Vote No on 5 and 6

[philipjmoss.livejournal.com]

I wanted to briefly share with you all my top 4 reasons for voting no on ballot questions 5 and 6 pertaining to refugee return and divestment from Israel.

1.) Its bad for Somerville, particularly the city’s elderly-

The city of Somerville doesn’t actually own any Israel bonds or stock in the companies that are targeted by the ballot questions. Rather, the investments in question are in the retirement fund of former city employees. The chairman of the retirement board has spoken out against the measures saying that they will prevent the city from making the best investments to insure the fiscal safety of the retirees’ pensions. His letter can be found here

http://www.townonline.com/somerville/opinion/view.bg?articleid=602304

2.) SDP are mostly out of town extremists, not local peace advocates-

The Somerville Divestment Project (SDP) which has put the questions on the ballot are primarily a group of extremist who don’t care about peace. Their own website contains an article by SDP leader Ron Francis which defends Hamas, a terrorist organization which has intentionally killed over 500 civilians including 27 Americans, as being unfairly maligned by the media. At last Saturday’s SDP event, I received a handout from senior SDP member David Rolde which stated that the atrocities in Darfur were not a genocide but were a plot by America and Zionists to distract attention from Israel. During the last divestment campaign, Joachim Martillo- a prominent SDP organizer- distributed fliers in Davis Square that stated, “the Jews want to send your children to Iraq to die for Israel”. In short, the list of extremist and bigoted remarks and activities that SDP has engaged in goes on and on.


3.) The resolutions reek of hypocrisy-

In question 5, SDP demands that Israel allow all Palestinian refugees to return, but they disregard the larger population of Arab Jews who were violently displaced from their homes during the same period. Likewise, rather than write a resolution that calls for responsible or ethical investment across the board, they choose to single out Israel. Granted, Israel does not have a perfect human rights record, but for all its faults, it remains a multi-racial, multi-religious, democracy that upholds rights to free speech, religion, gender and sexuality. To single out Israel whose human rights record is more comparable to the United States or France, while allowing investment in companies that do business in Darfur or Burma is incredibly hypocritical.

4.) All local officials oppose questions 5 and 6-
Even if you have a “throw the bums out” attitude when it comes to our government. There is something to be said that Deval Patrick, Rep. Capuano, Mayor Curtatone, Kerry Healy, and a former Green Party candidate for governor of Massachusetts all endorse voting no on 5 and 6.\

Thank you for reading my thoughts on the matter. If anyone has questions or wants to talk more about the questions I'll try to be available by email up until the election (as time permits).

(philipjmoss at hotmail.com)

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