Berkeley commissioner removed over Israel divestment resolution

[Ariadna: What was the Commissioner thinking proposing an Israel divestment resolution? Didn’t she realize it would create a “turmoil in the city”? What did she mean by saying “the people and the Commission were supportive”? Does she think that’s who the “city” is?!? Couldn’t she take a hint from “Zach”? The Mercury News has the story below.]

BERKELEY — Cheryl Davila didn’t realize that she had waded into a minefield when she wrote a Human Welfare and Community Action Commission resolution calling for city divestment in Israel. Davila was removed from the commission by Councilman Darryl Moore just before the panel took up the issue on Sept. 16.

Davila said she wrote the resolution after reading about the 2014 military operation in Gaza, during which more than 2,000 Palestinians and some 70 Israelis lost their lives. She had also recalled that Berkeley had been among the first entities to divest from the apartheid state of South Africa decades earlier.

In part, the resolution asks the city manager to “examine the feasibility of divesting all city of Berkeley direct holdings in companies complicit in ongoing violations of human rights and international law under Israel’s military occupation of Palestinian territories.”

Davila, appointed to the commission by Moore in 2009, expressed surprise at her removal.

“I was just acting out of being appalled by what was happening,” she said, adding that Moore told her in a phone conversation that he would take her off the commission if she didn’t withdraw the resolution.

“He also stated that it wouldn’t get past City Council and that it would create turmoil in the city and that I should have run it by him first,” she said.

Moore, who has since replaced Davila with Nicole Drake Lau, spouse of his legislative aide Ryan Lau and former legislative assistant to Vice Mayor Linda Maio, told this newspaper the primary reason for Davila’s removal was her “lack of transparency.”

“I ask my commissioners when they are working on anything controversial to communicate it to me,” he said, adding that, despite Davila working on the question for almost a year, she had not discussed it with him.

Furthermore, Moore said he’d talked to City Attorney Zach Cowan, who said the issue was not within the purview of the Human Welfare Commission, which generally addresses issues of local poverty.

Davila countered that the issue extends to local Palestinian refugees who cannot return to their homeland. She further argued that Moore had never asked her to share her commission work with him.

While he hadn’t seen the resolution, Moore said as far as he knew, “It’s not something I would have supported.” Davila said she was formally told of her removal by a staff person just before the meeting.

“It saddens me, because I put a lot of time and effort into the city,” Davila said. “The people on the commission are supportive.”

Davila said she hopes to be reappointed to the commission in a slot reserved for commissioners to select their colleagues.

Some 100 people attended the commission meeting, with most in favor of the resolution and just three speaking against it, according to Noah Sochet, former chairman of the Peace and Justice Commission, who helped author the resolution.

Supportive organizations include Jewish Voice for Peace, American Friends Service Committee and the Middle East Children’s Alliance.

Among local groups opposed to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement to divest in Israel is Stand With Us, which calls the effort “fundamentally anti-Semitic” and explains it as “a global growing propaganda campaign designed to erode support for Israel, isolate it as the pariah of nations, and marshal international forces to delegitimize and eventually eliminate the Jewish state by persuading the international community that Israel has no right to exist or defend itself.”

The commission sent the resolution to a subcommittee and could include it in its Oct. 21 agenda.