By Guy Page
An anti-Israel umbrella organization comprised of socialist and pro-Palestinian advocacy groups wants five Vermont legislators to resign following their September junket to Israel.
A bill before the Vermont Legislature, H.310, would require education about anti-semitism. Four of the five legislators are on the lengthy, bi-partisan list of bill sponsors.
On January 6 at 11am in the Statehouse’s Cedar Creek Room in Montpelier, the Vermont Coalition for Palestinian Liberation (VCPL) will hold a press conference demanding that five legislators who travelled to Israel to support its war on Gaza resign immediately.
VCPL is comprised of advocacy groups including Central Vermont Democratic Socialists of America and the Champlain Valley Democratic Socialists of America.
Will Greer (D – Bennington-2), Matthew Birong (D – Addison-3), James Gregorie (R – Franklin-6), Sarah “Sarita” Austin (D – Chittenden-19), and Gina Galfetti (R – Washington-Orange) joined the “50 States, One Israel,” met with Israeli officials, and posed for a picture with a Vermont flag. VCPL claims it has collected over 1,000 signatures on a petition demanding their resignation.
According to Seven Days, Gregoire said the recent trip offered a rare chance to learn firsthand about the region’s history and ongoing conflict, while acknowledging that the Israeli government controlled much of the itinerary. He said the visit still provided opportunities for dialogue that would not have been possible otherwise. “We wouldn’t have had those opportunities, any of us, to ask those questions if we stayed at our houses,” Gregoire said.
In a public statement reported in Seven Days, Greer said he traveled to Israel not to support Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government or “the genocide taking place in Gaza nor the ground offensive that has taken place as well in the past week,” but to represent his Bennington district. He emphasized that no taxpayer funds were used for the trip. “I do not want Vermont to be excluded from having conversations as they relate to our current concerns around, and hopes for, achieving peace in Gaza and the West Bank,” Greer wrote.
The petition claims that ‘these five legislators have implicated our state in one of the greatest crimes against humanity in history” – not Hamas’s October 7, 2023 surprise attack on Israel, killing over 2000 people, mostly civilians;. Instead it refers to Israel’s counter-attack that destroyed much of Gaza in its efforts to destroy those who planned and staged the Hamas attack.
VCPL’s press conference will feature Palestinian Vermonters Wafic Faour, Samia Abbass, and a written statement from Mohsen Mahdawi, the Palestinian-born Columbia University activist briefly detained by federal authorities this year. Federal authorities say Mahdawi asked a Vermont museum owner about purchasing a machine gun after he moved to Vermont more than a decade ago. Also, his social media site showed slain family members in Israel/Palestine holding guns. Mahdawi has since become a professing Buddhist seeking a path to peace, although he failed to condemn the Oct. 7 attack when the subject was broached on 60 Minutes.
VCPL will be joined by, among others, State Senator Tanya Vyhovsky, former Representative David Templeman, Mark Hughes from the Richard Kemp Center, Fran Miller of Jewish Voice for Peace, Reverend Chelsea Page of the United Church of Christ, and two eyewitnesses to the Israeli occupation, Carmela Ormando and Bethany Logan, who just returned from the West Bank.
VCPL claims the lawmakers “went to Israel, not for educational purposes as they claimed, but to receive guidance on how to lobby for bills to criminalize any opposition to Israel, its apartheid regime, occupation of Palestinian land, and genocidal war on Gaza.”
VCPL will call for the legislators to pass bill H.168 to defend freedom of speech for all activists, including Palestinians and Palestine solidarity activists. VCPL will also encourage them to pass its other proposed bills, most importantly one that pledges Vermont will become an apartheid-free state.
H168, sponsored by Reps. Troy Headrick (I-Burlington) and Kate McCann (D-Burlington) would: prohibit restriction in public schools of instruction on social equity and justice; require instruction in public schools on social equity and justice; require public schools to adopt policies that affirm the dignity of educators and students; prohibit the influence of privately funded groups on the development of public school curriculum; amend the minimum course of study to include social equity and justice; (6) require the Agency of Education to develop resources and supports for LGBTQIA+ students and families; and prohibit adverse action against teachers for performing work activities in a manner consistent with State or federal law.