After striking the item from its agenda last month, the Alameda County Board of Supervisors reinstated a slightly modified proclamation for a Palestinian Cultural Day, and then declared it in a July 24 resolution.
Though some in Alameda County’s 20,000-strong Palestinian community complained of Jewish pressure to drop the resolution last month, Bay Area Jewish leaders said they had no objection to a Palestinian Cultural Day in principle.
They did, however, object to the suggestion in the original proclamation that some Palestinians are Jewish. That reference has been removed.
“The objection raised … was solely that the proponents were trying to erase the unique 3,000-year history of the Jewish people in our homeland by subsuming it under the rubric of ‘Palestinian,’ a term that did not come into use until the past century,” Mike Harris wrote in an email. Harris is a leader with StandWithUs/San Francisco Voice for Israel.
“We are delighted that the supporters of this proclamation chose to remove that inappropriate clause,” he added.
The current proclamation reads, in part: “Palestinians have embraced for over 2,000 years core values such as love of family, commitment to education, hospitality and reverence for land, community empowerment, strong sense of justice and they now share these values with the residents of Alameda County.”
“We are pleased that the Board of Supervisors was responsive to concerns raised by members of our community,” Rabbi Doug Kahn, executive director of the S.F.-based Jewish Community Relations Council, wrote in an email. “While we still do not agree with some of the language around the 2,000-year history, the resolution is a significant improvement over the original and we have no objections to a resolution recognizing Palestinian Cultural Day consistent with the recognition of many communities’ cultural observances.”
The proclamation was signed by all five Alameda County supervisors: Nate Miley, Keith Carson, Scott Haggerty, Richard Valle and Wilma Chan.
— dan pine