A tumultuous Richmond City Council meeting on Wednesday ended with a failed attempt to censure Mayor Eduardo Martinez after he shared posts on social media last month that councilmembers said were antisemitic. The council instead approved Martinez's own atonement plan.Martinez is under fire for several posts he made on LinkedIn in the aftermath of the December terrorist attack that targeted a Hanukkah celebration at Australia's Bondi Beach, killing 15 people. Martinez reposted and "liked" content that characterized the attack as a false flag and promoted antisemitic conspiracy theories.Soon after, the Bay Area chapter of the Jewish Community Relations Council demanded his resignation. The JCRC is an organization that advocates for the interests of the local Jewish community.Martinez issued an apology in response, saying that at the time he didn't "fully read and understand the meaning" of what he was reposting.
By the time stories like this make it into the mainstream media, the specifics are airbrushed out, so it looks like, hey, maybe he was just misunderstood.
But here are the posts he "liked" and reported. Not just one accidental post, but a series of them.
Calling Bondi Beach a false flag attack by Israel.
Most damningly, reposting that Jews publicly celebrating Chanukah is an expression of power and meant to demean and insult Muslims.
There is no way to spin that post as "criticism of Israel."
Not surprisingly, Martinez is also an anti-Israel activist. He was a speaker at the People's Conference for Palestine in Detroit last year, and he has worn a baseball cap calling for death to the IDF.
The city of Richmond itself passed a resolution that condemned Israel in October 2023 - and did not say a word about the Hamas attack on Israeli civilians. It raised a Palestinian flag outside City Hall last year.
At the council meeting, his supporters held signs saying "People power from Richmond to Palestine."
Martinez's antisemitism is tied tightly to his "pro-Palestinian" politics. Not that the San Francisco newspapers would draw that line.
Yet he wasn't censured. The vote was 4-3 against.
And who was the tiebreaker? The mayor himself, who is a member of the city council, too.
Instead, Martinez proposed his own plan to fight his own antisemitism. Like meeting twice with a rabbi in town. Really.
Then he can declare that he is cured of the disease that he only reluctantly admitted he had, and everyone applauds.
And that plan was accepted.
The story proves, yet again, that when you scratch the surface of an "anti-Zionist" you find an antisemite. And too many people refuse to believe that they are related. Because the antisemites themselves insist it isn't true.
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"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022) |
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