We the undersigned call for the resignation of  Will Greer (D – Bennington-2), Matthew Birong (D – Addison-3), James Gregoire (R – Franklin-6), Sarah “Sarita” Austin (D – Chittenden-19), and Gina Galfetti (R – Washington-Orange). These five state legislators joined the “50 States, One Israel” trip to an apartheid state that is carrying out genocide in Gaza. They planted a Vermont flag on a destroyed Palestinian village, tying our state to occupation, dispossession, and ethnic cleansing. 

All their expenses–flights, housing, and food–were paid for by the Israeli state. The five claimed their trip was a “fact finding mission.” It was nothing of the sort. They did not meet with any Israeli human rights organizations like B’Tselem or international ones like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, let alone Palestinian representatives or scholars. All these would have welcomed the opportunity to educate the legislators about Israel’s history of colonization, ethnic cleansing, and apartheid as well as the genocide it is committing today. But instead, the five met exclusively with Israeli government officials and propagandists. 

Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, in consultation with the Zionist Shalom Alliance, chose these politicians because they support Israel’s genocidal war. His representatives gave them talking points to justify mass murder, which they repeated in interviews and on Vermont Edition, instructed them to campaign against Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions legislation, and encouraged them to introduce bills that define any criticism of the state of Israel as antisemitic. 

They will no doubt follow their instructions. Four of the five are already sponsors of a bill, H.310, crafted by the Shalom Alliance. They claim the bill combats antisemitism in schools, a laudable goal that any anti-racist would support. But the bill does not do this. Instead, it mandates that teachers and students conform to a pro-Israel narrative, which defines Jews as Palestine’s indigenous people, effectively turning its actual indigenous people, Palestinians, into settlers or undocumented immigrants deserving of expulsion. It would thus require schools to promote Israeli apartheid, which denies equal rights for Palestinians within its borders and occupied territories. 

These legislators do not represent the majority of Vermonters but are part of a shrinking Zionist minority. No person of conscience would have tolerated such a trip to South Africa under apartheid or to Germany amidst the Holocaust. So, we should not tolerate this trip to a pariah state violating Jewish values, killing tens of thousands of Palestinians, and destroying their homes, schools, and hospitals. These five legislators have implicated our state in one of the greatest crimes against humanity in history. All five should resign immediately. 

We encourage everyone else in the statehouse to set an alternative and positive example by endorsing and voting for H.168, which would protect our first amendment rights, and also the proposed Apartheid Free Communities bill. Such legislation can redeem the state’s reputation, a proud one set by its opposition to apartheid in South Africa. Now, amidst a genocide, we owe the same to the Palestinian people.