In the face of ongoing genocide and starvation raging against Palestinians in Gaza at the hands of the Israeli government, five members of the Vermont House of Representatives attended the “50 States, One Israel” conference in Jerusalem, hosted by the Israeli Foreign Ministry.
In a social media post of trip attendees planting trees in the city of Ofakim to honor Israeli victims of the October 7th attack, Vermont State Representatives Will Greer (D – Bennington-2), Matthew Birong (D – Addison-3), James Gregorie (R – Franklin-6), Sarah “Sarita” Austin (D – Chittenden-19) and Gina Galfetti (R – Washington-Orange) are pictured as confirmed attendees of the event. Ofakim used to be known as Khirbat Futais, a village of Bedouin Palestinians who were driven from their homes and eventually pushed into the Gaza Strip during 1948 Arab-Israeli war, part of the larger ethnic cleansing known as the Nakba. All homes in Khirbat Futais were destroyed and the Israeli government later built Ofakim in its place.
The trip to Israel included all-expenses-paid airfare and lodging, along with “all in-country transportation, accommodations, and guided programming,” according to a letter sent to an Oregon state legislator. The letter states that those who attend will “gain firsthand insight into the complexities and opportunities facing Israel today through high-level meetings with Israeli decision-makers, site visits to key national and cultural landmarks in Jerusalem and beyond, and direct engagement with experts in political, social, and academic fields.” Among those high-level meetings, attendees heard from Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar, who urged lawmakers to pass anti-Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions (BDS) laws in their states, along with Israeli President Issac Herzog, claiming the media presents a distorted view of the Jewish state. The keynote was a speech from Israel’s top political official, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
According to the Times of Israel, legislators in attendance also witnessed a rock performance featuring Speaker of the Knesset Amir Ohana singing “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” which he dedicated to slain far-right fascist podcaster Charlie Kirk. Ohana received a standing ovation.
None of those in attendance met with world experts, including the World Health Organization, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), and countless other organizations like UNICEF, who have confirmed that there is a famine in Gaza, as Israel continues the blockage of food and aid to the area. As of April, it is estimated that there were over 65,000 cases of acute malnutrition among children in Gaza, with estimates of over 400 deaths due to famine, on top of estimates of upwards of 80,000 deaths at the hands of the Israeli genocide against Palestinians in Gaza in late June, numbers that have certainly increased in the time since.
“I think what the biggest thing I wanted out of this and one of the biggest things I did take away [from] it was being able to see things with my own eyes,” Representative Matt Birong of Vergennes said in an interview with The Rake Vermont. “There’s a lot of, you know, information out there being manipulated, whether it be through AI technology, deep fakes, or just creative editing all around, and to come and actually be able to see it in a granular way, I think was very valuable.”
Birong did not specify what kind of manipulated information he was referring to, but claims that Palestinians are using actors and faked images to make up genocide and famine are part of a conspiracy theory that comes directly from the Netanyahu government’s own press releases. Israeli officials claim to count every calorie that enters Gaza, a claim that would be cause for alarm if said by any other country about a population they put under siege. Even President Trump publicly admitted there was a famine in Gaza in July. These conspiracy theories and atrocity denial have been a standard of Israeli propaganda and have contributed directly to the dehumanization of Palestinians throughout Israeli society.
Recognition of Genocide in Gaza is Growing in the U.S.
A Quinnipiac poll in August found that 60% of Americans oppose the U.S. sending arms to Israel, and 77% of Democrats believe Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza. The entirety of Vermont’s Congressional delegation have reached the same conclusion. Representative Becca Balint wrote in an op-ed on Wednesday:
Today, I believe the Israeli government is committing a genocide against the Palestinian people. As the granddaughter of a man murdered in the Holocaust, it is not easy for me to say that. But the trauma of the Holocaust serves as a reminder of the power of speaking out. […]
Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed, and almost 90% of Gaza’s population has been displaced, wiping out entire generations of families. Israeli Defense Force reports show that five out of six Palestinians killed by Israeli forces have been civilians.
Representative Birong suggested that Senators Sanders and Welch and Congresswoman Balint are “sourcing organizations whose information and data has been debunked in the past,” referring specifically to the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS). The academic association passed a resolution last month asserting that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, relying on detailed reports by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the Israeli human rights groups B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights, all of which have concluded that Israeli actions meet the definition of genocide.
Birong objected to the claim of genocide, saying, “the Palestinians have seen population growth. So with that, I kind of have a hard time with the genocide label.”
The United Nations Population Fund, the UN’s sexual and reproductive health agency, noted in a report in July, “According to the Ministry of Health in Gaza, only 17,000 births were recorded in the first six months of 2025 — a staggering 41 per cent drop compared to the same period in 2022.” The report also stated that basic hygiene supplies and menstrual products were completely exhausted, after Israel completely blocked those materials from entering Gaza since early this year.
An independent inquiry commission of the UN Human Rights Council released a lengthy fact-finding report in March that found, “Obstetric emergencies and premature births have reportedly surged due to the exposure to stress and trauma, and an increase of up to 300 percent in miscarriages has been reported since 7 October 2023.”
The UN commission concluded that, “the Israeli authorities have destroyed in part the reproductive capacity of the Palestinians in Gaza as a group, including by imposing measures intended to prevent births, one of the categories of genocidal acts in the Rome Statute and the Genocide Convention.”
The Israeli military has itself reported that 83% of all those killed by Israeli forces are civilians, a rate considered extremely high for modern warfare, even when compared to conflicts known for indiscriminate killing, such as the civil wars in Syria and Sudan. When asked if the Israeli government has done enough to limit civilian casualties, Birong said, “I mean, they drop leaflets, they make announcements, they actually tell them where the troop movements are going, so I think they have actually gone above and beyond what any modern military has done.”
In a statement on Wednesday, Senator Sanders laid out evidence for calling Israel’s actions in Gaza a genocide, writing:
Now, with the Trump administration’s full support, the extremist Netanyahu government is openly pursuing a policy of ethnic cleansing in Gaza and the West Bank. Having made life unlivable through bombing and starvation, they are pushing for “voluntary” migration of Palestinians to neighboring countries to make way for President Trump’s twisted vision of a “Riviera of the Middle East.”
A follow-up email with Birong offered him an opportunity to express any disagreement he might have with the Trump administration’s approach. Birong declined, replying instead, “For me, this is a non-partisan issue. It’s about the support of the Jewish people worldwide and the safety and security of the state of Israel and all of its citizens.”
Last week, U.S. Senators Chris Van Hollen and Jeff Merkley released a report on the situation in Gaza after a week-long fact-finding mission. They not only met with top Israeli officials, IDF soldiers, and families of Israeli hostages, but also visited the West Bank and Gaza border crossings and met with Palestinians. The senators’ itineraries were quite different from the planned activities the Israeli Foreign Ministry provided Birong and his colleagues. Van Hollen and Merkley concluded in their report, “whatever Israel’s original war aims may have been, they now include the removal of Palestinians from Gaza. That is ethnic cleansing.”
Genocide in Gaza—and a Chilling Effect in Vermont?
Representative Birong is one of the co-sponsors of the controversial bill H.310 in the Vermont House of Representatives. The bill counts fellow Israel trip attendees Will Greer, Sarah Austin, and Gina Galfetti among its co-sponsors, and was created in collaboration with members of the Vermont Shalom Alliance.
The bill would amend the definition of harassment in educational settings, adding specific provisions against ethnic and antisemitic harassment. Many residents and legislators have raised concerns that the definition includes a provision that would classify “negative references to” “the right to self-determination in the Jewish people’s ancestral and indigenous homeland” as potential antisemitic harassment. Similar bills and their introduction were a point of emphasis for lawmakers who attended “50 States, One Israel,” as one attendee of the event, a Georgia House of Representatives member, said, “Make sure your state has anti-BDS laws. And adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance [IHRA] definition of anti-Semitism.”
The IHRA definition also conflates Zionism with Judaism, much like the design of bill H.310. The push by pro-Israel advocates and lawmakers to adopt the IHRA is nothing new to Vermont. A complaint filed in 2022 sought to investigate allegations at the University of Vermont of antisemitism, which heavily used this definition and pushed for the university to adopt it. In a 2023 resolution, no findings of discrimination at UVM were found, and the school did not adopt the IHRA definition.
When Birong was asked what “negative references” to “the right to self-determination in the Jewish people’s ancestral and indigenous homeland” might look like in the context of a school that would be different from clear examples of antisemitic slurs or symbols, he said, “it’s basically, you know, saying, like, ‘Israel can’t exist,’ right?” Surprisingly, he compared statements of Israel’s right to exist to indigenous land acknowledgments in the U.S., saying, “the right of the Jewish people to sit in the modern state of Israel is essentially a 3500-year-old land acknowledgement for an Eastern Mediterranean tribe.”
Birong said only those who said negative references in a manner “persistent and severe” would run afoul of the law. Vermont State Senator Vyhovsky is concerned the law would impact the classroom to a far greater extent. In an interview with the Rake Vermont, Vyhovsky said, “I’ve heard from a number of teachers about the chilling effect this would have on curriculum and their ability to teach broadly what’s happening in the world. And certainly, if I’m hearing that from multiple teachers, I have to believe the teachers and what they’re telling me about their profession.”
H.310 would also mandate the Secretary of Education to create an antisemitism awareness curriculum “in conjunction with Shalom Alliance of Vermont, where appropriate.”
Vyhovsky raised concerns about naming a specific non-profit in legislation. “It’s not a common practice at all,” she said. “There’s a lot of reasons for that. I think that it flies in the face of an open process of application and vetting of entities that are going to receive taxpayer money and work with the state government.”
Vyhovsky also questioned the impact of such a bill in a national political climate increasingly hostile to free speech. “Free speech is massively under attack, whether it is students being disappeared because they are at pro-Palestine rallies, whether it is entertainers being silenced because they said something someone doesn’t agree with, I don’t think now is the time to be doing anything that could be construed as picking away at free speech,” she said.
What a state curriculum written in conjunction with the Shalom Alliance of Vermont would look like, and how it might tackle antisemitism while preserving freedom of expression, is an open question. Statements by Shalom Alliance’s Rachel Feldman last month may shed some light, however. Feldman spoke on WVMT’s “The Morning Drive” about bill H.310.
Calling into the show from Israel, Feldman criticized how Vermonters and their elected officials rallied around Mohsen Mahdawi, the Vermont student detained by the Trump administration for his pro-Palestinian advocacy at Columbia University. The Department of Homeland Security attempted to deport him until a Federal District Court intervened. Feldman said “Mr. Mahdawi’s backstory does not add up,” adding, “I think we also have to look at his fellow organizer at Columbia, Mahmoud Khalil.”
In response to a question on what criticism of Israel would be permissible without it becoming antisemitic, Feldman said that whoever is speaking must ensure “they are not crossing the line, and that they are not in their speech saying that Israel sole among nations has no right to exist, that they are not holding Israel to a standard to which no other nation is held, and that they are not making Israel the perpetrator of the worst thing that the society deems at that time, such as genocide.” Later in the interview, Feldman said that genocide claims were an example of “blood libel” against Jewish people.
Unsurprisingly, many Jewish Vermonters and organizations disagree with such an assessment. Members of Jewish Voice for Peace VT/NH have long identified Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocide, and proudly assert that their anti-Zionism is not just compatible with but core to their Judaism. In a statement to the Rake Vermont, Jewish Voice for Peace VT/NH wrote:
As a growing statewide organization of almost 1,000 anti-Zionist Jewish Vermonters, Jewish Voice for Peace VTNH is appalled, saddened and angry that five of our legislators would travel to Jerusalem under these circumstances. They were traveling under Israeli government sponsorship at a horrific time when the Israeli military is engaged in its most savage acts yet of starvation, bombing and killing of the entire population of Gaza. While the world increasingly sees that Israel has become a genocidal nation, these legislators have been recruited and paid for by the State of Israel to engage with rather than sanction these ongoing war crimes.
We are outraged that the State of Israel is influencing Vermont lawmakers, even as the Israeli government flouts international law. Jews will only be safe in Israel, Vermont and the world, when Palestinians have the same rights to justice, peace and self-determination as we do.
Matt Moore is a writer from Vermont. He is on the editorial collective of The Rake Vermont.
