Warren explains positions on Israel, Pilgrim
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, left, and state Sen. Dan Wolf chat
with Andi Genser, executive director of We Can, during
a visit to the We Can facility on Wednesday.
Cape Cod Times/Steve Heaslip
HYANNIS — In a room filled with signs calling for the closure of Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station and the end of NStar's herbicide use, it seemed that Cape issues would dominate Sen. Elizabeth Warren's "office hours" Wednesday at Barnstable Town Hall.
"No questions about the Pilgrim nuclear power plant and no questions about NStar, right?" joked state Sen. Daniel Wolf, D-Harwich, facing signs that read, "Close Pilgrim" and "Say nay to the spray."
But when the man in the green Hawaiian shirt stood up, Warren went from voicing her support for those local causes to defending her vote to send $225 million to Israel in its ongoing conflict with Hamas.
"We are disagreeing with Israel using their guns against innocents. It's true in Ferguson, Missouri, and it's true in Israel," said Harwich resident John Bangert, who identified himself as a Warren supporter but said the $225 million could have been spent on infrastructure or helping immigrants fleeing Central America.
"The vote was wrong, I believe," he added, drawing applause from several in the crowd.
Warren told Bangert she appreciated his comments, but "we're going to have to agree to disagree on this one."
"I think the vote was right, and I'll tell you why I think the vote was right," she said. "America has a very special relationship with Israel. Israel lives in a very dangerous part of the world, and a part of the world where there aren't many liberal democracies and democracies that are controlled by the rule of law. And we very much need an ally in that part of the world."
Warren said Hamas has attacked Israel "indiscriminately," but with the Iron Dome defense system, the missiles have "not had the terrorist effect Hamas hoped for." When pressed by another member of the crowd about civilian casualties from Israel's attacks, Warren said she believes those casualties are the "last thing Israel wants."
"But when Hamas puts its rocket launchers next to hospitals, next to schools, they're using their civilian population to protect their military assets. And I believe Israel has a right, at that point, to defend itself," Warren said, drawing applause.
Noreen Thompsen, of Eastham, proposed that Israel should be prevented from building any more settlements as a condition of future U.S. funding, but Warren said, "I think there's a question of whether we should go that far."
After visiting the Cape Abilities farm in Dennis and WE CAN, a nonprofit organization in Harwich that helps women through life transitions, the debate marked the lone point of discord on a day of friendly facetime with Warren. Before leaving Barnstable Town Hall for the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Warren said she shared the Cape Downwinders' concerns over the Plymouth nuclear plant.
Warren said she first raised the lack of an adequate escape plan for the Cape in the event of an accident at Pilgrim in a conversation with Allison Macfarlane, chairwoman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. At the Statehouse, legislation to expand the emergency zone to include the Cape and Islands has stalled, in part, because federal regulations supersede the state's.
"We had some back-and-forth, I'll just put it that way. We had some back-and-forth about it, and some of the back-and-forth was about the question of whose responsibility it was to have an adequate escape route and who has to approve the escape route. Her position was that this is the responsibility of the state," Warren said of Macfarlane. "My pushback on this, I think, ends up kind of in the same place where you are on this, and that is it is the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that is ultimately responsible for ensuring that if the plant is open, it is operated safely, and that means there is an exit plan in the case of emergency."
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