Over the past month, a certain violent strain within the international pro-Palestinian protest movement has surfaced in the Bay Area, animated by a muddled, angry ideology that has raised the threat level for the Jewish community.
Since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel and amid the current war in Gaza, protests have swept the Bay Area at levels unprecedented in the region, from marches in major cities to encampments on university lawns. Much of the protest activity has been peaceful. Some of the protests have turned ugly. Often they have featured criminal behavior: in June when students committed felony vandalism at Stanford, in February when students at Cal smashed windows at an event with an Israeli speaker, and in January when a man was charged with stealing and burning an Israeli flag in El Cerrito.
But recently, more dangerous criminal behavior has been linked to pro-Palestinian protests, coinciding with a national campaign to #Escalate4Gaza, a hashtag used to encourage extreme and often illegal acts to raise awareness for their cause.
So far, much of the local attention has focused on 34-year-old Casey Goonan, a talented former athlete and a well-credentialed scholar who now finds himself sitting in state jail in Dublin, staring down seven felonies.
On June 20, Goonan, who was under investigation by the FBI, was charged with four counts of arson for crimes police say he committed at UC Berkeley, including firebombing a police vehicle. Ahead of his arrest in Pleasant Hill, an anonymously published manifesto described the arsons as a way for the movement to put a “knife to the throat of Zionism.”
Goonan’s is still a relatively rare case of someone in the U.S. accused of committing potentially dangerous felonies in the name of the Palestinian cause. But on the international stage, the movement to escalate protests on behalf of Palestinians has been spreading.
The gist of the movement is summarized on the anti-Israel website Mondoweiss in a May 1 piece, also published anonymously, by a group called Palestine Action US. Titled “Flood the Gates: Escalate,” it calls on protesters to “abandon symbolic arrests,” of the kind championed by nonviolent resistance movements throughout history. The essay contends that protesters’ efforts up until this point have failed.
“Despite the mobilizations of millions around the world, we must acknowledge that we have not been able to stop the genocide — we have not come even close,” the essay asserts, reiterating an accusation against Israel that most supporters reject. “This is a failure, but not a defeat. It demands we reckon with our errors and recalculate our strategy to win.”
Palestine Action US is an offshoot of Palestine Action UK, which has gained notoriety for, among other acts, a dramatic and destructive break-in in June of a factory in the town of Sandwich that they believed to be a subsidiary of Israeli weapons manufacturer Elbit Systems.
Powered by social media, the call to #Escalate4Gaza has grown in popularity, and its fruits have been borne out from Melbourne to New York to Los Angeles and now Berkeley. The movement has attracted activists already comfortable with radicalism, such as anarchists affiliated with antifa.
The Mondoweiss piece was published on May Day, which commemorates labor movements celebrated by large swaths of the far left.
“Power won’t move unless we strike fear in the heart of the ruling class and pose a threat to their reproduction of capital,” the essay states.
Students of history know that radical political activism, up to and including violence, is intertwined with the Bay Area’s political history.
Despite the mobilizations of millions around the world, we must acknowledge that we have not been able to stop the genocide. It demands we reckon with our errors and recalculate our strategy to win. Anonymous post, Palestine Action US
Berkeley is the birthplace of the radical Symbionese Liberation Army, a group that committed acts of violence in the name of a vague idea of “symbiosis,” a 1973 pamphlet explains, or “living in deep and loving harmony” with one another. The SLA is most infamous for kidnapping media heiress Patty Hearst and killing the Oakland public schools superintendent. The Black Panthers, who did not shy away from political violence, formed in Oakland.
Many know about the Weather Underground’s attack on the U.S. Capitol and other government buildings in the 1970s, but fewer know that on the same day the group detonated an explosion at the State Department, a bomb was discovered at a military site in Oakland that failed to explode.
The most extreme pro-Palestinian activists today have not yet carried out anything as drastic in the U.S. But increasingly, they have shown a willingness to engage in violent criminal behavior, and to revel in it.
Radicals on social media and on left-wing blogs now share examples of what they often call direct action: how-to guides on “preparing for fun,” as the manifesto linked to the Berkeley arsons puts it, and on ways to avoid getting caught such as “use cash or theft to acquire anything you need,” “look for the safest entrance route and exit route,” and “wear an outfit that makes you unidentifiable and get rid of the clothing after.”
Security experts in the organized Jewish community are paying attention. If someone is willing to set fires on UC Berkeley property because of the university’s tangential connections to Israel, what is the threat to synagogues or Jewish organizations that actually support Israel?
Since the Israel-Hamas war began, individuals or businesses identified as “Zionist” have been targeted with extreme forms of vandalism, for example Jewish-owned Smitten Ice Cream in San Francisco, which in October was vandalized with broken windows and “free Palestine” graffiti. And for several hours on June 23, pro-Palestinian demonstrators shouted, banged on drums and waved Palestinian flags outside an Orthodox synagogue in Los Angeles, drawing condemnation from President Biden, because it was hosting an event about Israeli real estate.
Ezra Weinberger, communications manager for the Secure Community Network, a hub that monitors threats to Jewish communities in North America, told J. that since Oct. 7 more resources have been committed to monitoring the online behavior of extremists, as the “threat nexus” to Jewish communities remains “vast.”
“We have seen a willingness of certain parties to engage in verbal harassment, assault and even violence. We have heard calls for the genocide of Jews and the destruction of the Jewish State of Israel,” Weinbeger wrote in an email.
“SCN has worked to ensure close coordination between our Jewish Security Operations Command Center, Jewish security professionals, law enforcement, and key partners to ensure a coordinated, best-practice approach that ensures the safety and security of the Jewish community and respects recognized free speech rights, but not hate speech or calls for violence,” he added.
It is a cruel reality that the Jewish community, as the most targeted religious group in the U.S., has long faced a broad threat environment from groups ranging from white nationalists to organized militias to radical Islamic extremists. But in our current political moment, an additional threat stems from a decentralized but still coordinated secular far-left movement, where individuals who have engaged in violent behavior are often hailed as heroes.
Aaron Bushnell, the 25-year-old military servicemember who in February self-immolated outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C., to protest the war in Gaza, has been held up as a martyr for the cause. And not long after news of Goonan’s arrest became public this month, a pro-Palestinian group announced that it would launch a fundraiser to cover his legal costs, which promise to be substantial. Goonan is being held on $450,000 bail and has hired a private lawyer. Even the anti-Zionist group Jewish Voice for Peace at Columbia and Barnard announced support for Goonan in an Instagram post.
The discourse surrounding Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza continues to polarize the American left. There are those who wish to see peace in the region via something like a two-state solution, and those who support violent resistance “by any means necessary,” a common refrain among militant pro-Palestinian groups.
The “escalate” movement appears primed to push that goal further, forming an ever-shrinking, niche circle of activists willing to engage in the most extreme forms of violent protest for their cause, elevating the threat level for the Jewish community in the process.