Hood River County citizens demonstrate for a ceasefire in Gaza at the entrance to Sen. Wyden’s Hood River town hall on June 26.
Contributed photoSen. Ron Wyden’s June 26 town hall was greeted by a vocal group of local citizens who challenged what was called Wyden’s uncritical support for Israel’s actions against Gaza and failure to adequately advocate for a permanent ceasefire.
The event opened with brief comments by Wyden, who did not mention the war in Gaza.
Nevertheless, nearly half the questions asked following his comments were critical of his inactivity regarding the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Among the questioners were members of a group that has demonstrated for Gaza ceasefire weekly on Fridays at 5 p.m. beside the Hood River City Hall.
“Sen. Wyden politely heard our questions asking what he is doing on a ceasefire, humanitarian and medical aid to Gaza, and restricting weapons sales to Israel to defensive weapons,” said questioner Leanne Hogie of Hood River.
As Wyden responded to each question on Gaza, portraits of eight of the 15,000 Palestinian children killed to date by Israeli bombardment were held up directly in front of him by a member of the local ceasefire advocacy group.
The images were captioned with a quote from Wyden at one of another recent town halls: “One dead child is too many.” When the images were turned toward him, the senator did not look at them.
“Sen. Wyden’s official senate webpage shows that he has not made any statements on Gaza since 2012,” Hogie later said. “Yet we hope he will join our Sen. Jeff Merkley in calling for a permanent Gaza ceasefire.”
Editor’s note: Columbia Gorge News reached out to Wyden’s office for this comment: “As with all of his 1,089 open-to-all town halls to date throughout Oregon, Sen. Wyden received a variety of questions on a variety of topics. As always, he fully answered any and all questions asked of him on any and all topics — including those raised in Hood River about Israel and Hamas.”
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