- By Allyson Aleksey | Examiner staff writer |
- Oct 17, 2023 Updated 15 hrs ago (SFExaminer.com)
San Francisco Jewish leaders say their community had grown increasingly concerned about rising antisemitism even before the Hamas attack on Israel earlier this month.
At the same time, The City’s Islamic community is calling for an investigation into a social-media post by District Attorney Brooke Jenkins, which appeared to liken a Saturday rally in support of Palestine to a “pro-Hamas” demonstration.
Religious groups, nonprofit organizations and school leaders have been on high alert since major U.S. cities — including San Francisco; Washington, D.C.; New York; Los Angeles and Chicago — stepped up police patrols around places of worship as calls for attacks escalated online. Schools and universities in the Bay Area canceled classes on Friday citing safety concerns, although no attacks came to fruition.
Jeremy Russell, communications director for the Jewish Community Relations Council, said the Jewish community has seen “a huge surge” in antisemitic acts this past week, including antisemitic graffiti on Market Street.
Graffiti was seen “on several buildings,” SFPD spokesperson Gonee Sepulveda said, and “appeared to be prejudice based” and “targeting people of Jewish descent.”
Mayor London Breed said that the graffiti would be investigated as a hate crime.
But Russell said that hate speech against the Jewish community has been escalating long before the Hamas attack on Israelis.
“Zoom bombers have attacked city council meetings across the Bay Area,” he said. “Antisemitic white nationalists have been seen waving banners above the freeway in Walnut Creek. Flyers blaming Jews for the COVID pandemic have appeared in neighborhoods all around the Bay.”
Antisemitic acts targeting Jewish people have been on the rise in California in recent years.
Last year, 500 antisemitic crimes including assault, vandalism and harassment, were reported in California, an increase of more than 40% from 2021, according to a report by the Anti-Defamation League.
The ADL also cited increasing collaboration among extremist and white supremacist groups in a report detailing a wide range of hate crimes and violence. California saw at least six murders by members of extremist groups in 2021 and 2022 — the most in the nation — with three being linked to white supremacist groups, the report found.
“We are urging the community to stay away from the anti-Israel rallies and advising our Jewish community organizations to enhance security by maintaining heightened awareness and incorporating greeters or volunteers into security plans,” Russell said.
While antisemitic crimes continue to rise, the war in Gaza is also causing division here at home. On Saturday, thousands marched on Market Street calling for an end to Israeli military force in Palestinian territory.
The Arab Resource and Organizing Center, an organizer of the rally, did not label the demonstration as “anti-Israel,” but instead as a rally in support of Palestine.
The center, along with other organizations and nonprofits in The City, were further angered by a since-deleted tweet by District Attorney Brooke Jenkins that likened the rally to a “pro-Hamas” event.
Zahra Billoo, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said that remarks like the one made by Jenkins cause further harm to the Islamic community.
She said that the community is already reeling from a significant hate crime that resulted in the killing of a six-year-old Muslim boy in Chicago, allegedly by his mother’s landlord. The U.S. Justice Department opened a federal hate-crime investigation into the events leading to the death of Wadea Al-Fayoume and injuries suffered by his mother.
“DA Jenkins’ biased mislabeling of a peaceful rally in support of Palestinian people is incredibly troubling,” Billoo said. “At a time when our community is reeling from the vicious hate motivated murder of a six-year-old in Illinois and the killing of over 700 children in Gaza, our civic leaders need to do better to keep our communities safe. Their inflammatory words have consequences.”
The Arab Resource and Organizing Center called for a full retraction of Jenkins’ statement, and Jenkins responded to criticism she received from the Muslim and Arab community on Monday after deleting the post.
Jenkins said that the “pro-Hamas” sentiment was directed to the antisemitic graffiti, and not the rally itself.
“The clearly antisemitic graffiti has no place in San Francisco, and we must be mindful that a person who chooses to engage in hateful acts is not representative of an entire community of faith,” Jenkins wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
She said that this time must be used “as a catalyst for engaging in a meaningful discourse and understanding as a city and a nation for how we can end suffering during this difficult time.”
Russell said that Jenkins has been one of the Jewish Community Relations Council’s closest allies in deterring the spread of antisemitism in San Francisco.
“We can’t comment on whether this was a ‘pro-Hamas’ rally, but their inability to condemn the largest massacre of Jews, including women, children and the elderly, since the Holocaust is unfathomable,” Russell said.
Ellen Brotsky, a member of Jewish Voice for Peace, a group that supports Palestinian liberation and “Judaism beyond Zionism,” said that members of the Jewish community were also part of Saturday’s march demanding peace in Gaza.
“DA Jenkins absolutely does not speak for Jewish San Francisco residents,” Brotsky said. “There’s a word for when politicians seek to exploit our Jewish community to incite violence: antisemitism.”
