This latest example (and we can find them pretty much every day now) involves Richmond, California Mayor eduardo martinez.
From Kate Talerico’s article for the San Francisco Chronicle:
Bay Area Jewish leaders are calling on Richmond Mayor Eduardo Martinez to resign after he reposted several LinkedIn posts promoting conspiracy theories that blamed Israel for the mass shooting at Bondi Beach in Australia.
Screenshots captured by the Jewish Community Relations Council Bay Area show Martinez reposting content from a Palestinian activist and professor who speculated that an Israeli soldier might have committed the Bondi attack, claiming that “paid actors have a history of carrying out false flag, anti-Jewish attacks in Australia and then blaming others.”
Another repost featured an image of a Star of David alongside the caption: “The root cause of antisemitism is the behaviour of Israel & Israelis.”
Martinez later deleted the posts.
“I want to apologize for sharing my previous posts without thinking,” he wrote in a LinkedIn post Wednesday. “Of course we know that antisemitism was here before the creation of the state of Israel. As I’ve said many times before, we should not conflate Zionism with Judaism. They are two separate beliefs.”
In an open letter sent Thursday, the Jewish Community Relations Council Bay Area urged Martinez to resign, calling the reposts “dangerously antisemitic, deeply offensive, and wholly unacceptable.”
“Such rhetoric is dangerously antisemitic, deeply offensive, and wholly unacceptable-particularly coming from a sitting mayor,” the group wrote. “Words from public officials carry weight and when those words echo antisemitic tropes they place people at risk.”
That’s some apology, let me tell you.
What martinez is, in essence, saying is that Israel and Zionism (i.e. support for Israel) stink. But since not all Jews stink – there are some good ones; the ones who are against Israel and Zionism (isn’t that what ku klux klansmen suggested about some Black people – the ones who, er, knew their place?), so I should have thought twice before posting those comments. There’s nothing wrong with hoping that Israel is eradicated from existence and Jews have no homeland at all, not even the one they have lived in for thousands and thousands of years.
Yes, anti-Semitism is on the march. Very open, very visible, and coming from people, like this dupe, who are very comfortable with who/what they are.
I hope you’re not surprised. Because this should not be a surprise. It should be an expectation, based on 58 centuries of experience.
