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On Sept. 9, at City Council, Tom Bates acted in a way that will damage his political career as mayor of Berkeley. Before this date, few will remember that Bates, with former Mayor Hancock, U.S. Senator Cranston, and then-Legislative honcho Willie Brown—all key Democrats—worked hard to defeat a Palestinian West Bank sister city resolution in Berkeley in 1988. Backed by big money, some of it from the Rightist American-Israeli lobby which unquestioningly supports all Israeli policy no matter how egregious, the Democratic Party machine interfered in Berkeley politics to trash the Jabaliyah resolution put on the ballot by 19,000 citizens. “We have a better way” to peace, they wrote in their glossy mailers. But the rest of us—whether Jews, Palestinians or other Americans of goodwill—are still waiting for the party’s “better way.” That fraud reminds one of Bush’s Iraq policies. As we wait, presidential front-runner Howard Dean has said his views are closer to the Rightist Israeli lobby—which has given over $120 million to the Democrats in a decade—than to the broad Israeli peace movement which seeks a just two-state solution.  

We have been waiting to hear when the Democratic leaders here in Berkeley will stop being the sycophants of the Israeli Right and call for an even-handed approach against impunity and in support of the rights of all peoples there through a U.N.-enforced peace rather than a yearly $8 billion blank check in U.S. tax dollars that supports State terror against the Palestinians.  

Now, 15 years later, Bates, who claims he wants to stay out of such “divisive” issues, emerges to “meddle in foreign policy” on the side of impunity. Bates opposed the City Council resolution endorsing Congressional House Resolution 111 that seeks a full U.S. investigation of the death of peace activist Rachel Corrie by a U.S.-supplied Israeli Army bulldozer. Then he turned around and voted in support of an Olds-Hawley resolution, backed by Israeli government supporters. The defeated resolution called for amending the Congressional resolution to investigate the deaths of all Americans in that region, an action one councilmember pointed out could assure that Corrie’s death not be investigated in our lifetime.  

Tom Bates, in voting for that latter resolution rather than abstaining or voting against both seemed to contradict his statements that he doesn’t want such “divisive” and “external” issues to damage the effectiveness of Berkeley’s City Council. But the sense that Bates was in contradiction is a mirage. We want to believe that people like Bates and Hancock have more political independence and integrity than, say, Bush or Clinton, and can vote their consciences. We expect more from local politicians than from state and national figures who depend upon tens of millions in campaign contributions. And we should.  

But it ain’t so.  

Mr. Bates, like Rumsfeld and Ashcroft, who fraudulently promote war at incalculable cost to the world, is duplicitous and should resign. You know he won’t. But Tom will later have to face reelection on a record that endorses the Israeli right wing and fails to speak out against the policies of U.S. neo-fascists like Kissinger, Wolfowitz, Perle, and other Bush Rightists. Those policies are causing incalculable suffering to the Palestinian and Iraqi people, and to our nation. We are responsible. As Max Anderson, describing a horrifying experience as a GI in Vietnam told City Council, it’s just like what I saw in Vietnam.  

Note: Hon. Barbara Lee is one of the signers of HR 111 which City Council voted to endorse 5:4 over the mayor’s opposition.