While University of California students chanted “Divest!” and erected “Free Palestine” encampments, a little-known pro-Israel faction of the California legislature introduced legislation to indoctrinate six million California public school children and stem the rising tide of college resistance to Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Co-Chaired by Assembly Member Jesse Gabriel ( San Fernando Valley) and State Senator Scott Weiner (San Francisco), the 19 member Legislative Jewish Caucus includes 12 lawmakers in the 80-member assembly and 7 in the 40-member state senate, comprising 15% of the assembly and 17.5% of the senate, enough to exercise leverage as a block of votes on the floor or for the election of the speaker of the assembly or the president of the senate, both of whom appoint the chairs of committees who decide whether bills ever make it to the floor. Of the 19 members, at least 10 chair standing committees, with co-chair Gabriel chairing the powerful assembly budget committee, co-chair Weiner chairing the senate housing committee and member Newman chairing the senate education committee.
The Legislative Jewish Caucus includes the following assembly members: Dawn Addis (Morro Bay), Rebecca Bauer-Kahan (Orinda), Marc Berman (Menlo Park), Laura Friedman (Burbank), co-chair Jesse Gabriel (Encino), Matt Haney (San Francisco) Jacqui Irwin (Thousand Oaks), Josh Lowenthal (Long Beach), Gail Pellerin (Santa Cruz), Blanca Rubio (Baldwin Park), Chris Ward (San Diego) and Rick Chavez Zbur (Los Angeles), and Sens. Ben Allen (Santa Monica), Josh Becker (Menlo Park), Steve Glazer (Orinda), Josh Newman (Fullerton), Susan Rubio (Baldwin Park), Henry Stern (Calabasas) and co-chair Scott Wiener (San Francisco).
On January 3, 2024, the first day of the legislative session, hundreds of Jewish Voice for Peace protesters and allies shut down the California state capitol to demand lawmakers support a ceasefire in Gaza. In response, the Legislative Jewish Caucus released a letter portraying themselves and the Jewish community at large as victims.
“The far right and far left in America view each other as existential enemies, yet the one thing they seemingly can agree on is that Jews are a unique problem responsible for various evils in the world,” the letter states. “Our community is trapped between white nationalists who hate us because they believe we are behind a plan to diminish the influence of white people and far-left ideologues who hate us because we are somehow the epitome of white oppressors.”
What do they stand for?
On the Home page of the Caucus website, members thank Governor Newsom on October 9th for illuminating the state capitol in blue and white “as a beautiful symbol of California’s enduring solidarity with the State of Israel.” Expressing sympathy with Israel following Hamas’ October 7th attack was to be expected, but the words “enduring solidarity” lept from sympathy to blanket approval of Israel’s past, current and present crimes against the 4.5 million Palestinians living under Israeli occupation.
The Caucus website also displays a photograph of caucus members in 2014 celebrating then-Governor Brown’s signing of a memorandum of understanding with Israel Prime Minister Netanyahu to collaborate on the development of water conservation, cybersecurity, biotechnology, education and other industries. The agreement also encouraged Israeli companies to work closely with California’s Innovation Hubs (iHUB), a network of “16 clusters of research parks, technology incubators, universities and federal laboratories, together with economic development organizations, business groups and venture capital funds.”
The Israeli flag that once draped the website’s pages has been replaced with a multi-colored Jewish star. The text beneath it is short and inclusive in describing the caucus’ mission as a Jewish “voice for justice, equality and progress” and as a resource to advocate on behalf of the “educational, social, political and cultural concerns of the Jewish community.”
Resistance from the Jewish community
Estee Chandler, Jewish Voice for Peace board member, says the mission statement is not reflected in the organization’s actions. “Whenever I read an article that quotes the Legislative Jewish Caucus, hear them speak on an issue or visit their website, they are commenting on, spinning or legislatively pushing the goals of political Zionism and the Israeli government, not justice, progress, or the professional, social and cultural goals of the Jewish community.”
Seth Morrison, national board member of JVP-Action, a 501 (c) 4 sister to Jewish Voice for Peace, agrees. “Unfortunately, the priority of the Legislative Jewish Caucus seems to be defending Israel and perpetuating the falsehood that US Jews are safer when Israel is allowed to violate international law and the human rights of Palestinians. They are using the Holocaust to somehow justify Israel’s actions and working to censor legitimate criticism of Israel.”
In 2016, when the Legislative Jewish Caucus still posted an Israeli flag on its website, activists in Jewish Voice for Peace and other organizations mobilized to try to defeat AB2844, a caucus bill to punish supporters of the Boycott, Sanctions and Divestment (BDS) movement against Israel for its occupation of Palestine The legislation, sponsored by then-Assembly Member Richard Bloom of Santa Monica, was to require the California Attorney General to post a statewide enemies list of companies whose refusal to conduct business with Israel would make them ineligible for state contracts worth 10,000 or more As a result of vigorous grassroots opposition, however, the caucus’ anti-BDS bill was stripped of its enemies list to become virtually duplicative of existing laws against discrimination.
That same year, 2016, when Israeli Defense Forces fired on hundreds of unarmed Gazans marching to Israel’s border in the “Great March of Return,” members of the the California Legislative Jewish Caucus won the legislature’s approval of a resolution celebrating Israel’s 70th anniversary.
What is the current agenda?
More recently, during Israel’s slaughter and mass starvation in Gaza, caucus members–who succeeded in scrubbing Palestinians from the state-adopted ethnic studies curriculum– tightened their grip on California’s education system with introduction of assorted bills.
In a press release, the Legislative Jewish Caucus defended their priority bills saying, “These bills seek to protect Jewish students on campus, better educate young people about the Holocaust and modern forms of antisemitism, and address the rise in hate crimes.”
Opponents say the bills promote Palestinian genocide denialism and seek to conflate anti-zionism with anti-Semitism.
Censoring genocide education
Sponsored by State Senator Henry Stern (D-Calabasas), SB 1277 puts the pro-Israel California Teachers Collaborative for Holocaust and Genocide Education in charge of training public school teachers and developing curriculum on genocide education for six million K-12 California public school children. One of the collaborative’s member organizations is the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a Zionist lobby group Wikipedia editors have voted generally unreliable as a legitimate source on anti-semitism and Israel/Palestine.
This piece first appeared at LA Progressive.
