It seems the “Democratic Socialists” who were elected to the Denver City Council just last spring are already bored with their $100K-plus-a-year jobs. The homelessness crisis, the immigration crisis, the affordable-housing crisis — to say nothing of patching potholes and policing the streets — didn’t hold their attention for long.

So, now, they want the council to focus on — drumroll, please — Mideast politics!

As The Denver Gazette reported Wednesday, council rookies Shontel Lewis and Sarah Parady, both endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America in the April 2023 municipal election, want the council to endorse a resolution calling for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. Some other U.S. cities reportedly have taken similar action. Lewis says a resolution could come before council as soon as Monday.

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Presumably, the hope is Israel will be pressured into halting its military pursuit of genocidal Hamas terrorists in neighboring Gaza after they massacred 1,139 Israelis, mostly civilians, in a cross-border blitz last Oct. 7. That’s assuming either Israel or Hamas know or care about statements from the soapboxes of fledgling provincial officials in the U.S.

“This is a moment to do the right thing,” Lewis told our news staff in a statement. “Our constituents have marched, have written, have called, have cried, and have organized demanding that the City and County of Denver join other U.S. cities which have been adopting resolutions in support of a ceasefire in the conflict.”

Oh, please.

Denverites must be weary by now of such bloviation by self-styled radicals. It’s so 2020. We’d wager plenty of rank-and-file Democrats in particular are starting to wince at the protests, pronouncements and street theater of their party’s kooky fringe.

Palestinian nationalism has become the latest plaything of the loopy left, and bashing longtime U.S. ally Israel is its hobby horse. It, too, is getting old — and ever more divisive. Jewish Coloradans — and, we hope, Coloradans in general — are sick and tired of the resurgent antisemitism that accompanies so much of the “Free Palestine” blather.

In any event, it has no place at City Hall. Lewis and Parady don’t hold seats on the U.N. Security Council. Their job isn’t to pontificate about world affairs; it’s to roll up their sleeves and put some elbow grease into their workaday chores right here in Denver.

As The Gazette’s report also notes, Aurora’s City Council passed a resolution last October expressing “abiding support for the people of Israel” a few weeks after the Oct. 7 mass atrocities. That, of course, was simply a heartfelt statement of sympathy.

The pending Denver attempt to dabble in global politics and micromanage a far-off war is more akin to Boulder’s enactment of a law declaring the sometimes-otherworldly home of CU to be a “nuclear free zone.” That was in 1985; the ordinance is still on the books. But such is Boulder.

Denver has a lot more on its plate, and City Hall has trouble enough staying focused on the city’s most pressing problems.

This would be a good time for the council’s president to take the two newbies aside and remind them they’re entitled to their view on the Mideast or any other theater of global conflict — when they’re on their own time. Not on the taxpayer’s dime.

Denver Gazette Editorial Board