With her refusal this week to acknowledge the Hamas terrorist organization as, in fact, a terrorist organization, Boston City Councilor Tania Fernandes Anderson has scored a bad decisions hat trick.
It started with hiring her sister and son to City Hall positions, a conflict of interest violation, and worsened with her pushing for a $31M cut to the BPD this summer.
On Wednesday, she used a Boston City Council meeting to describe the Hamas terrorist organization as a “militant group” and characterized the attack that killed over 1,400 Israelis, among them women, children and babies, as a “military operation.”
This white-washing of Hamas’ atrocities in the guise of a “military operation” is shamefully popular among far-left progressives. The brutal killings, including the murders of children, women and the elderly are at best “unacceptable,” but Israel’s defense against such slaughter is deemed reprehensible.
As the Herald reported, the resolution filed by Fernandes Anderson calling for de-escalation and a cease-fire in Israel and “occupied Palestine” was in response to one filed earlier in the week by Councilor Michael Flaherty, who wanted to condemn “Hamas and their brutal terrorist acts against Israel.”
It’s inconceivable that a resolution to condemn terrorist acts would get pushback, but the progressive agenda is never at a loss for audacity.
In slamming Israel’s policies, Fernandes Anderson noted: “If you’re killing innocent children, in my eyes, you’re a terrorist. I don’t know what ethnicity you are, what religion you are. No matter what, you’re a terrorist. You’re a horrible person.”
We’ve seen the photos of children’s bedroom walls splattered with blood, seen the cribs soaked in it, and heard from those on the ground in Israel describe the scenes of horror after Hamas terrorists unleashed hell on Oct. 7. As the Israeli Defense Force told CNN, women, children, toddlers and elderly were “brutally butchered in an ISIS way of action.”
Did Fernandes Anderson miss the video of Shani Louk, the young German Israeli tattoo artist taken hostage by Hamas at the music festival? Footage showed the terrorists parading her near-naked body through the streets in the back of a pickup truck.
Hamas has executed other hostages. These acts more than tick off the boxes of what Fernandes Anderson considers terrorist behavior.
And when calling for a “cease-fire,” does that include the rockets launched by Hamas from Gaza? As NPR reported, more than 5,000 have been launched into Israel since the Hamas attacks began, according to the Israeli military. Or is the cease-fire just for Israel?
Though her comments were met with derision, Fernandes Anderson did get media juice out of the moment, and earned more cred with the chanting set.
At the end of the day, both resolutions were sent to the Committee of the Whole for a public hearing, after objections to a vote being taken Wednesday.
All par for the course for our city council. Resolutions and ideas, no matter how worthy, are too often hamstrung by far-left agendas.
