1. United States
2. Ohio
3. Letter

I am a constituent writing to you today to express my wild dismay at your yea vote on the recent House resolution declaring the protest chant, “From the river to the sea” as antisemitic speech and should be condemned. How shameful for you to support this ghastly and misinformed resolution. First, it flies in the face of the Constitution, even if it does not carry the legal wait of government censorship. This is not what good governance looks like. Second, that statement is actually originated from Zionists, prior to the the founding of Israel, and has been reclaimed by Palestinians to express their inalienable right to be free in their own land. It is NOT a call for extermination, it is a call for an end to a violent apartheid state that imprisons every single Palestinian in Israel, occupied West Bank, occupied Jerusalem and Gaza. It is a call to recognize the basic humanity of the Palestinian people. Just as the popular U.S. idiom “from sea to shining sea” was part of some of the original US colony’s charters, which then actively committed a mass genocide during the founding of the United States, “From the river to the sea” in Israeli history is a call for erasure, ethnic cleansing, and genocide of the Palestinian people. That you do not seem to understand this, shows that you have a massive opportunity to learn some history and DO BETTER. I’ve written to you previously to urge you to get off your hands and do something about U.S. complicity in this ongoing genocide. You’ve been reliably silent, and at this point I’ll be supporting a primary challenger against you in upcoming elections. Keep this up, and I guarantee you will see the relative ease of your previous elections evaporate. Representative Beatty, how will you reconcile this abdication of good governance with the will of the people? I’ve read that 70%, or more, of Democrat voters are against the current U.S. policies supporting the slaughter of innocents in Gaza. Why aren’t you aligned with the people who continue to put you in office? Why are you voting ‘yes’ on efforts to curtail free speech? Your legacy is at stake, and we will NOT forget. Please start acting accordingly.