Colorado lawmakers with close ties to Israel and Gaza say they are cautiously optimistic the ceasefire agreement and hostage release announced Wednesday will hold and there will be peace in the region.
Democratic Sen. Iman Jodeh of Aurora, the state’s first Palestinian American lawmaker, has family living in the West Bank. She said she hopes nothing goes wrong in the 42-day implementation plan while logistical details are sorted out.
“This is the most optimistic I've felt in the past 15 months, and I think the reason for that is because both parties have really come to the table with an understanding of what the next 42 days will look like,” said Jodeh.
In December of 2023, Jodeh helped organize dozens of current and former Democratic state lawmakers, and other local officials, non-profits and religious leaders, to call on Colorado’s congressional delegation to push for a bilateral ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. She said under the new agreement, justice and human rights truly need to prevail, especially in Gaza.
“It's incredibly important that humanitarian aid and rebuilding begin immediately, and that the hostages are returned to their families,” she told CPR News. “We need to make sure that the devastation and destruction never happens again.”
Democratic Sen. Dafna Michaelsen Jenet of Commerce City was born in Israel, where most of her family still lives. She too hopes this is a turning point.
“When the news came through, I jumped up and down and then I was like, okay, okay, hold it in, hold it in. You’ve got to wait and see until the hostages come home.”
She said she won’t fully celebrate until that happens.
“Tortured is the word that I can use for how I feel about what's going on in Israel every day, and what's going on in Gaza," said Michaelson Jenet. "I feel like Hamas has put us all in a perpetual stage of distress.”
Hamas’s surprise attack on Oct. 7, 2023, killed more than 1,200 people, mostly Israelis. Another 250 were taken hostage. Israel’s military campaign in response has killed more than 45,000 Palestinians, according to health officials in Gaza.
“Peace is always a good solution,” said Republican state Rep. Ron Weinberg, who is Jewish and has ties to Israel. His aunt and uncle’s home is in the village of Metula in northern Israel, not far from the border with Lebanon, which, when the war first broke out, was under the control of the Iranian-backed militia Hezbollah. He said they haven’t been home since.
Weinberg said he hopes the hostages will be returned and families will be able to live in harmony again, but he feels like the war’s impact on individual lives will linger, even far from the Middle East. He said the pain of the antisemitism he’s felt in the state Capitol building since Oct. 7th won’t ever go away.
“We forget that we're a hated people because incidents don't happen for so long, and then we get targeted and then here comes the hate. Here comes the antisemitism all over again, to almost remind us that the Jewish people are a hated people,” he said. “It's harmful and hurtful.”
When Colorado lawmakers returned to the capitol for the start of the legislative session earlier this month, the war in Gaza was not front and center. That was a change from the start of the 2024 session, when a former lawmaker was reprimanded after joining an earlier pro-Palestinian protest in the House gallery and disrupting proceedings. This year, it’s been relatively quiet.
Sen. Jodeh said a lot of the recent anti-war effort has involved meeting with elected officials behind the scenes and making sure there's a way to move the needle on the humanitarian crisis. She’s been worried that what’s happening in Gaza could become normalized, like the war in Ukraine to some extent.
“My fear last year and this year was that this genocide would also become commonplace,” she said. “And I think that is really what has happened.”
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