ANN ARBOR — A former board member of the Friends of the IDF (FIDF), a group that calls itself the sole representative of the Israel Defense Forces and is its biggest donor in the U.S., has expressed his objection to the candidacy of Ann Arbor City Council candidate Dr. Mozhgan Savabieasfahani.
For decades Savabieasfahani and others have been strong and public critics of Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine and the U.S.’ military and economic support of Israel’s apartheid rule in the region. Savabieasfahani is a fixture during City Council meetings and was recently successful in pushing the body to consider discussing a possible boycott resolution.
Though that resolution never passed, Savabieasfahani has decided to run for a City Council spot representing Ward Four in the August 4 primary election, to make sure the official body declares support for Palestinians. Other long-term goals are for the City Council to bar Ann Arbor police officers from being trained by Israeli security forces, a move successfully made by the City Council in Durham, North Carolina last year.
Neal Elyakin, a past FIDF board member, has made contributions to Jen Eyer, one of Savabieasfahani’s opponent, and has publicly called Savabieasfahani’s platform anti-Semitic. Eyer herself was embroiled in a “dark money” scandal around running negative campaign ads against opponents, using money from undisclosed channels.
Hannan Lis, one of the FIDF’s Michigan chapter’s founders, has officially endorsed Eyer. Lis is board chairman of Detroit Public Television.
A longtime activist vies for an official seat
For a long time, Savabieasfahani and other anti-Israel protestors in Ann Arbor have maintained that their opponents have carefully conflated any criticism of Israel’s widely known and internationally condemned practices with racism and bigotry against Jewish people. Israeli forces like the IDF are recognized and condemned internationally for committing regular violence against Palestinians, including children.
Dr. Mozhgan Savabieasfahani at an Ann Arbor City Council meeting
Pro IDF residents have tried unsuccessfully to insert themselves or their preferred candidates into the City Council and previously lost a campaign against Ann Arbor’s first Palestinian City Council member, Ali Ramlawi.
“I have to talked to several people in my city who are keen on what I am proposing,” Savabieasfahani, an environmental toxicologist by training, told The Arab American News. “$15 hour minimum wage, investment in public housing, the immediate clean up of Gelman dioxin contamination and an end to military aid to Israel.”
The City Council can pass its own resolution to end military aid to Israel, Savabieasfahani said. It can the press the state’s government to do the same and both bodies can push Congress to end support for Israel’s human rights violations. The Boycott, Divest, Sanction (BDS) movement has made significant headway in Ann Arbor in recent years, especially on the University of Michigan campus.
Big corporations and big military states who are behind the corporations, they benefit from raping the environment; and people like me that stand against apartheid states and pollution, we want to stop their toxic impact on our community and the environment — Dr. Mozhgan Savabieasfahani
Savabieasfahani also said Ann Arbor’s government has had a troubling history of allowing industry to pollute the city. She is seeking an immediate end to the long running and massive dioxin (a carcinogen) contamination of the city’s groundwater by Gelman Sciences and PFAS contamination by the Wixom-based company Tribar.
Savabieasfahani connects the destruction of the environment by industrial capital at home to imperial ambitions abroad that have tied the U.S. to its ally Israel in the Middle East as one singular drive against humanity and the planet.
“The powerful do not hear people with no political power or wealth,” she said. “They are more prone to hearing the rich and that has to change. Big corporations and big military states who are behind the corporations, they benefit from raping the environment; and people like me that stand against apartheid states and pollution, we want to stop their toxic impact on our community and the environment.”
4 Comments
Neal Elyakin
July 19, 2020 at 10:38 amTo the Editor:
Does the Arab American News organization advocate to eliminate the State of Israel? Does the Arab American News organization believe that Israel is a Nazi state? Does the Arab American News organization believe that the Israeli government is wantonly and purposely engaging in genocide against the entire Palestinian people, placing them in concentration camps and killing camps, as the Nazis did to millions of innocent people during WWII? Does the Arab American News organization agree with Mozhgan Savabiesfahani when she proposes to violently eliminate the entire nation of Israel, driving the inhabitants into the sea or otherwise eliminating them? Does the Arab American News organization support demonstrations that are aimed at a political entity to be staged in front of a house of worship?
These are the expressed opinions of Ms. Savabieasfahani, stated on placards she proudly holds up while disrupting an orderly Ann Arbor City Council meeting (requiring the police to escort her out of the chambers), or when she stands in front of a house of worship on the day of worship, loudly telling the worshippers that they are entering a house of death, that they support genocide. Ms. Savabieasfahani does not believe in any result that includes a state of Israel.
I do. I believe that a possible outcome of direct talks can result in a peaceful Palestinian State alongside a peaceful Israeli State. I believe in supporting peace. I do not advocate the elimination of an entire people, an entire nation, or an entire religion. These are the beliefs of Ms. Savabieasfahani. Is this the type of person the Arab American News organization wants to highlight in a news article?
Neal Elyakin, Ann Arbor, MI
July 19, 2020
Mozhgan Savabieasfahani
July 19, 2020 at 12:05 pmIn reply to Mr. Neal Elyakin’s comment:
First, I expect to be addressed as “Dr. Savabieasfahani”.
Secondly, Mr. Elyakin has admitted that he is a former Board member of the Friends of the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) Michigan chapter. He has no right to put words in my mouth.
Think for a moment about what the IDF is. The IDF has massacred thousands of occupied Palestinians and driven many more off their land. Think about the millions of Palestinian choking under Israeli military blockades, checkpoints, and gunfire if they even try to go fishing for food.
Think about the Warsaw Ghetto situation which Israel has imposed on the Gaza Strip — the world’s largest open-air prison.
The Israeli military controls every mouthful of food which Palestinian children are permitted to eat in the blockaded Gaza Strip. The Israeli Prime Minister’s adviser, Dov Weisglass, said “The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet…”
As noted in his BBC obituary, Israeli General Raphael Eitan said: “When we have settled the land, all the Arabs will be able to do about it will be to scurry around like drugged cockroaches in a bottle.”
For those reasons, yes, I believe the IDF is a Nazi military at the service of a genocidal state. Look up the U.N. definition of genocide. That is what Israel is committing against the Palestinian people. We should never fund that. Never.
That’s why I’m campaigning for a resolution against the $38 billion in military aid which the U.S. is handing over to Israel: https://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/2019/12/anti-israel-activist-and-environmentalist-running-for-ann-arbor-council.html
Once I’m elected to Ann Arbor City Council, you will see me campaign just as hard for that resolution. It is a basic human rights issue, in a city which prides itself on supporting human rights.
At the campus level and the City Council level, I fully expect that our grassroots boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) campaigns can abolish the genocidal government of Israel before it can pull the trigger again.
The same kinds of BDS campaigns helped abolish the apartheid state of South Africa, thank God.
It is beyond me how any Friend of the IDF dares to put words in my mouth. If you look at my decades of human rights activism, you will find me urging boycotts against the apartheid state of South Africa and boycotts against the apartheid state of Israel. You will also find me urging divestment and sanctions against those apartheid states.
You will never hear anything from my mouth or pen that bears any resemblance to Mr. Elyakin’s language.
Mr. Elyakin’s language, as you can see in his comment above, is the language of mass murder. It’s not surprising to find fans of the IDF using that kind of language, and to find them imagining that their victims think in the same language. In fact, Israel was created in part by driving many thousands of Palestinians out of Jaffa and into the sea, under heavy aerial bombardment.
After his past Board membership in Friends of the IDF was discovered, Mr. Elyakin was unable to get elected to the City Council himself. His credibility is zero when it comes to me. I am a lifelong fighter against racism and apartheid.
By taking a high position in Friends of the IDF, Mr. Elyakin attached himself to that IDF — a truly Nazi military force. He will live in eternal shame for that. No one will want him to endorse their campaign. God only knows why Jen Eyer’s campaign still advertises his endorsement on its website.
For more details on my platform, check out my campaign film here: youtu.be/4kYdnvS6aQI
And check out my campaign website here: https://voteforthedoctor.com/
Dr. Mozhgan Savabieasfahani
The people’s candidate for Ann Arbor City Council, Ward 4
July 19, 2020
Shiao Tung
July 20, 2020 at 7:47 amPlease explain how any of your aims can be achieve by a local city council, one where you would be but one voice.
You require consensus and majority to achieve anything but as your own campaign materials show, you believe you can do things alone.
Why is that for all your years of demonstrations and haranguing council, you could not even bother to vote or register to do so until 2019?
Why should anyone think, with the exception of Gelman, you wouldn’t be wasting our vote and our council’s time?
No, just no.
Dr. Mozhgan Savabieasfahani
July 20, 2020 at 11:55 amIn reply to Mr. Shiao Tung:
— As you referenced, I have been the sole voice demanding an immediate City of Ann Arbor cleanup of the spreading Gelman dioxane pollution.
— I have also been the sole voice publicly demanding a $15 minimum wage for every worker in Ann Arbor.
— I have been extremely clear about my plans for the City, as you can see on my website. My First 100 Days Plan is right there for all to see: https://voteforthedoctor.com/first-100-days-in-office-plan/
* However, your primary complaint seems to be my pioneering human rights work in City Council and the Human Rights Commission.
* I, and others, successfully pushed the Human Rights Commission to approve a resolution against military aid to Israel. Now, years later, the same Commission (as appointed by the Mayor and his helpers) is running away from the issue as fast as their legs will carry them. That is to their shame, and to the shame of a Mayor who has a severely limited view of human rights.
* Mayor Taylor’s severely limited “human rights” view turns a blind eye to the singularly atrocious massacres – which are funded by your tax dollars – being committed against the Palestinian people. The Mayor has made it clear that his view of the Ann Arbor community does not, repeat, does not, include Palestinian members of our community or their loved ones who are suffering.
* I was part of the successful campaign to push the City Council to adopt a resolution against the racist Stand Your Ground law. That law empowered vigilantes to hunt and kill Black men and boys. I was most public in opposing that law, right in the Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti City Council.
* I also spent years campaigning for boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) against the apartheid state of South Africa.
— You currently disdain that kind of human rights work. Yet exactly that kind of BDS work, in city councils and campuses, helped to accomplish the abolition of that racist beast known as Apartheid South Africa. It’s now dead and buried and never coming back from the grave. Be sure that BDS will do the same to the apartheid state of Israel. I would hope that you’d applaud that kind of powerful advocacy against racism. But somehow I will keep going without your applause.
— For decades, I have been voting with my feet and my lungs, standing up for those very worthy causes. That is more active and constant participation, in the civic life of this City, than you have ever seen from anyone else.
— You are apparently determined to convert people to your point of view about what political activism should be: voting for the kind of rancid warmongers, racists, and rapists who are served up to us at election time.
— You will never get me to vote for them.
— I was glad to vote for the billion-dollar school millage, and glad to vote for my own candidacy for Ann Arbor City Council.
You will find people whose expectations are so low that they can stomach my opponents: Mr. Eaton with his devotion to hiring more police, or Ms. Eyer, surrounded by her IDF fanboy endorsers and her mountain of campaign contributions.
I expect much better from my City Council members, as you will see once I’m in office later this year.
— Dr. Mozhgan Savabieasfahani
Candidate for Ann Arbor City Council, Ward 4
July 20, 2020
Check out my campaign video at: youtu.be/4kYdnvS6aQI