Remarks of Rob Prince, Retired Senior Lecturer of International Studies before the Aurora, Colorado City Council. October 23, 2023

My Response to City Council Resolution R2023-125: A Resolution of the City Council of the City of Aurora, Colorado, Expressing The Aurora City Council’s Abiding Support of the People of Israel. The Revenge Resolution

My name is Robert Prince, I live in Denver. I am a retired senior lecturer from the University of Denver’s Korbel School of International Studies.

I want to acknowledge the fine work that Mayor Coffman has done in support of the Ethiopian Community here in Colorado. Once, a number of years ago, when a better future for the Horn of Africa seemed more likely, we shared a podium.

I watched, impressed, as the Ethiopian immigrants whom he represented then as a U.S. Congressman gave him a rousing ovation. Tonight I am asking the Mayor and the City Council to take into consideration the concerns of Aurora’s Palestinian, Arab and Moslem Communities as well as civil rights and Middle East peace advocates.

I refer to Gaza, an area not much bigger than Aurora.

I am urging that the current resolution be rejected. Not only does it “lack balance” but it fails completely to address the crisis at hand. It does not decrease tensions nor work to resolve this conflict that we are in the midst of.

The Gaza situation is a crisis.

The Israeli government has declared a genocidal war on Palestinians in Gaza, with no regard for the lives of civilians as well as putting Israeli hostages at risk.

The latest statistics as of this morning, more than 5,000 Palestinian Gazans killed, among the 1600 children, virtually all civilians. Tens of thousands wounded and hundreds of thousands displaced. The Israeli government has shut off all electricity to Gaza. Hospitals cannot save lives, the internet is collapsing, people are not able to charge cell phones to communicate with the outside world. Gaza is plunged into darkness as Israel turns its neighborhoods to rubble. Still worse, Israel has openly stated an intention to commit mass atrocities and even genocide there.

No civilians anywhere deserve this kind of treatment.

This is all with the full support of the U.S.

It is absolutely urgent that President Biden and Congress demand a de-escalation and call for a ceasefire, and urge adequate humanitarian assistance be allowed into the Gaza Strip. We must also not fuel violence by further arming the Israeli government as it commits mass atrocities.

There is only one way to end violence and that is to address the root causes: 75 years of Israeli military occupation and apartheid, and end U.S. complicity in this systemic oppression.

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Addendum:

It was called City Council Resolution R2023-125: A Resolution of the City Council of the City of Aurora, Colorado, Expressing The Aurora City Council’s Abiding Support of the People of Israel. It was impressively lopsided from a humanitarian and geo-political viewpoint, itself little more than a racist rant disguised as a political statement.

It was nothing other than a “revenge resolution” – Israel and its supporter’s “revenge” for the military humiliation and strategic defeat it suffered at the hands of Palestinian resistance fighters, a part of the frenzied response of Zionists everywhere to having suffered the pain of battlefield defeat as well as a classic example of that Israeli finely honed skill of playing the victim after more than a century ethnic cleansing, genocide and territorial expansion 

Above are my prepared remarks and I am glad to share them now as they reflect my more formal opposition to the bill. 

It was not necessary to read it because so many of the people who got up to speak – overwhelmingly Palestinian Community members – had made the same remarks repeatedly, so often, in fact,  that other than publicly stinging Mayor Coffman to his face – the remarks at the beginning, above – I threw away my script and began talking about the “chosen people” themes instead, the idea at the heart of Zionism that the Jewish People were chose by God and that the creation of a Zionist state is somehow ordained by God, therefore justifying 75 years – nay it is more like 125 years – of ethnic cleansing, war crimes and genocide against the Palestinians and other Arab and Moslem peoples.

I was just getting warmed up on this theme when Mayor Coffman’s gavel came down and my time was up. I was about to dissect the chosen people nonsense that much more: chosen by whom to do what to whom, to mention that Zionism has always been similar to the Zelensky government in Ukraine, to the TPLF (Tigray People’s Liberation Front) in Ethiopia, the Taiwan government in China, etc, etc. nothing more than a proxy for U.S. regional control. But we’ll have to save those remarks for another time. I left with the two friends I had come with, the Center for Freedom and Justice – Colorado’s Gary Anderson and longtime companero, Chicano activist and people’s historian, Ernesto Vigil before the end. What we missed was described by another friend in a message:

“Things got pretty heated after the public comment (period) ended. Marcano proposed to table the resolution indefinitely until they met with impacted members of the community. That motion lost 6-5. Then people started yelling a lot when ‘Jurinsky(1) wouldn’t shut up’. Twenty storm troopers came in and then the (original) resolution passed 5-4 with one abstention I think with a `b.s’ amendment acknowledging “innocent lives lost with no mention of Palestinians. Utterly disgraceful” 

I missed the end but the passing of what was essentially “a revenge resolution” – revenge against the Palestinian people for having initiated their surprise military offensive – was “utterly disgraceful”. I put the major responsibility for this charade for all this on the mayor angling for his political future. But there was another side to the story: being present as the Palestinian Community came out in full force, organized, articulate, knowledgeable and militant: battle ready: men, women, kids. It was that which was truly magnificent and this is just the beginning. I was not at all discouraged; as many noted, the vote was cooked beforehand. They almost always are. Still the final vote,  5-4 in favor of the resolution with one abstention, must have gave Mayor Coffman the jitters. Very close, far from a consensus, unanimous support for Israel that Mayor Coffman would have preferred, a very marginal victory. The three (that I recall) Zionist speakers were pathetic, hateful , racist. One of them, smoother and more controlled than the other two who just ranted on, a “clever fellow” called for an “anti-Hamas front” that virtually no one  in the audience fell for. I missed the end since it was past my bedtime and I simply got too tired.

Regardless, Colorado’s Palestinian Community stood up! It was moving to witness it, to be among them and to pitch in a bit. 

Richmond, CA City Council votes for Palestine

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1. “Jurinsky” = Danielle Jurinsky, one of the more vocal city council members in favor of the resolution.