Oak Park voters overwhelmingly rejected a measure that would’ve posed a question about boycotts to Israel to local voters on this November’s ballot.
Oak Park Township held its annual town meeting at Percy Julian Middle School’s cafeteria Tuesday, April 28. The question on this year’s meeting agenda was “do you support the right of individuals and organizations, including state contractors, to boycott, divest and sanction Israel?”
If the vote had passed, the question would’ve gone onto the midterm ballot for Oak Park voters in November’s election.
Nearly 500 Oak Park residents came out to vote at the annual meeting, with 352 voting against the measure and 134 voting in favor of it. The measure was put on the meeting agenda after a local petition received 26 signatures.
The local petition came as the Illinois legislature considers repealing a 2015 law banning state pension funds from being invested in companies that divest from or boycott Israel. The same question was on the agenda for several other townships around the state.
Votes on the same question passed earlier this month in the townships of Cunningham, Peoria, Kickapoo, Medina, DuPage and Normal but failed in Capital and Wheatland townships, according to progressive news blog Let’s Address Illinois.
The meeting was held this week at the middle school after attendance at a previously scheduled meeting on April 14 at the Oak Park library’s Dole branch quadrupled the meeting room’s capacity. The vast majority of voters at the meeting had already cast their ballots before the discussion was held, with the township allowing people to vote at the start of the meeting since the school the cafeteria also didn’t have capacity to accommodate the hundreds who’d come out to vote.
After most attendees cast their ballots and left, township trustee Juan Munoz moderated the discussion portion giving equal time to both sides. Munoz was detained by ICE inside the Broadview ICE detention Center during a protest at the facility last fall and he began the discussion by referencing the community support he’d received in the wake of his arrest.
“Some of these instances were deeply troubling, but the response from the community was also deeply moving,” he said. “Tonight is a reflection of that same civic spirit.”
Munoz told Wednesday Journal he felt that the discussion at the meeting remained largely respectful, despite the palpable emotion that shown through in residents’ testimonies. He said it was important for him to reference his experience as the only Chicagoland elected official to have been detained inside the Broadview Detention facility amid the DHS’ Operation Midway Blitz to remind people at the meeting of the responsibilities they shared as neighbors.
“We really are neighbors in that room yesterday, today, tomorrow we’re going to continue to be neighbors so the way that we engage each other in the room is in that context,” he said. “Knowing how the community has responded to other issues and my own personal issues and what I went through, the level of support that I received, I wanted to highlight the positive responses that come in times that are difficult and how capable we are of responding in that way.”
The discussion was intense and emotional at times, with residents on both sides referencing the experiences of family members living on one side of the partition between Israel and Gaza and the West Bank.
Attendees in opposition to putting the question on the fall ballot said the question was improperly worded since it doesn’tdirectly reference the 2015 state law, that approving it would needlessly divide Oak Park and even stoke antisemitism. Michael Zmora, an Israeli Oak Parker who said he’d previously worked on USAID funded peace projects connecting Palestinian, Lebanese, Jordanian and Israeli educator and youth, criticized the measure saying that the question was misleading.
“Practically speaking, the resolution in front of us is also misinformation,” he said “No individual’s first amendment right to boycott the state of Israel is currently infringed. The campaigners behind this statewide effort know that and have worded it to intentionally confuse the issue they actually care about, the reversal of an anti BDS bill that passed unanimously in 2015 which covers pension fund investments’ and the choice of companies they may invest in. But a question about pension fund investment management choices would not draw the numbers at the polls so here we are.”
Dima Khalidi, a Palestinian Oak Parker and local first-amendment lawyer, said international economic pressure on Israel is essential to ending the war and that the Illinois anti-boycotting law violates freedom of speech.
“Voting no is telling me as a Palestinian that I shouldn’t be allowed to demand accountability and equal rights for my people and I reject that,” she said. “Israel is the only country that we are told we’re not allowing to boycott, but it doesn’t stop there, because now states are copying those bills and passing laws that say, we can’t avoid top fossil fuel companies or arms companies or companies that don’t allow gender affirming care. This is a slippery slope.”
It’s now been two-and-a-half years since the war in Gaza began, while a fragile U.S.-brokered ceasefire has been in place since last October.
More than 71,000 Palestinians were killed between Oct. 7, 2023 and Jan. 28 of this year, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health. The majority of those casualties are believed to be civilians, according to Doctors Without Borders.
Around 2,000 Israelis have been killed since the start of the war, according to Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies. Most of that death toll comes from civilian casualties from Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attacks.