Congresswoman Barbara Lee will attend the sixth annual Sebastopol Living Peace Wall ceremony on Saturday, Sept. 11, where she will be celebrated as a peacemaker after weeks of scrutiny from some local activists about her position on Israel and Palestine.
Lee will be joined by Mary Moore, Adrienne Lauby and Fred Ptucha as 2021 honorees. The induction ceremony for those being honored is being held in Sebastopol’s plaza at 11 a.m. on Sept. 11.
A local group called the Ad Hoc Committee to Call Out PEPs — individuals deemed “Progressive Except for Palestine” — came together to raise awareness and put pressure on the renowned politician to show more support for Palestinians surviving under Israeli occupation of its remaining territories.
Sebastopol resident Michael Gillotti, a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War, brought the Living Peace Wall to life and chairs the honoree selection committee.
The committee chose Lee to be honored as a peacemaker for casting the sole vote in Congress against the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists (AUMF) in 2001, days after the Sept. 11 attacks, he said.
“We only put people on there that have dedicated themselves to promoting peace and justice through nonviolent actions,” Gillotti said.
Lee received death threats for opposing giving the U.S. president greater powers to go to war without much established information. “It was a blank check to the president to attack anyone involved in the September 11 events — anywhere, in any country, without regard to our nation’s long-term foreign policy, economic and national security interests, and without time limit,” she wrote for SF Gate.
However, objectors say she’s been inconsistent with her values for approving funds for Israel and showing less support for Palestinians continuing to face human rights violations and airstrikes under Israeli occupation of remaining Palestinian territories. U.S. funding for Israel backs the violence towards Palestinians and their subjugation, local activists said.
“But we’re not honoring her for what she hasn’t done. We’re honoring her for what she has done,” Gillotti said. From his perspective, attempts to cast dishonor on Lee when she will be honored as a peacemaker is offensive and unacceptable.
Members and supporters of the committee leafleted outside Rialto Cinemas in August, where people came out to see the documentary “Barbara Lee: Speaking Truth to Power.”
The leaflet handed out draws attention to Lee as the sole sponsor of H.R.4373, a bill that commits at least $3.3 billion to Israel for foreign military financing.
Congress has marked a yearly $3.8 billion in security aid to Israel, with $3.3 billion marked for “foreign military financing funds, which are essentially grants to buy U.S.-made weapons, and $500,000 million in missile defense assistance, including for the Iron Dome,” according to reporting by The Hill in May 2021.
Lois Pearlman, a member of the committee, said she visited the partially-recognized State of Palestine in 2003 and witnessed conditions in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem — as well as Tel Aviv and West Jerusalem of Israel — that moved her to stay engaged in issues facing Palestinian people ever since.
“I saw it. I saw the checkpoints, which are much more numerous now, but at the time, they were mostly between what was the West Bank and what was Israel,” Pearlman said. “We watched how hard it was for Palestinians to get through checkpoints — not always, 20 years ago, but often — whereas as an American with an American passport, it was much easier, although they did give us a bit of a hassle getting into Gaza.”
She said the group came together to critique Lee’s consistency on peace and justice after a friend, Moore, found out she would be honored as a peacemaker at the ceremony alongside Lee, one of her heroes. Another friend put out that the representative’s decisions around Israel and Palestine weren’t as progressive as the group would hope.
“We started investigating and discovered that, in fact, she’s … thrown out some crumbs to the Palestinians but has always supported sending billions of American dollars to Israel to buy arms. They buy American arms, so the money comes back from taxpayers to the military defense interest industry in the United States,” she said.
“Nobody wants to throw her out of Congress, ” Pearlman said, but the ad hoc committee believes she could do better.
Stating she herself is Jewish, Pearlman said the state violence she speaks of spans from shooting peaceful protesters to “forcing Palestinians out of their house, removing all their furniture” to pass it over to Jewish Israelis.
The activist said Israel’s control of Palestinian territories and suppression of Palestinians amount to more than just occupation, but settler colonialism and apartheid. She continued, “Well, under international law, when you occupy a country, you’re not supposed to move your population into that occupied area, but they are in fact doing that.”
According to Gillotti, the group dissatisfied with Lee’s decisions in Congress requested that he contact Lee to clarify her position regarding Palestinians. He understood that to mean challenging her to do more to support Palestinians and he refused, viewing such an act as inappropriate.
“I think it’s misplaced anger, to tell you the truth, and I really am offended that they would come and use our peace wall ceremony,” Gillotti said.
“Why are they singling her out?” Gillotti said of Lee’s support for financially backing the Israeli military. “Everybody’s given Israel whatever they’ve wanted every year in terms of millions, sometimes billions of dollars. So, why are they focusing on her when she had the courage to say we’re not going to go to war?”
He continued, “I think they’ve sort of cherry-picked and they’re not looking at the full picture of Barbara Lee, who is a very courageous Black woman who’s been through a lot in her life and shown a lot of courage, and that’s why we’re honoring her.”
Gillotti said that part of being human is to do things that seem contradictory or inconsistent and that he doesn’t know anyone who always lines up with their beliefs.
“We’re imperfect beings and what they’re looking for is a perfect person and we don’t have that standard in our selection of these people.” The chairman said honorees must demonstrate their commitment to peace and justice nonviolently and Lee did so, he said.
“We are calling out Barbara Lee because even though she’s not our representative, she’s being given an award in Sebastopol and it does not seem right that she should be going on a wall with people who unconditionally support everybody’s rights, where she places a condition on supporting the rights of Palestinians,” Pearlman said. “Sending money for arms that are used by the Israeli defense forces to basically kill and intimidate Palestinians is not a way to support them.”
This debate comes at the end of a summer when Americans became more aware through reporting and social media of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians during the 2021 Israel-Palestine Crisis, including airstrikes upon Gaza and deadly crackdowns on Palestinians protesting planned evictions of families in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood for Israeli settlers to move in.
