A previous version of this article stated that eight U.S. municipalities had adopted the pledge; however, there have only been six in the country, the other two being Canadian municipalities. The article now includes the correct number as of Feb. 19, 2026, at 3 p.m. 

Adopting the Apartheid-Free Communities Pledge is the bare minimum Burlington voters can do to fight Israel’s genocide and occupation in Palestine, but the City Council won’t even let us vote on it. 

For the third year in a row, thousands of Burlington residents signed a petition to place the pledge on the city ballot, only for it to be — once again — shot down by the seven Democrats on the Burlington City Council, according to a Jan. 27 Seven Days article. 

The Apartheid-Free Communities Pledge is a non-binding resolution condemning Israel’s crimes and expressing solidarity with Palestinians against Israeli apartheid. The pledge has been adopted by a diverse collection of over 1,000 organizations and communities, from religious institutions to labor unions, including six municipalities in the U.S. 

Five of these six municipalities are located in Vermont. Brattleboro, Newfane, Plainfield, Thetford and Winooski have all adopted the pledge despite a statewide mobilization of Vermont’s biggest Zionist advocacy group, the Shalom Alliance, against the campaign. 

The adoption of the AFC pledge on such a wide scale should come as a surprise to no one; for over two years, Israel has been committing a livestreamed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. 

This genocide — recognized by every major human rights body in the world, including the United Nations Human Rights Council — has been perpetuated with a near-endless supply of U.S. weapons and tax dollars. 

In the past two years, the U.S. has sent over $16.3 billion in direct military aid to Israel, according to an Oct. 7, 2025 article from the  Council on Foreign Relations. 

Over 72,000 people have been murdered according to Gaza’s municipal health authority, which does not include deaths from the Israeli-imposed famine or bodies still unrecovered from the 92% of residential buildings destroyed by the state of Israel.

Despite Israel murdering over 270 Palestinian journalists as of August 2025, footage of these crimes has been easily visible to audiences through social media sources like Eye on Palestine. 

The sheer barbarity of Israel’s genocide, coupled with the U.S. government’s unflinching participation, has driven ordinary people around the world to organize against the Zionist project in any way they can. 

Vermont has been no exception, nor should it be.

In Burlington, however, the so-called Democrats in the City Council have done everything they can to make it so. 

Citing the Apartheid-Free Communities pledge’s alleged “divisiveness,” councilors Ben Traverse, Allie Schachter, Evan Litwin, Sarah Carpenter, Buddy Singh and Mark Barlow voted to once again block Burlington residents from voting on the pledge at the Jan. 26 City Council meeting.

Furthermore, City Council President Traverse admitted to trying to keep the proposal off the agenda completely and expressed his frustration at the city attorney’s office for informing him of the limits of his powers. 

“If the Council President has no gatekeeping function whatsoever, a single Councilor could force an untold number of measures onto our agendas, effectively hijacking our legislative process,” Traverse stated in his letter written in advance of the meeting. 

Ignoring the slippery slope fallacy there, the fact that Traverse feels comfortable describing “gatekeeping” as any part of his role as city council president shows just how deep his disrespect for the people of Burlington goes. You know, the ones he’s supposed to represent. 

For all their shamelessness, even the Democrats on City Council have not ventured to actively deny any of Israel’s crimes entailed in the Apartheid-Free Communities pledge. This is not a credit to them; it’s virtually impossible to do so at this point.

Israel’s military occupation and apartheid rule are both recognized as not only real but illegal by the International Court of Justice. Apartheid is a system of institutionalized and legalized racial segregation, according to the Cornell Law  School Legal Information Institute. 

This is supported by an overwhelming consensus of Palestinian activists, international human rights organizations and even the admission of Israeli organizations such as B’Tselem, who all agree: Israel is enforcing apartheid rule through military occupation. 

Israel’s settler-colonial nature is admitted openly by Zionists, save for a handful of Zionist advocacy groups aiming to influence Western opinion, like the Anti-Defamation League.

All of Zionism’s ideological founders were open about their colonial intentions, and the efforts of organizations like the Palestine Jewish Colonization Association culminated in the ethnic cleansing of 750,000 Palestinians during the 1948 Nakba. 

The ongoing violent settlement of Palestinian land in the West Bank, treated as exceptional by confused or dishonest American liberal Zionists, is simply a continuation of how the entire state of Israel was created.

Ultimately, rehashing long-settled debates over the language in the AFC pledge is a distraction. The real question is: what will we do to fight Israel’s crimes? 

Adopting the AFC pledge should be seen as the absolute bare minimum. From there, we must work to boycott, sanction and divest from Israel until the occupation has been thoroughly dismantled.