MONTAGUE — Come fall, Special Town Meeting voters may be asked to approve or deny a petition article declaring the town to be an apartheid-free community as an act of solidarity with the Palestinian people.
This petition article contains a resolution that looks to recognize the equal rights of all people, and the discriminatory treatment and human rights abuses against the Palestinian people by Israel. The measure is nonbinding and represents the desire of Montague residents to be in solidarity with the Palestinian people and to “build an apartheid-free world, starting with our own community.”
“We’re hoping to engage residents so that they even know who their Town Meeting members are, that they show up in support of this resolution at Special Town Meeting and that we’ll get the vote as a positive from the town to be an apartheid-free community,” Apartheid-Free Western Massachusetts co-organizer Heather Hutchinson said.
Hutchinson said she and fellow organizer Rich Karsten have met with Montague town officials to go over the requirements of the petition article. For it to be brought to the floor for a Town Meeting vote, a minimum of 10 signatures is required.
Thus far, more than 100 people have signed the petition, with local businesses having a copy of the petition on hand for people to sign. Hutchinson said she’s collected signatures at Food City in Turners Falls and she had a booth open at the Pocumtuck Homelands Festival in early August with the petition.
Apartheid-Free Western Massachusetts is part of the national coalition, Apartheid-Free Communities, which formed in 2022. Amnesty International, a non-governmental organization focused on human rights that is headquartered in the United Kingdom, conducted a study from July 2017 to November 2021 on information collected from a variety of stakeholders, non-governmental organizations, United Nations agencies, academic and legal scholars, and journalists, that concluded Israel is engaged in apartheid against Palestinians. According to Amnesty International, the organization analyzed “Israel’s intent to create and maintain a system of oppression and domination over Palestinians and examined its key components: territorial fragmentation; segregation and control; dispossession of land and property; and denial of economic and social rights.”
Hutchinson said that since Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas-led militants entered the south of Israel from the Gaza Strip, killing nearly 1,200 and taking more than 250 hostage, there has been increased awareness of the systems of oppression in Palestine.
“I think the events of Oct. 7, while not being the beginning of what has been going on in terms of oppression and apartheid and suffering in Palestine,” Hutchinson said, “was pivotal to raise awareness all around the world, and mobilizing people to [say] this is not the world we want. We do not want a world of authoritarianism, of apartheid, of oppression.”
In the 22 months since Oct. 7, 2023, the Israel Defense Force has continued military operations on the ground in the Gaza Strip, culminating in the deaths of more than 62,000 Palestinians, along with starvation conditions amongst the population, insufficient medical supplies, continued military offensives, displacements and injuries, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported on Aug. 13.
Dreamhouse, a brunch restaurant on Third Street in Turners Falls, has had the petition up for two weeks, with nine signatures coming in within the last week.
“I think it’s great,” Dreamhouse owner Jillian Fishman said. “I think any community that wants to codify a stance against genocide and apartheid is something that we want to support.”
As the petition in Montague continues to circulate, Northampton is another community where Apartheid-Free Western Massachusetts has a petition going around to divest public money from “entities complicit in human rights violations in Israel and Palestine.”
In a statement, Karsten said the Montague petition has been well-received, adding that the support signifies that people understand the injustice of apartheid and that everyone deserves equality.
“People’s willful ignorance and silence allows dangerous situations to explode. We must also recognize that although people are much more aware now, there is still not enough action to end the engineered starvation of all of Gaza,” Karsten continued. “We must do more, not just for Gaza, but for the soul of humanity.”