Swalwell Continues to Disappoint During Town Hall

Representative Swalwell held a virtual Town Hall where he continued to make excuses for not calling for a ceasefire.

At 4pm on Tuesday, December 12th, Representative Eric Swalwell held a virtual Town Hall for constituents of Congressional District 14. He appeared in a white shirt and blue tie from Washington DC. Over his shoulder was a cowboy hat, the seal of the Central Intelligence Agency, and a cross, along with other bric-a-brac. The Town Hall didn’t have an official focus beyond a year-end roundup of his Congressional achievements, of which there were few highlighted.

Over the hour or so that focused explicitly on Gaza and Palestine, Representative Swalwell made his position as clear as he was going to make it. With that in mind, let’s take a look at some of what Swalwell had to say and give some context to his claims.

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Defining a Ceasefire

A point Swalwell continues to return to is the definition of a ceasefire. He defines it as: All Israeli hostages returned and the surrender of Hamas.

If, as Israel and the US seem to want to, we define this conflict as being between Israel and Hamas, Swalwell’s definition of a “ceasefire” is actually an Israeli military victory. Which, if that’s what you want to push for, fine. But call a spade a spade.

It’s worth pointing out that the Miriam Webster Dictionary defines it in much simpler terms: “1. A military order to cease firing or 2. A suspension of active hostilities.” That’s all anyone has been calling for from the beginning. It lays the groundwork for what everyone in the US claims that they want: the return of hostages, the end of innocents being killed, the return of humanitarian aid, the dissolution of Hamas. None of that can be achieved while the bombs are falling.

Representative Swalwell, this is what your constituents are asking for. It was productive when it happened and it’s worth noting that there has been ample evidence that both Hamas and Israel worked to violate it. However, if you actually value innocent Palestinian and Israeli lives, you would call for another ceasefire without qualifiers.

Any Innocent Palestinian Life

At multiple points Representative Swalwell asserted that he “values any innocent Palestinian life” in Gaza. As of this writing, the death toll in Gaza is at least 19,500 people, of whom over 7,700 are children and over 5,000 of whom are women. Over 52,000 have been injured, of whom over 8,600 are children and over 6,300 are women. That’s an unacceptable number of innocent Palestinian lives ended by the Israeli bombing.

If Representative Swalwell truly valued innocent Palestinian lives, he would call for a ceasefire. He continues to argue that Israel has a right to defend itself and that Hamas has inserted itself into the civilian population, and even assuming all of that is true, the appropriate thing to do militarily would be to engage in targeted operations that minimize the deaths of innocent people. Instead, Swalwell appears to be completely okay with almost 20,000 dead civilians being the cost of “rooting out” Hamas.

When he was accused of not demonstrating empathy, his continued support of this kind of brutal military operation was likely the reason why. Anyone who truly values innocent life would be doing whatever was within their power to stop the ongoing murder of innocents that has been the defining factor of this conflict.

What is Zionism?

One of the things that constituents called out was Swalwell’s vote on H.Res. 894. Specifically, the portion that claims the House of Representatives “clearly and firmly states that anti-Zionism is antisemitism.” Swalwell voted in favor of this Resolution. When pressed on why, Swalwell insisted that Zionism means different things to different people, holding up a copy of the New York Times with a headline asking the question “Is Anti-Zionism Always Antisemitic?”

Zionism is a nationalistic ideology that emerged to enable the establishment of a Jewish ethnostate in Palestine. This pretty explicitly makes it a colonial effort and calls for the seizure of Palestinian land in favor of a Jewish state. There’s a long history about how it happened and how it was 100% the fault of the British who mostly wanted to get rid of European Jews who were disproportionately fighting for organized labor and also to put a European eye on the Middle East after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, all based on a paternalistic view that White people deserve self-rule and self-determination but everyone else needs to be managed or governed for their own good.

But does Israel have a right to exist in its current form? Right now it is, without exaggeration, an apartheid state. The extreme segregation has been well-documented from the fact that there are certain streets that Palestinians aren’t allowed to walk on to the checkpoints and segregated lines in customs. Whether you believe an Israeli state should exist or not, you have to admit that the current form of it is deplorable.

Also, if you can’t be anti-Zionist without being anti-Semitic, it’s weird that there are a LOT of anti-Zionist Jews out there. As one Jewish Palestinian journalist from The Electronic Intifada stated in an interview, anyone who claims to speak for all Jews is anti-Semitic.

Is Israel an Apartheid State?

I mean, if you define it narrowly as the specific segregated government that existed in South Africa until 1994, then obviously not. But if you take the idea of, broadly, a white colonial ethnostate denying members of the local indigenous community representation in government affairs, it feels pretty close. If you take all of historic Palestine together, there are currently about 7,500,000 Israelis and just under 6,000,000 Palestinians. However, by territory controlled, Palestinians control 22% of the land (falling every day with continued illegal settlements).

Palestinian movement is controlled within Israel, and Israel has had the Gaza Strip under siege for over a decade. They control how much food, water, electricity; everything that goes in and out. So, it’s hard to think that any of this is particularly democratic or even desirable.

Also, when it comes to whether or not it’s genocide, even Time, hardly a leftist or hippy-dippy publication, interviewed many experts on genocide and even if they don’t technically agree that it meets the legal definition of a genocide, it’s definitely on a path to genocide or “genocide-adjacent”. And honestly, if we’re splitting hairs that hard it’s just plain wrong.

Aggressive Listening

One thing that Swalwell continually brought up was how “complicated” things are in the “Middle East” (which is code for Israel without saying that Israel is a large part of the problem). And, because it’s so complicated, he is dedicated to Aggressive Listening™. Which, if it were actually complicated and not time-sensitive, would be fine.

But it seems really cut and dried: Israel shouldn’t exist in its current form (in the same way that the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand shouldn’t exist) but it does. We can’t fix that, but we can (just like in the US) make it less awful. The very least we could do would be to stop bombing innocent people. This, quite honestly, should not be difficult. Almost 20,000 innocent people have been killed by Israelis. Nobody should be okay with this.

Also, the idea that Swalwell has an open mind on the subject is really called into question when he gets $30,000 all-expenses paid trips to Israel from the J Street Education Fund. Sure, he probably gets money from Islamic organizations, but was it $30,000? Was it a flight with a propaganda-filled tour of a known hotbed of conflict? I’m willing to bet not. It’s also worth noting that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) was the number 3 contributor to his campaign for 2022. Not to mention any other “definitely not lobbying” that “(c)3”s like J Street engage in.

Conclusion

After looking at his claims and taking the time to fact-check him, is Eric Swalwell truly as “independent on this” as he claims? In this one case, Eric Swalwell has it correct: It’s “your right to decide what all of that means.”