Town Councilors Issue Nakba Remembrance Day Statement
Israeli airstrike on the El-Remal area in Gaza City. Photo: Naaman Omar / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0 DEED)
Source: Jill Brevik
Town Councilors Jill Brevik (District 1), Amber Cano-Martin (District 2), and Ana Devlin Gauthier (District 5) read the following statement in commemoration of Nakba Remembrance Day, at the Amherst Town Council meeting of May 18, 2026. The statement was also endorsed by Councilors Hala Lord (District 3) and Ellisha Walker (at large).
In honor of Nakba Remembrance Day, we recognize the ongoing genocide and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian and Lebanese people.
May 15, 2026 was the 78th commemoration of the Palestinian Nakba, meaning “catastrophe” in English, a term which refers to the violent dispossession and exile of more than 750,000 Palestinian people from their homeland in 1948 by Zionist militias, in order to form the state of Israel. For almost 8 decades, Palestinians, their culture, their resilience, and their suffering have been invisible in spaces like this town room.
Displacement, an ongoing nakba, is still the reality for millions of people today who have been forced to leave their homes again and again, in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza. In Lebanon as well (a country the size of Connecticut that is connected to Palestine by shared borders and traditions) villages are being ethnically cleansed and civilians are being killed on sight for leaving their homes. With US backing and weapons, the Israeli military continues to attack civilians, and has done so more than 2,400 times after the ceasefire that began in October 2025, in the same way that it has violated all ceasefires before that.
While the news cycle moves on, Gaza is in the longest period without relief aid, lasting 19 months. 1.1 million children remain at risk of starvation. There is not enough food; or fuel, which is necessary to run the desalination plants that provide Gaza’s drinking water, leaving 91% of the population to face acute water insecurity. More than 250,000 Palestinian and Lebanese people have been killed or severely injured since October 2023 (with some sources reporting much higher numbers) and all of our most trusted human rights organization have called these actions genocide, including the United Nations, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Doctors Without Borders, B’Tselem, the International Federation for Human Rights, Oxfam, Save the Children, and the International Association of Genocide Scholars.
Those killed by the US-backed Israeli military include the loved ones of Amherst community members. We see you, all of you, who have to go on, and who continue to show up for your community here in so many ways.
We are witness to the grief and pain of our neighbors who have been watching the news relentlessly for the past two and a half years to see if their loved ones are safe, who endure trauma responses from calling their father, or cousin, or aunt and hearing the phone ring and ring and go to voicemail. Who have family members who are still under the rubble in the south of Lebanon and in Gaza.
We also see those affected by rising anti-Islam and anti-Arab hate, yes, here: families in and around Amherst have endured racial slurs, property damage, and physical aggression. Residents have received threats and had events canceled because of their identity.
Several of us here are also connected to a school in Gaza, named the Sumud School, Sumud meaning “resilience” in English, and we receive regular communication from the teachers and students who have continued to educate and learn and play despite having been forcibly displaced multiple times, despite neighboring buildings being bombed, despite continuous deaths of parents, children, siblings, and friends in their community, despite having to reduce their school hours because the children and teachers were starving as a result of of Israel’s blockade of food and supplies, and did not have enough energy to continue into the afternoons. I think of them all the time, when I put my kids on the bus, and when we debate the school budget here.
I also think of the more than $40 billion our government has given or pledged to the Israeli military and spent on our own participation in these atrocities, when we talk about budget cuts and diminishing town services. I think of the white phosphorus and bombs we’ve helped purchase, the ecocide we’ve supported, when we talk about combatting climate change.
Simply marking this moment and telling these stories and the history behind them, are the types of actions that have helped the world wake up to what is happening. That the United States has been complicit, through Democrat and Republican administrations, and continues to be complicit in Israel’s ongoing nakba by providing Israel with weapons and diplomatic impunity even as its leaders openly describe and enact plans to ethnically cleanse and depopulate Palestinian and Lebanese communities today. And as we tune into news about US escalation in places like Iran, remember that this is enabled by our society’s general justification of, or ignorance to, war crimes in Palestine and Lebanon, as well as our media’s bias and complicity in their erasure.
The ongoing Nakba affects our community deeply. If you weren’t aware of this history, this day of remembrance, or its relevance to our community, there are endless opportunities to open your eyes, right here in our area. To my fellow councilors, our voices inherently carry louder than others–please take every opportunity to acknowledge these atrocities and support your constituents who are grieving, and advocate for the end of US involvement in this genocide. And to anyone listening, I urge you to reach out to me and I would be happy to connect you to one of the many groups expending tremendous energy to offer education, and who celebrate Palestinian and Lebanese culture while fighting for their freedom from oppression. Thank you.
Thank you!
Bravo, Jill, Amber and Ana. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. As a Jew and former Zionist, my soul is in agony over this ongoing atrocity. Israel has totally lost its way.
Glad to see leadership from new and veteran councilors!
Thank you.Jill, Amber and Ana for this statement and to the Indy for reprinting it. As a tax payer, it is really awful that there is public funding for the ongoing genocide in Gaza and the West Bank and in southern Lebanon. Yesterday was Shavout (May 21) and I was thinking about the idea of the “Peoples of the Book” in ancient times and the shared teachings in these texts about human decency and love. I didn’t learn about the Nakba growing up but in the last 15 years and now more than ever realize it is not just an historic and historical event but an ongoing present tragedy.
Thank you for your moral clarity and ethical leadership.
Thank you, Councilors Brevik, Cano-Martin, and Devlin Gauthier, for taking this initiative and writing this powerful statement. Particularly important is your reminder that the Nakba is by no means a thing of the past, but an ongoing horror that we must continue to bring to public attention, especially as it has been lrgely eclipsed in the news cycle. We must continue to call for U.S. defunding of the genocidal Israeli assaults on Gaza and the West Bank, and on Israel’s ongoing attempts to deploy what it calls its “Gaza model” ( Destroy, Displace, Dismantle) in Lebanon.
For those who missed the recent Nakba Memorial Ceremony sponsored by Combatants for Peace and the Parents Circle, the message that the Nakba is ongoing is nothing new. Yet for many diasporic Jews of a certain generation, coming to terms with the realities of the historic and current Nakba is challenging and provokes profound discomfort, sometimes to the point of existential threat. The weaponization of antisemitism, and the conflation of antisemitism with any criticism of Israeli policies all combine to threaten erasure of legitimate Palestinian aspirations. Thank you for this statement. The universal principles of justice, equality, freedom and especially safety should apply to everyone.
Toward a Local Governance of Inclusion, Not Division
It was reported in the May 20th edition of the Amherst Indy, that at the May 18 Town Council meeting, several of our councilors issued a statement commemorating Nakba Remembrance Day. It is entirely appropriate—indeed, it is vital—for a community as diverse and compassionate as Amherst to acknowledge the deep historical trauma, grief, and ongoing pain felt by our Palestinian neighbors. The human suffering currently unfolding in the Middle East is devastating, and the desire of our elected officials to express solidarity with those who are hurting comes from a place of deeply felt empathy.
However, the language, context and framing chosen for this statement raises a critical question about the role of municipal governance in times of global crisis. When local officials adopt highly polarized, one-sided characterizations of a profoundly complex international conflict, they risk alienating other members of our community who are carrying their own immense generational and immediate trauma.
The council’s statement understandably highlights the catastrophic displacement of Palestinians in 1948. Yet, by isolating this event from its broader historical context—including the foundational context of the Holocaust, the United Nations partition plan, and the simultaneous, and violent expulsion of nearly a million Jewish people from Arab nations during the very same era, the narrative becomes exclusionary rather than educational. Characterizing the complex history of Israel solely through the lens of “atrocities” ignores the reality of a nation built by refugees that has faced existential threats from its very inception.
More importantly, it impacts our neighbors here at home. Amherst is home to Jewish and Israeli residents who have spent the last several years watching the rise of global antisemitism with acute fear. Many have loved ones who were victims of the horrific violence of October 7, 2023, the deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust.
Furthermore, to understand the profound anxiety felt by Israeli and Jewish members of our community, one must acknowledge the harrowing daily reality Israel faces: a state under constant bombardment from almost every direction. Over the past few years, tens of thousands of rockets, missiles, and drones have been launched at Israeli towns and cities by hostile actors spanning multiple fronts—including Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, and direct strikes from Iran. This relentless barrage has displaced over one hundred thousand Israeli civilians from their homes, shattered daily life, and inflicted deep, continuous trauma on an entire nation.
When our local government issues proclamations that utilize inflammatory language without acknowledging these harsh realities, the trauma, and the fundamental security fears of the Jewish state, it signals to a segment of our town that their grief and their vulnerabilities are invisible to their elected representatives.
Tying complex international military defense spending to local municipal budget challenges is also a rhetorical stretch that misrepresents how local government works. The difficult choices our towns face regarding schools, roads, and services are structural local issues, not the result of Federal foreign policy. Suggesting otherwise distracts from the tangible, constructive work we must do together to strengthen Amherst’s infrastructure.
True progressive leadership does not require us to choose one community’s pain over another’s. It demands that we expand our circle of empathy to encompass both. The role of the Amherst Town Council should not be to adjudicate complex international conflicts or pass resolutions that mirror partisan talking points. Rather, its role is to ensure that every resident—regardless of their background, heritage, or faith—feels safe, valued, and heard within the town borders.
Let us remember history, the entire history and let us mourn for all who are affected by the ravages of this ongoing conflict. But let us do so in a way that brings Amherst together. We can support grieving Palestinian neighbors while simultaneously affirming the rights, history, safety, and acute trauma of our Jewish and Israeli neighbors.
In a world deeply fractured by conflict, let our local community be a place of nuance, mutual respect, and shared humanity.