[Updated to reflect current status of Fairfax County Economic Development Authority operations in Tel Aviv, which were shuttered on June 30.]
Several speakers at the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors’ July 30 meeting criticized board members for not weighing in on current fighting between Israel and Hamas forces in and around Gaza.
Nicholas Ferlazzo compared the conflagration with eras in the past – the slavery era, Holocaust, U.S. civil-rights movement and South African apartheid – when people had to make clearcut moral choices.
Ferlazzo took the Board of Supervisors to task, saying most members had refused to meet with pro-Palestinian group members. He asked that the board not only pass a formal motion supporting a ceasefire between the warring parties, but full divestment from Israel by the Fairfax County Economic Development Authority.
“Failure to do so will damn you in the eyes of your electorate and in the eyes of posterity, whose judgment will be harsh and absolute,” Ferlazzo said.
The EDA formerly had a presence, but not an office, in Tel Aviv via contract only, a county spokesman later told the GazetteLeader. The EDA is no longer contracted with that person as of June 30, he said.
Dr. Tariq Haddad, a cardiologist in the county who grew up in Gaza and has hundreds of family members there, also weighed in at the Board of Supervisors' meeting.
“I’ve had more than 130 of my family members killed in Gaza, including physicians, pharmacists, lawyers, engineers [and] dozens and dozens of children,” he said.
After reciting harrowing stories from some of those friends and family members, Haddad also asked the board to pass a ceasefire resolution.
“This is not taking sides,” he said. “This is recognizing that all life matters.”
The Fairfax governing body is among a number across Northern Virginia targeted by pro-Palestinian activists.
At least four times this year, those forces have turned up at Arlington County Board meetings with essentially the same demands delivered in Fairfax.
Until they take a stand, county leaders are guilty of “material complicity,” said Aasim Rawoot, who led a delegation to push for a ceasefire resolution at the Arlington body’s July 22 meeting.
Earlier this year it appeared activists might have had a shot at getting something out of Arlington leaders, but board members apparently decided among themselves behind the scenes that they were not going to get involved.
“We don’t do foreign policy,” County Board Chairman Libby Garvey said in response to Rawoot’s comments.
“Were there something we could do now that would make things better, we would do it,” said Garvey, the only board member to respond to the request. “Nothing we could do now would make it better.”
– Scott McCaffrey contributed to this report.
