#ben weber

by Dexter Van Zile

Anyone who has any doubts about the success enjoyed by the Islamist-led campaign to squeeze Jews out of the public square in the US needs to watch the video of the Boston City Council meeting that took place on February 14, 2024. The success of this campaign was on full display when District Six City Councilor Ben Weber, the only Jew on the council, withdrew a “negotiated ceasefire” resolution from the agenda. It was yet another moment when the Tikkun Olam agenda of “repairing the world” was handed its head by Islamist activism in the United States.

Weber’s resolution was pretty straightforward and “balanced.” In addition to highlighting the suffering of both Israelis and Palestinians and calling for a negotiated ceasefire between Hamas and the Netanyahu government, Weber’s resolution asked councilors to call on Hamas to return the hostages it took on October 7, and work for the safe return of Massachusetts residents stuck in Gaza.

Before announcing that he was withdrawing the resolution from consideration, Weber declared that while writing the resolution, he sought input from fellow councilors, officials from Boston’s Jewish Community Relations Council, and a prominent Boston-area Palestinian-American lawyer working to get Massachusetts families safely out of Gaza. Weber didn’t say which councilors he spoke to, but The Boston Globe subsequently reported that Weber had spoken with former council president (and Israel supporter) Ed Flynn and anti-Israel zealot Tania Fernandes Anderson.

The dialogue was to no avail. “It has come to my attention that the language of the resolution I drafted may cause more division, which is the opposite of what I hope to do,” Weber said. “So out of my respect to my council colleagues and members of the Boston community, I withdraw this resolution to have further conversations.” In short, Weber, a first-term city councilor, didn’t want to force his colleagues to declare their response to the October 7 massacre openly, because to do so would make him a one-term city councilor.

After the meeting, Weber told me that he felt obligated to withdraw the resolution after unnamed people expressed concerns that it was promoting the involuntary departure of Palestinians from Gaza and that it appeared to promote “one side over the other.” The notion that Weber’s resolution promoted the involuntary evacuation of Palestinians from Gaza is an intentional misreading of the text. Weber’s resolution says nothing about the expulsion of Palestinians. And as far as “taking sides,” the resolution was clearly written as an attempt to mollify “pro-Palestinian” (anti-Israel) activists, including Fernandes Anderson, by highlighting the suffering in Gaza without acknowledging it was Hamas who was responsible for this suffering. The logic is simple. If there would have been no October 7 massacre (and no terrorism from Gaza before that), there would never have been any conflict in Gaza.

If Weber had been paying attention, he would likely have spared himself the humiliation of having to withdraw the resolution by not submitting it in the first place. It’s not as if Boston isn’t in bad need of some Tikkun Olam.