Bridgeport ceasefire resolution misguided
Most 1-year-olds celebrate their birthdays surrounded by family and friends, maybe even with a birthday cake and an entertainer. Kfir Bibas — whose name fittingly translates to “young lion” in Hebrew — just celebrated his first birthday on Jan. 3 as a hostage in Gaza where he was taken as a 10-month-old with his mother and 4-year old brother.
Meanwhile, across the world, here in Bridgeport, on that same day, members of the city council were meeting to pass a resolution calling for an “immediate de-escalation and permanent ceasefire in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank.”
Under pressure to hurriedly pass a resolution, the council sidestepped the standard deliberative procedures and processes which are critical for ensuring quality, broad community participation, and equity in decision-making.
As a result, the resolution lacks nuance, factual accuracy and moral clarity. It is tone-deaf, and uses partisan language about the war which Israel does not want and did not start.
The resolution repeatedly draws a false moral equivalency between Hamas terrorists who perpetrated the horrific and gut-wrenching Holocaust-like massacre of Oct. 7 and the defensive actions of Israel, a sovereign nation-state with a moral obligation to protect the lives of its citizens.
When speaking of Israel’s response from Oct 7 to today, context is crucial. This was not a random flare-up as the resolution implies. There is not a word in the resolution about the barbaric massacre of Oct. 7, which saw the most Jews murdered in a single day since the Holocaust. For moral clarity, the city council would do well to follow the example of the U.S. Congress and many local government bodies by airing a screening of “Bearing Witness” a compilation of raw footage from these unimaginable atrocities, much of which was documented by Hamas itself.
It is abhorrent to lump together, as the resolution does, the abduction of 1-year-old Kfir Bibas — along with 240 other totally innocent civilians who were brutally kidnapped — with prisoners held in administrative detention who are suspected of violent crimes. It is utterly immoral to equate a terrorist group that deliberately raped, butchered and incinerated Jews of all colors, religious and political affiliations, to Israel’s defensive military response which goes to extraordinary lengths to protect innocent lives.
Of course, we believe in the sanctity of life and mourn the tragic deaths of every single innocent person. I call unequivocally for peace throughout the entire world and the end of all death and war; and Jews pray three times daily for the day when nations will not raise their sword against one another.
On a superficial level, it sounds great to call for an end to all violence and to decry war of any kind, but this response is far too simplistic and it creates an extremely dangerous moral equivalency with regards to the current situation.
There is no question that a ceasefire at this time will ensure that Hamas can regroup and continue their reign of terror upon the residents of Gaza and their 20-plus year campaign of rocket fire into Israel. I have cousins in Sderot, a city less than a mile away from the Israel-Gaza border. They describe how they have just 12 seconds to take cover from the rocket-fire, which occurs at all times, day or night. My 9-year-old cousin has already had to run for cover thousands of times in his short lifetime. Calling for a ceasefire now prolongs Hamas’s ability to terrorize the population of Gaza and southern Israel.
To paraphrase former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, if Hamas put down their weapons, there would be no more war; if the Jews were to put down their weapons, there would be no more Israel.
While the local city government might not be the correct forum for such a discussion, I applaud and admire the council’s sincerity and desire to help. I urge the Bridgeport City Council to focus on truly helping the people of Gaza and Israel by uniting in an unequivocal demand for the immediate dismantling of Hamas, the immediate and unconditional return of every hostage, the end of Hamas’ use of innocent women and children as human shields, and that the thousands of trucks of humanitarian aid already being sent to Gaza must reach the civilians it is intended for instead of being stolen by Hamas terrorists.
I pray for the day when there will be true and enduring peace for all humanity.
SUSAN CAMPBELL
This past Saturday, a group of volunteers descended on Ivoryton’s town green to begin to unwind and store the town’s holiday lights. For the past month, those half a million bulbs turned the little village into a magical place. If you love illuminated islands that serve as beacons in the winter gloom, you might look at the weekend volunteers as holiday’s anti-elves, but those are the same people who put the lights up in the first place. So thank you, volunteers. You made December — and a small corner of January — bright.
On Saturday in Hartford, for the first time since the pandemic began, camels loped along Park Street to mark Dia de los Reyes — Three Kings’ Day — when tradition tells us three wise men anxious to explore a bright star in the east came to visit to the baby Jesus. The Hartford crowd was appropriately festive, and the camels looked — as always — as if they were powered by a puppeteer.
On social media, Saturday was celebrated by people posting video after video of insurrectionists dressed in our national colors, and taking sticks and flag poles to beat law enforcement officials in Washington, D.C. They broke into our capitol during what was anything other than a “normal tourist visit” — though a Georgia politician later tried to paint it as such. Online, insurrection supporters —