Late last month, Jacob Frey, the Jewish mayor of Minneapolis, vetoed his city council’s resolution endorsing a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war, calling it “a one-sided resolution that adds more division to an already fraught situation.”
On Thursday, the council voted to override his veto, adopting a resolution that calls for a “permanent ceasefire” and places the war squarely “in the context of the 75-year displacement of Palestinians.”
Overridden but unbowed, Frey issued his own ceasefire proclamation. Like the council’s, it calls for an immediate ceasefire, the return of Israeli hostages and humanitarian aid for Gazans.
Unlike the council resolution, it specifically endorses a two-state solution, eliminates a call to end U.S. military aid to Israel and makes no reference to accusations in the International Criminal Court and elsewhere suggesting that Israel is carrying out genocide.
“It differs from the resolution passed by council in that it attempts to honor, uplift, and include Minneapolis residents across faiths,” Frey explained on Instagram. “We need more unity right now, and furthering [division] and hate at home does not help achieve peace abroad.”
The differences between the two proclamations are both subtle and pointed, and typify a fierce debate over “ceasefire,” a word that has come to carry a host of meanings and more emotional and political baggage than its plain definition implies.
As often happens in polarizing political debates, a term like “ceasefire” becomes toxic when it gets too closely associated with one side or the other. And because pro-Palestinian protesters were early in calling for a ceasefire, in some cases within days and even hours of the Oct. 7 attacks, and because many of their demands were seen as anti-Israel, even many Jewish progressives are avoiding the term.
Last week I spoke to Jews across the political spectrum, many eager for the bloodshed to end, about their relationship to the word “ceasefire.” Some are worried a premature ceasefire will undermine Israel’s genuine security needs. And others, like Frey, are trying to reclaim the word and imagine an end to the fighting that serves the interests of both Israelis and Palestinians.
“This war will end with a negotiated ceasefire — that’s how the world works,” Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, told me. “What matters greatly is what comes after. The hostages have to be released. And I think who governs Gaza after the cessation of hostilities is really important.”
