Protest urging cease-fire shuts Assembly
SACRAMENTO — The antiZionist group Jewish Voice for Peace shut down the California Assembly on Wednesday by staging a disruptive protest calling for a cease-fire in Gaza when lawmakers reconvened for the new year.
After several months on break, lawmakers were back in session for only a few minutes before dozens of protesters congregated in the viewing gallery overlooking the Assembly chambers and began calling out and disrupting the proceedings. They unfurled eight red and black banners with phrases including “Jews say no U.S. funding for Israel’s genocide in Palestine,” while singing the phrases, “Cease-fire now,” “Not in our name” and “Let Gaza live.”
The protesters continued singing as the Assembly member leading the proceedings in the chamber, Jim Wood, DHealdsburg, called for order and then called a recess. Most lawmakers filed out of the chamber, though a few stayed and surveyed the protesters from the floor. After about 10 minutes, Wood adjourned the session until Thursday.
Dozens of protesters remained after the Assembly shut off the lights, and stayed chanting after reporters, staffers and lawmakers were cleared from the chamber. Outside, more than 100 protesters filled the Capitol rotunda, where they spread a large banner over the ground mourning people killed in Gaza. Protesters kneeled in concentric circles around the banner, folding black and red poppies out of tissue paper to symbolize lives lost.
Hundreds of people had planned to participate in the demonstrations, and had planned for “mass arrests,” said Jewish Voice for Peace spokesperson Liv Kunins-Berkowitz. Several hours into the protest, no one had been arrested, she said.
The California Legislature does not have an official role in U.S. foreign policy, but Kunins-Berkowitz said she and the other protesters want lawmakers to pass a resolution calling for a cease-fire, like the one that the Oakland City Council passed in November. Such a resolution would not be enforceable, but would be a significant statement by the Legislature.
“We want our legislators to take a stand on the side of peace, on the side of justice, and on the side of humanity,” Kunins-Berkowitz told the Chronicle outside the Capitol before the protest began. “Right now Israel is waging a genocidal campaign in Gaza, and we need all people of conscience to speak up, to put an end to this horrifying moment in history.”
Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, who co-chairs the Legislative Jewish Caucus, said he and other Jewish lawmakers have their own criticisms of Israel and want the war to end, but don’t support a cease-fire resolution.
“The death that happened in Israel, the death that’s happening in Gaza — it’s just horrific,” he told reporters outside the Senate chambers, just around the corner from where the singing protesters had filled the rotunda. “We also know that the cease-fire resolutions we’ve seen at the local level have at times gone off the rails in terms of dredging up a lot of anti-Jewish hate, and that causes a lot of fear in our community for a nonbinding resolution.”
At one point, a reporter asked Wiener about a specific chant that protesters had leveled at him, accusing him of supporting genocide.
“That’s disgusting and false,” he said. “I’ve made it clear that Benjamin Netanyahu and his government should be replaced. I have publicly said I want the war to end, and that Israel needs to be more surgical in targeting Hamas because so many civilians are dying.”
Wiener and Assembly Member Jesse Gabriel, co-chair of the Legislative Jewish Caucus, said the governor’s Office of Emergency Services summoned them to a last-minute briefing on Tuesday night about more than 200 bomb threats made against Jewish institutions since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel. Gabriel, a Democrat from Encino, said it’s a particularly scary time for the Jewish community, which faces attacks from both the far left and the far right.
The protest on Wednesday included several Jewish groups from across the state, including If Not Now and the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network. Jewish Voice for Peace and similar groups have staged protests of the war across the country, including one in November at a federal building in Oakland with hundreds of participants that resulted in dozens of arrests.
The action underscored the increasing political pressure California Democrats find themselves facing because of the war.
Many prominent California Democrats have aligned themselves with President Joe Biden and applauded his handling of the war. Biden has supported Israel, a U.S. ally, in its war against Hamas in Gaza following the Oct. 7 attack on Israel. Hamas killed about 1,200 people and took about 240 people as hostages, according to Israel.
Biden has grown somewhat critical of the Israeli offensive in Gaza, which Hamas says has killed 21,900 people, mostly women and children. He said at a fundraiser last month that Israel was losing international support because of its “indiscriminate bombing” of the region. But the Democratic president is still approving arms sales to Israel, including on Friday when the administration bypassed Congress to approve $147.5 million in military equipment sales.
Last month, the 19-member Jewish Caucus wrote to the president, praising him for “standing with Israel and with the Jewish community” and urged him to prioritize helping the hostages still held by Hamas.
Gov. Gavin Newsom has also said he supports Biden’s response to the war. In October, Newsom traveled to Israel, where he said government officials there showed him a video of Hamas militants beheading an Israeli person during the attack on Oct. 7, which Newsom said deeply affected him and shaped his view of the conflict.
In October, Newsom said California was sending aid to Israel and to Gaza, though he said the state was facing logistical challenges in dispatching it because of Israel’s blockades on aid into Gaza at the time. Some of the aid finally reached Gaza last month, Office of Emergency Services spokesperson Brian Ferguson said.
In December, Newsom canceled the Capitol’s annual inperson tree-lighting ceremony amid safety concerns over protests. The Sacramento Regional Coalition for Palestinian Rights had planned a cease-fire rally at the same time the tree-lighting was originally scheduled. In a statement, the group accused Newsom of canceling his plans because he “doesn’t want to face their anger at his shameful stance in regard to the genocide in Gaza.”
About two weeks earlier, pro Palestinian protests prompted the California Democratic Party to cancel some events at its convention in Sacramento.
Last month, 17 Assembly Republicans announced they would introduce a resolution condemning Hamas for the Oct. 7 attack.
“As leaders, we must be clear and unequivocal — we condemn the murder, rape, torture and mutilation of innocent people that was committed by Hamas terrorists on October 7,” said Assembly Republican Leader James Gallagher. “This is a time to come together and say clearly that there is no place for Hamas’ savage ideology of terror and hate.”
The proposed resolution does not address calls for a cease-fire or Israel’s bombing in Gaza.
Gallagher, who represents Yuba City, said after the Assembly adjourned that he thought the protesters’ behavior was unacceptable.
“People have a right to protest, but I think you’re going over the line when you’re impeding government functions,” he told the Chronicle outside the Assembly chamber. “This can’t be allowed to continue.”
Though the Assembly did not have any votes planned Wednesday, Gallagher said that this session the Legislature must act to deal with a projected budget deficit, problems with insurance companies pulling back in the state and high gas prices.