Editor’s Note: Phoebe Zinman also submitted this letter to Beacon’s City Council.

As a 13-year resident of Beacon, a homeowner, an elected trustee of one of our community’s most valuable institutions, and a Jewish American, I am calling on you to pass the ceasefire resolution. My family escaped from the pogroms in Russia and came to this country in the early 1900’s. My grandmother worked very hard to get Jewish families to America during WWII. Not one single member of my family would want this genocidal rampage to happen in Palestine, and certainly not in our name.

This is a horrific ethnic cleansing that we are watching in real time, and also bearing witness to the power of pro-Zionist propaganda at every level of our society and culture. Furthermore, my father’s family were socialists and were blacklisted during the Cold War by the American government for speaking their truth to capitalist power and against censorship of the freedom of expression. Now in 2024, we are witnessing more blacklisting, more censorship, more limits to our freedom to criticize Israel’s actions.

Is the City Council and the city prepared to stand on the wrong side of history, under the weak pretense that the resolution doesn’t matter? If it doesn’t matter, why are any of us serving our city? This is a time for being clear about the value of human life, and not for favoring those with more power and resources.

You must pass this ceasefire resolution, there is no other choice you can make in good conscience,

Phoebe Zinman