Did you hear the good news? Portland City Council has fixed the situation in the Middle East! By taking the courageous step of pulling our considerable largesse from funding the only meaningful tragedy happening in the world, our brave council has turned the tides of history. Rejoice, Portland! Gather your spent fentanyl needles from the ground and throw them in celebration! Dance in our crumbling streets! Surely, this stone thrown into the Casco Bay shall create a mighty tidal wave that will crush the evil Zionist occupation. Look upon this resolution, ye tyrants, and lament! This wise body has turned its all-seeing eye to the world outside where it fights for the oppressed (sorry Uyghurs, Sudanese, Armenians, Congolese, Haitians … get a TikTok!).

I apologize. Do I sound a little salty? I often process my hurt with sarcasm. Let me restart in a way that is more productive.

Though I disagree, I understand that some look at the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians and see one aggressor and one victim and want to make sure they do not support the aggressor. This is a complex conflict that looks very different depending on where you stand. Personally, I find divestment as a tool to be myopic, counterproductive and biased. But there is no point in arguing that; the vote has already happened. We need to discuss the way that it happened.

On Tuesday night last week, members of the Jewish community in Maine gathered on a Zoom call to mourn the Israeli hostages recently murdered by Hamas. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to anyone on that call, the Portland City Council was preparing a vote for the next afternoon to divest funds from entities with any ties to Israel.

Many members of the community of Portlanders most likely to oppose divestment – the Jewish community – did not know it was even under consideration until a few hours before the vote. Many of the most eloquent voices in our community were unable to attend on such short notice. The supporters, however, seemed amply prepared. Draped in uniform keffiyeh, they packed City Hall before the gavel fell. With gory visual aids and well-prepared speeches they dominated the conversation, leaving the impression that the whole city was behind them. When the final vote came, unanimously in favor of the measure, it was clear that the fix had been in.

For the past several years, Portlanders have been treated to multiple lessons about inclusivity from this council. When the time came to include diverse voices that may not agree with them, their duplicity became clear. Compared to the fighting between Israelis and Palestinians, this is, of course, small potatoes, but this is our community. And how we make decisions matters. This measure will do nothing to ease the suffering in Gaza, but now there is hurt, anger and division in our city. It did not have to be this way.

Councilors could have reached out to Jewish voices beyond the attention-seeking fringes to understand their perspective on divestment. Failing that, they could have given some time to prepare. Why the rush? Was there an imminent IDF attack that relied on our city’s pension fund?

No. Because in a fitting coda to this farce, it turns out Portland has not a single dollar invested in Israel. We spent more on the printouts for the meeting than we invest in Israel. Taking a page from the playbook of shoddy governments around the world, the council used Israel for a quick win to distract from its own failures.

A fair process that heard all voices and reached the same result would have been upsetting, but not so gutting. Far from the Jewish ethic of tikkun olam, repairing the world, a message so many of the divestment advocates stood on, the actions of City Council and the whole sordid way it went down has only further broken the world by further breaking our community.

Portland City Council and Mayor Dion owe this city answers as to why they saw fit to use their time and our resources on a divisive and purely symbolic vote, and how they were so captured by one interest group that they ran roughshod over another. While they are at it, maybe they could tell us which groups are up next. I expect no answers will be forthcoming. Hopefully they will hear answers of another kind from the voters this November.