Some trustees said this was not an issue the board should get involved in, but organizers are not giving up. We think they are morally right to persist.
Can someone please explain to me what the impact of this will be other than some virtue signaling? Why should a local village of 4 square miles and 8,000 some-odd people - more or less a bedroom community - waste precious time on something that is clearly wider in context? It's not like anyone anywhere in the world is going to say "Ohh, look at Croton's resolution! We better stop the war!"
Other than virtue signaling, I don’t understand why we need to have Holocaust museums and teach kids about that history in our schools. After all, the 6 million Jews are already dead, it’s not going to bring them back.
For the same reason why we have a 9/11 memorial right here in the Village along with a museum and memorial 30 miles south of us and at numerous other places around the country: to remember and honor the dead. There's a difference between remembering and honoring, and submitting for public consideration something that has no bearing on local village government and is not even tangentially related to anything within the purview of that local village government.
Question for Balter. Were you aware of this petition or the movement toward this ridiculous, one-sided screed, when you generously gave Ms. Celarier a platform, in which she presented a completely distorted view of an "Israeli invasion of Gaza", filled with Hamas "facts".
In short, what part do you play in the background, with this.
While your comment/question is pretty borderline in terms of the Chronicle's comments policy, because it veers close to a personal attack on the author of the Guest Editorial ("screed" is a personal characterization), I am going to let it slide and respond to it. I saw that the petition had been launched, and asked Ms. Celarier to write a Guest Editorial for the Chronicle, just as I have invited others with a wide variety of viewpoints to contribute to the Chronicle. That is just normal for a publication that includes opinion pieces. As for the content of the petition, I would recommend that you read this opinion piece today in the New York Times by a well known and respected scholar of genocide (an Israeli now at Brown University who has nothing to do with Hamas, and who cites many others who also have nothing to do with Hamas) and which shows how factually based these allegations actually are. Indeed, when publishing Guest Editorials, I ask contributors to do their best to make them based on factual evidence, and here there is plenty of it.
I hate to belabor this, but your characterization of the sources Bartov cites in his NYT piece is completely erroneous. He does not cite just three experts or expert sources, that is false. He sites a greater number of genocide experts that you omit in your comment above, either because you did not read it all the way through or because you have deliberately misrepresented what he said. Bartov also makes an important distinction between genocide experts and Holocaust experts, which you also ignore and thus create a misleading picture. I am happy to have you express your opinions but not to engage in disinformation in this comments section. I suggest you read the piece over and then modify or delete your inaccurate comments. Even more importantly, you completely ignore the factual evidence on which all of these analyses are based, which at this point is really incontrovertible.
I’ve now gone back to the original NYT piece and counted the number of genocide experts who have concluded Israel is committing that act in Gaza, in addition to the three that our commenter mentions. There are eight additional experts who have come to this conclusion as cited by Bartov. Given the seriousness of the factual inaccuracies in the comment above, I have suspended the commenter from posting here for one day so they can go back and re-read the Times piece and modify/correct their statement. As I said, opinions are welcome here, but blatant misinformation and misstatement of facts are not, especially given the likelihood that readers will just assume that the statements are correct unless they take the time to read the actual source material. I would also repeat that using words like “screed” to characterize a piece by a Croton contributor to this publication, or implying that they were using “Hamas facts”—ie channeling or representing Hamas in some way—violates the comments policy which requires commenters to be polite and respectful and not engage in personal attacks. I let that slide the first time around but it creates a context that also justifies the one day suspension for commenting.
The All Powerful Croton BOT will get it done! DJT should ask them for help with the other boondoggle; however, I just don’t think they’d be willing to lend a helping hand.
Can someone please explain to me what the impact of this will be other than some virtue signaling? Why should a local village of 4 square miles and 8,000 some-odd people - more or less a bedroom community - waste precious time on something that is clearly wider in context? It's not like anyone anywhere in the world is going to say "Ohh, look at Croton's resolution! We better stop the war!"
Other than virtue signaling, I don’t understand why we need to have Holocaust museums and teach kids about that history in our schools. After all, the 6 million Jews are already dead, it’s not going to bring them back.
For the same reason why we have a 9/11 memorial right here in the Village along with a museum and memorial 30 miles south of us and at numerous other places around the country: to remember and honor the dead. There's a difference between remembering and honoring, and submitting for public consideration something that has no bearing on local village government and is not even tangentially related to anything within the purview of that local village government.
Question for Balter. Were you aware of this petition or the movement toward this ridiculous, one-sided screed, when you generously gave Ms. Celarier a platform, in which she presented a completely distorted view of an "Israeli invasion of Gaza", filled with Hamas "facts".
In short, what part do you play in the background, with this.
While your comment/question is pretty borderline in terms of the Chronicle's comments policy, because it veers close to a personal attack on the author of the Guest Editorial ("screed" is a personal characterization), I am going to let it slide and respond to it. I saw that the petition had been launched, and asked Ms. Celarier to write a Guest Editorial for the Chronicle, just as I have invited others with a wide variety of viewpoints to contribute to the Chronicle. That is just normal for a publication that includes opinion pieces. As for the content of the petition, I would recommend that you read this opinion piece today in the New York Times by a well known and respected scholar of genocide (an Israeli now at Brown University who has nothing to do with Hamas, and who cites many others who also have nothing to do with Hamas) and which shows how factually based these allegations actually are. Indeed, when publishing Guest Editorials, I ask contributors to do their best to make them based on factual evidence, and here there is plenty of it.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/15/opinion/israel-gaza-holocaust-genocide-palestinians.html
I hate to belabor this, but your characterization of the sources Bartov cites in his NYT piece is completely erroneous. He does not cite just three experts or expert sources, that is false. He sites a greater number of genocide experts that you omit in your comment above, either because you did not read it all the way through or because you have deliberately misrepresented what he said. Bartov also makes an important distinction between genocide experts and Holocaust experts, which you also ignore and thus create a misleading picture. I am happy to have you express your opinions but not to engage in disinformation in this comments section. I suggest you read the piece over and then modify or delete your inaccurate comments. Even more importantly, you completely ignore the factual evidence on which all of these analyses are based, which at this point is really incontrovertible.
I’ve now gone back to the original NYT piece and counted the number of genocide experts who have concluded Israel is committing that act in Gaza, in addition to the three that our commenter mentions. There are eight additional experts who have come to this conclusion as cited by Bartov. Given the seriousness of the factual inaccuracies in the comment above, I have suspended the commenter from posting here for one day so they can go back and re-read the Times piece and modify/correct their statement. As I said, opinions are welcome here, but blatant misinformation and misstatement of facts are not, especially given the likelihood that readers will just assume that the statements are correct unless they take the time to read the actual source material. I would also repeat that using words like “screed” to characterize a piece by a Croton contributor to this publication, or implying that they were using “Hamas facts”—ie channeling or representing Hamas in some way—violates the comments policy which requires commenters to be polite and respectful and not engage in personal attacks. I let that slide the first time around but it creates a context that also justifies the one day suspension for commenting.
The All Powerful Croton BOT will get it done! DJT should ask them for help with the other boondoggle; however, I just don’t think they’d be willing to lend a helping hand.