated one because of the circumstances, and the topic. Unfortunately also, because it is overshadowed by the elections, all the information that is being posted out is by partisan groups, leaving the outside reader to wonder if this is all just a propaganda battle that the Middlesex voters are stuck in the middle of.

Stay tuned for a seemingly-irrelevant-but-possibly-threatening ballot proposal near you.