The Milwaukee County Board has weighed in on a major international issue — a possible ceasefire in Israel and Gaza — and in doing so, the board has highlighted some of the local division over the topic.
A symbolic resolution calling for a permanent ceasefire in Israel, Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank has been slowly making its way through the county committee process. On March 21, the item came to the full County Board where Sup. Ryan Clancy, a resolution co-author, has called for including language that describes the targeting of civilians as genocide.
Clancy read often graphic comments from what he says were elected Israeli officials, urging widespread harm against Palestinians.
In summary, Clancy says, “This is clear, compelling evidence that the intent here is to kill Palestinians, kill the people of Gaza. This is the language of genocide.”
County Sup. Sheldon Wasserman took exception to the term genocide to describe what’s been happening in the Middle East. He says a couple years ago he went the Majdanek World War II Nazi concentration camp, which has been preserved as a state museum in Poland. Wasserman says he even visited the camp’s gas chamber.
“A chamber that my grandparents, my cousins, my aunts and my uncles stood in and died in. You see the walls of this chamber, and guess what? They’re discolored with the blue-green film from the cyanide gas that affects the concrete. I stood in the space when the door was closed and they had a peephole to see what was going on with the people dying in it. I stood in that chamber. That’s genocide!” Wasserman exclaimes.
Wasserman says there are people on both sides of the Middle East conflict that are "nuts" and "crazy."
He joined nine other county supervisors to narrowly pass a substitute resolution that also calls for a permanent ceasefire, but drops the term genocide and adds that world leaders should prioritize the immediate release of hostages in the region, including ones taken during the Hamas attack on Israel last October 7.
Several dozen supporters and critics of the original resolution were in the audience. Alexa Safer of Shorewood says she’s pleased the substitute passed.
“We believe 10/7 and the atrocities of that day need to be recognized. The demand for the hostages needs to be included. We just wanted to see a two-sided even arrangement and we feel like that’s what we got today," Safer says.
The Milwaukee Jewish Federation says the original county resolution failed to mention Hamas, lacked equity and contained divisive, inflammatory language.
But a Milwaukee man of Palestinian descent, Yaman Othman, says the substitute resolution leaves out key points.
“We saw there was no talk of deliberation with the people of Palestine and the end of the occupation they’ve been going through for 75 years," Othman says referring to the creation of Israel in 1948.
Rachel Ida Buff of Jewish Voice for Peace-Milwaukee says her group is glad the resolution that passed does push for a ceasefire. She says there are shortcomings with the language. And Buff wants to emphasize that all hostages should be released.
“Now, we’re talking about the children held in Israeli jails. We’re talking about the journalists stripped naked, incarcerated, held in the cold for no reason," Buff says.
Buff charges that the continued Israeli attacks endanger the Jewish hostages being held.
The Milwaukee County Government Affairs staff has now been authorized to share the contents of the ceasefire resolution with Wisconsin’s Congressional delegation.
