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© 2026 The Somerville Times. All rights reserved.
(The opinions and views expressed in the commentaries and letters to the Editor of The Somerville Times belong solely to the authors and do not reflect the views or opinions of The Somerville Times, its staff or publishers)
By Evan James Fontana
Fifty-five percent of Somervillians who voted on November 4 voted ‘Yes’ on Question 3: “Shall the Mayor of Somerville and all Somerville elected leaders be instructed to end all current city business and prohibit future city investments and contracts with companies as long as such companies engage in business that sustains Israel’s apartheid, genocide, and illegal occupation of Palestine?”
Now, as the low-turnout results settle, we owe it to ourselves to think critically: is this initiative rooted in independent judgment, or are we importing someone else’s agenda at our community’s expense? This isn’t about choosing sides in distant conflicts. It’s about whether Somerville’s public policy should be outsourced to activist networks with shifting priorities, simplistic narratives rooted in Soviet propaganda, and no accountability to our City’s needs and budget.
The ’Yes’ campaign misled voters by telling them Question 3 was symbolic and would have no effect on the City and their community because it was non-binding, all the while planning to press the matter later as if it were binding. Moreover, it used deliberately vague language that encompasses virtually any company doing business in or with Israel. Promotional materials highlighted Caterpillar, which provides equipment used to pave our roads and even the City’s backup generators, and HP, which provides laptops to Somerville Public School students, while referencing nameless “large multi-national corporations.” The organizers’ social media proudly touts affiliation with the international BDS movement, which publishes an ever-changing list of “complicit” companies—including Disney, Facebook, Caterpillar, Volvo, Hyundai, Komatsu, Apple, Google, Amazon, OpenAI (ChatGPT), Microsoft – even Pizza Hut.
The practical absurdity becomes clear when they demand ending the City’s contract with HP, ignoring that Intel, AMD, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Lenovo, and IBM, along with most major tech companies, have significant operations in Israel and are also on the BDS divestment list. Should Somerville be subject to an outside organization’s radical agenda that conflicts with our City building schools, paving streets, and maintaining critical infrastructure, let alone in a fiscally responsible manner? Those behind Question 3 would rather sacrifice our City and students at the altar of their misguided crusade.
The extremism demanded by such organizations has already taken root locally. Activists occupy Tatte because its founder is Israeli-American, despite Panera now owning the chain, along with Life Alive. Similar pressure already drove medical device company KMC Systems (now HiArc) out of Cambridge’s Central Square. They demonstrated outside Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center’s pediatric wing in New York, ranked second nationally for pediatric care. Mass General could face similar protests for lifesaving partnerships with Israeli medical technology. When activist lists replace informed policymaking, essential services suffer and communities lose the ability to govern themselves.
Cities cannot be governed by viral hashtags. Procurement, pension decisions, and municipal contracts require stability and fiduciary duty. If Somerville follows BDS investment logic, our public workers’ retirement funds would miss opportunities like Caterpillar’s 231% stock growth over the past five years. NVIDIA, a BDS target and the world’s first $5 trillion company, is tripling its Israel investment and just welcomed back an employee held hostage for 738 days. Nope, that’s off limits. Our dedicated teachers, firefighters, police officers, and city employees deserve secure retirements, not ideology-driven boycotts. A city budget isn’t moral theater—it’s a promise to those who keep this city running. If symbolic gestures mattered more than results, we’d boycott China and protest an actual genocide in Sudan.
I know Somerville voters value justice, compassion, and competence. We can care about human rights while recognizing that discriminatory business targeting isn’t sound municipal policy. True leadership means thinking for ourselves and resisting pressure from outside groups that don’t bear the costs of their demands. The campaign’s organizers claim Question 3 reflects community values. Yet its targets, its language, and its pivots reveal a campaign following outside directives rather than local judgment, measuring success in moral theater and hate rather than improved outcomes.
The vote happened. Question 3 was non-binding. Mayor-Elect Jake Wilson has stated publicly that implementation is not legal, as confirmed by the City Solicitor. Still, the Yes on Question 3 campaign is relentlessly pushing implementation, as we saw at the previous city council meeting (11/13). We must speak up. We must encourage our leaders to reject this imported extremism, hate, and financial recklessness. The most morally principled path forward protects Somerville’s ability to govern responsibly, invest wisely, and act with independent integrity. Our City Council should affirm that Somerville sets its own priorities based on facts, fairness, and long-term impact—not on who’s targeted by this week’s internet-driven boycott.
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Yet another pro-israel genocide apologist doing anything they can to cope with the fact that they are the actual extremists. The vote on question three represents the American position on our government’s unconditional support for Israel.
The bleating about this election being “low turnout” is pathetic. Your side lost fully on the merits. You had huge sums of money from zionist orgs outside somerville. You could afford polished, focus-grouped ads that artfully dodged talking about the core issue of support for the Genocidal regime in israel. Yet you still lost because Somerville voters are smarter than you gave them credit for.
What galvanizes me in chilly times like this are the brave citizens who dare to stand up against supposed “progressive” backlash to support hapless and helpless multinational corporations worth billions of dollars.
And nothing quite thrills my stone-dead heart like the sound of implied bribes that whispers lovingly “231% stock growth” over any of my remotest inclination to value lives more than money.
This and my derision of the endorsement by the Somerville Educators Union of the Palestinian Solidarity Question (AKA, Question 3) over clearly much more sensible and egalitarian calls for elevating only Jewish and other voices that unquestioningly heed the clarion call of Zionism are what keep me warm on these icy Massachusetts holidays when my doorbells are only visited by daring spiders.
The rightwing Netanyahu regime may be guilty of war crimes but they are most certainly NOT guilty of “genocide.” That is a loaded word deliberately used against the Jewish state by those who wish to liken them to Nazis. It’s use speaks volumes about who the real haters are, because the only ones who were guilty of mass murder simply because of the identity of the victims was not Israel but Hamas.
Bravo, Mr. Fontana! So well stated. The virtue signaling idiocy that wastes Somerville taxpayer dollars should be infuriating to any clear thinking adult.
Dylan
Both your tone and choice of words serve to rip that mask off your face…but no, of course you aren’t full of anti-Semitic hatred…not at all – right?
“Genocidal regime in israel.
pro-israel genocide apologist
huge sums of money from zionist orgs”
It seems the author is accurate in their analysis the activists of the city are hellbent on implementing this without any regard to the effects on the city and its citizens. I didn’t realize how involved the USSR was with cultivating the genocide, colonial, and apartheid claims and appreciate the sources to learn more. The comments above and the usual language I hear at City council and around the city echoes the information provided. Less interested in debating the content of the article, and just a lazy, blanket statement.
I once interviewed for a job in Somerville.
The way the question or the ballot proposition was written is Clearly prejudicial to a fair vote
The only genocide in Gaza was the genocide of the truth. The use of the term genocide is particularly offensive to Jews, who actually experienced one Nazi Germany. There was a genocide in Rwanda. There was an Armenian genocide. Nothing resembles this in Gaza.
Furthermore, Israel is not apartheid. Arabs in Israel Represent 45% of all pharmacist and 16% of the students at Tel Aviv university. The Netanyahu government is nationalist and has aggressively defended the country against attacks on seven fronts, but it is neither far right nor overly aggressive. Some say it has been too cautious in pursuing Israel’s aims against jihadist enemies such as Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas.
If you’re hating Israel, you’re hating the west. You’re hating civilization. You’re hating the Jews. That’s what it’s all about.
“If you’re hating Israel, you’re hating the west. You’re hating civilization.” 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Oh David Street, your unironic and unapologetic ethnocentric statements have so rejuvenated my spirit with laughter❣️
Thank you for dispensing with any pretense and just being your authentic self 🙏
Yes, yes,, “a progressive Jewish-American,” don’t ever let statements of fact stop you from falsely accusing someone of antisemitism❣️
We real “progressives” must stick together in our refusal in acknowledging the authority of such well-known international and Israeli human-rights organizations, such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Doctors without Borders, B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (https://www.timesofisrael.com/in-first-two-major-israeli-human-rights-groups-accuse-israel-of-genocide-in-gaza/), when they conclude that Israel’s “unprecedented destruction of civilians, deliberate starvation, and mass forced displacement” amount to genocide.
We must also vehemently deny that a group that was effectively funded by the ADL to the tune of over $200,000 garnered “huge sums of money from zionist orgs” (https://www.cambridgeday.com/2025/10/10/somerville-kills-well-funded-bid-to-remove-palestine-boycott-measure-from-ballot/), because the fact that the opposition (AKA, Somerville for Palestine) only received a quarter of the donations SUAD did but still won the Yes-on-3 would might just show that more Somerville voters care about human rights (to the tune of 11,599 vs 7,992 votes: https://www.somervillema.gov/votesomerville), as they did in divesting from prison labor and the South African apartheid regime.
So, let’s get busy replacing facts with smears, because why would anyone want to sit with the realization that they have become the present embodiment of the very evil that channeled fear, ignorance, bigotry and ethnocentrism to justify an almost successful eradication of world Jewry less than a century ago?
Concerned Citizens for Billionaires”
One comment and one question:
Sorry to rain on your parade of self-righteousness and equally sorry to pull the rug out from under your easy assumptions- but it just so happens that i believe Israel has committed serious war crimes in Gaza.
And here’s a question for you and your fellow apologists in” Somerville for Palestine.” Why can’t/won’t you simply condemn Hamas’ massacre of over 1,200 mostly unarmed civilians Oct 7, 2023? Until you-along with that oh so moral organization of Hamas apologists – can muster up the human decency to speak out against such depravities, you don’t have a moral leg to stand on! Now go ahead and dodge my question, change the subject and once again display your mind boggling hypocrisy!
And feel free to have the last word….you’re not worth any more of my time
@a progressive Jewish-American
You are the one reflexively changing the subject here. When demonstrated that all credible international organizations and even Israeli human rights groups agree Israeli is committing genocide you cry “What about Hamas?”
Your response demonstrates a genuinely absurd lack of self awareness. You are doing genocide denial. you are the one without a moral leg to stand on here.