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During at least two recent Florence City Council meetings, a Florence citizen has spoken out against Israel defending its citizens. Why this young man, whom we had mistakenly assumed was a student at UNA, thinks Betterton, Hendrix, or any other city do-nothing has a modicum of influence on this conflict between a democracy and the Hamas terrorist-controlled entity of Gaza, we have no idea. Is he actually that ill-informed or delusional?
We're going to go with the latter. It seems that Jeffrey K. Hamm isn't a student, at least at UNA. In fact, he's been banned from that campus after an incident from ten weeks ago.
We believe in letting the public have its voice in local government, but we also support safety in public meetings. Perhaps it's time to ramp up the requirements for public speaking at these meetings?
While I said at the time this young man was in the audience at the city council meeting he was delusional to think the amount of money he was attributing to coming from the city of Florence budget to support Israel in their fight against Hamas was factual. But, he had every right to speak his mind at the public remarks section. What I did not agree with was he and his cohorts sitting in the audience with signs which were proclaiming Israeli genocide of Palestine was somehow connected to the city of Florence. There was nothing even remotely addressing this conflict on the city of Florence agenda of the meeting they were attending. "Requirements for public speaking at these meetings" sounds very much like censorship to me and since Betterton is already banning remarks on the live stream on Facebook, he could easily ban remarks at the meetings altogether. This is a slippery slope. "Remarks from the public" should be just that, any and ALL remarks from the public which address the actions of elected representatives in the city. Or whatever is on one's mind with a 5 minute time limit.
ReplyDeleteFrom a Middle East scholar: There is no genocide in Gaza!
DeleteGazans are Muslim Arabs. That's all. There are about 450 million Arabs in the world of which more than 90% are Muslim. Even if every single Gazan were killed - which is not the case at all - that would be less than 1% of the whole Arab population. In stark contrast, there are less than 16 million Jews in the world of which 46% (nearly half) live in Israel. So proportionally, the genocidal attacks by Hamas of Oct 7 against Jews is a greater blow to Jews than the losses claimed by Gazans. Also the claimed losses are in doubt since Hamas controls the very health care agencies who provide these numbers. The IDF claimed to have killed 12,000 Hamas militants but Hamas insists that it is no more than 6000. Notice how the reported IDF number is actually bigger and in the range of 1.5:1 — in other words, 1.5 civilian deaths for every combatant death. That does not meet the threshold for genocide. Don't fall for Hamas's number game!