Newsom highlights AIPAC failure
Concerning Gov. Newsom’s declaration regarding AIPAC (“Gavin Newsom says he never has and ‘never will’ take money from AIPAC,” Feb. 25), it can only be said that his position reflects a massive failure on the part of AIPAC when a few years ago it turned into another political action committee with a Republican slant.
For generations, AIPAC was a nonpartisan, pro-Israel advocacy organization with great influence in Washington that was respected on both sides of the aisle. That is because it informed politicians about Israel so that they could make decisions based on the facts.
But recent leadership stole AIPAC and its legacy, perverted it, and now it is only known as another Republican political action committee.
Those in leadership at AIPAC should do teshuvah, repentance, both in terms of acknowledging their self-interested errors and in terms of changing AIPAC back to something worthwhile.
After being a supporter of AIPAC for about 50 years, even when I disagreed strongly with Israeli policies, I resigned in 2022 because I thought AIPAC’s change was wrong and because I felt that AIPAC was in fact not honest in saying that the old nonpartisan AIPAC still existed alongside the new AIPAC political action committee.
For all of those 50 years of my membership, I gave more money to AIPAC than I gave to any other public interest organization, Jewish or otherwise. That is how important I thought AIPAC was. But today, I give AIPAC nothing, which is what it deserves.
Lawrence Grossman | Benicia
J.’s Holocaust series coverage
I want to speak up for the many Sonoma County Jews who applaud the Sonoma State Center for the Study of the Holocaust and Genocide for respecting the sentiment “Never Again” in its current context: Never again genocide for anyone.
As J.’s article details (“Holocaust and genocide lecture series at Sonoma State adopts new subject: Israel,” Feb. 18), the center has in recent years hosted international experts not only in the 20th century German mass murder of Jews, but other state-sponsored genocides, in Armenia, Rwanda, Cambodia, the Americas and elsewhere. This year, we are proud the center will hear from respected Brown University genocide scholar Omer Bartov, who is one of many experts who contend that Israel is committing a Palestinian genocide.
Saying that Israel, my own people, are committing genocide, makes me distraught. But it doesn’t make me anti-Israel or antisemitic, any more than acknowledging the American genocide of Native Americans makes me anti-American. Nor does it make me ignorant of history, as those quoted in the article would have it.
In fact, the center’s detractors seem ignorant of history. J. reported that “supporters” of the series “don’t want to see the series politicized.” Yet all holocausts are political. They are designed by politicians, supported by laws and enforced by state power.
When Ussama Makdisi, chair of the UC Berkeley Palestinian and Arab Studies program, spoke at the center last year about the Palestinian genocide, he received a standing ovation from a large crowd. Surely J. could have found one person from that audience to interview.
Susan Stern | Santa Rosa
S.F. Mayor Lurie gets it wrong
I agree with Mayor Daniel Lurie that there is no place for antisemitism or hate directed at any group in San Francisco (“S.F. Mayor Daniel Lurie condemns ‘Tax the Jews’ chant heard during protest,” Feb. 26). But he made a grievous error in attributing an antisemitic chant (“Tax the Jews”) to “a group of individuals” from the Democratic Socialists of America who were chanting “Tax the rich.” The antisemitic chant came from a lone woman, who was not part of the DSA demonstration. This has been confirmed on video and by eyewitnesses, as reported in Mission Local.
Mayor Lurie may have made an honest mistake — he was apparently unable to see the demonstrators from the stage — but he needs to publicly correct his misinformed tweet about the chant. His tweet is now being spread by those who seek to smear our city and attack our democratic rights to express dissent.
False antisemitism claims power the current attacks on free speech, democracy and diversity by the Trump administration. Universities have lost funding. People have been deported. Mayor Lurie needs to change the narrative he started.
David Spero | San Francisco
Column points to father’s articles
My family appreciated your Feb. 13 archives column “From Jamaica to India to Zimbabwe, Jewish newspapers have held us together,” which examined Jewish newspapers from the “periphery of the Jewish diaspora.” The article both enlightened and enlivened our knowledge of Jews around the world and, specifically, my family’s heritage and why Purim represents something timeless for our people. It also led us to discover articles that my father published in 1935.
The column references the Jewish Guild Journal, published in Rhodesia (present-day Zimbabwe) between 1919 and the 1930s. I deduced that my father, Chaim Gershater, who was born in Lithuania and immigrated to Bulawayo, likely published in that journal during the 1930s before assuming the role of editor of the Zionist Record in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1943.
Within minutes, our family discovered that the Jewish Guild Journal archives are accessible and searchable online. We quickly found that my father had indeed published numerous articles in this newspaper over the span of a decade, and was on the editorial board. “Why Haman? Why Purim?” was published in April 1935 and remains pertinent today.
A beneficiary of yeshiva preparation, my father was steeped in Torah, Talmud and Yiddishkeit. He also studied history, English and political science. He had a Sholem Aleichem brand of wry humor. In his article, he writes of the power of Jewish satire: “Haman owes his popularity not to his inglorious ambitions, nor to his ignoble end, He owes it to the humble and anonymous scribe who wrote an immortal satire and gave the Jews an immortal weapon wherewith to fight the enemies: the weapon of ridicule.”
Reading my father’s words from 1935 is a reminder of how Jews have survived the most antisemitic of antisemites, and persevered, through ridicule and humor. Thank you, J. and Maya Mirsky, for your journalistic curiosity.
Aryela Lee Zulman (nee Gershater) | Palo Alto
Don’t ignore genocide experts
Israeli Consul General Marco Sermoneta says Israel is not committing genocide in Gaza and attributes base motives to those who say otherwise (“Calling the Gaza war ‘genocide’ is a false, dangerous narrative,” Feb. 4). Sermoneta ignores the definition of genocide in international law and the consensus of Holocaust and genocide experts.
The list of those concluding that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza includes the International Association of Genocide Scholars, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, B’Tselem and multiple Jewish and Israeli Holocaust scholars.
Sermoneta is correct that genocide doesn’t just mean killing a lot of people. One also must prove that a government intended to destroy an ethnic, national or religious group “in whole or in part.”
Israel’s actions fit both tests: Israel has killed a minimum of 70,000 Gazans, according to The Lancet. Some 3,000 Palestinian children have lost their limbs, according to UNICEF. We must also consider means of sustaining life. According to Haaretz, 70% of structures in Gaza are destroyed. Sanitation, water and electricity systems are badly damaged. Agriculture and fishing are nearly impossible. Children are still dying of malnutrition.
Nissim Vaturi, deputy speaker of the Knesset, said on X that Israel’s task was “erasing the Gaza Strip from the face of the Earth.” As Israeli American Holocaust scholar Omer Bartov wrote in the New York Times, Israeli “government and military officials … called for ‘total annihilation.’”
We are both synagogue-going grandmothers, hardly antisemites or part of a “hostile network of actors,” as Sermoneta characterizes Israel’s critics. We fear that Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari was right when he worried recently that Israel will destroy Judaism.
“If Israel continues on its present trajectory,” Harari said, it will become based on the “worship of what were completely anti-Jewish values for the last two millennia… the worship of power and violence [will be] the new Judaism.”
Susan Stern | Santa Rosa
Beverly Voloshin | Petaluma
Give Betty Yee a shot
Your coverage of the Feb. 26 gubernatorial forum on Israel and Jewish safety (“Candidates for CA governor vow to keep Jews safe and Israel ties strong,” Feb. 27) omitted a crucial fact: Betty Yee, perhaps the candidate with the deepest ties to Israel and the Jewish community, was excluded despite her recent second-place performance at the California Democratic Convention.
This decision deprived the community of hearing from a longtime ally. Betty Yee has visited Israel numerous times, chaired Israel trips for Bay Area friends, and is married to Rabbi Steven Jacobs.
As a UC Regent, she consistently supported Jewish students facing antisemitism on University of California and California State University campuses. As a former leader within the California Democratic Party, she was a steady, reasonable voice for a strong U.S.-Israel relationship and against rising antisemitism. She also delivered sound fiscal policy as a two-term state controller.
Voters who care about Israel and Jewish community safety should give Betty Yee a serious look. Her record shows not just rhetoric, but years of partnership with our community.
Dan Cohen | Raanana, Israel