Breed slams but doesn’t veto cease-fire motion
Resolution returned to supervisor board without her signature
Mayor London Breed has declined to veto a resolution from San Francisco supervisors calling for a sustained cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war raging in Gaza. But Breed was still sharply critical of the resolution in a Friday letter to the Board of Supervisors, which she said had made San Francisco “angrier, more divided, and less safe.”
She said supervisors “should never have put our City in this position” since the 11 board members are “neither elected nor qualified to undertake complex foreign policy.”
The mayor said she had spent 10 days carefully weighing a request from those who wanted her to veto the resolution, which city law required her to do by Friday. But ultimately, she said she chose not to formally reject the resolution because she did not want to prolong an already painful and controversial debate by sending the matter back to supervisors, in whom the mayor said she had “no confidence on this issue.”
Breed returned the resolution to supervisors without her signature, which is how she normally handles non-binding policy statements from the board.
Eight of the 11 city supervisors voted Jan. 9 to pass the resolution, which would have been enough to override Breed’s veto if everyone voted the same way again.
Breed said a veto would “likely lead to yet more divisive, harmful hearings, which in turn would keep this matter and divisiveness front and center in our City, and fan even more antisemitic acts.”
“I cannot watch us divide ourselves even more,” Breed said. “A leader, like a doctor, should be guided by the basic ethos to ‘do no harm,’ to not make a bad situation worse. The Board of Supervisors has put us in this terrible position and, unfortunately, after much consideration and prayer, the best thing I can do is try to quell it, try to turn down the volume and begin the healing. I must choose unity.” Breed’s letter came one week after she condemned the ceasefire resolution, saying the process the board went through “only inflamed division and hurt” and did “not speak for or on behalf of the entire city.” In response to that critical statement, the Jewish Community Relations Council, the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee this week urged the mayor to go further and issue a veto.
Supervisor Dean Preston, who introduced the cease-fire resolution, told the Chronicle he was happy that the mayor did not veto the resolution, which is now final. He said he was proud that city supervisors were “officially on record calling for a cease-fire, humanitarian aid and the release of all hostages.”“I appreciate the turnout, the tens of thousands of San Franciscans who took a strong stand for peace,” Preston said. “I hope this resolution helps amplify calls around the country and world for peace.”
Board President Aaron Peskin said that while he is happy the mayor did not veto the resolution, he thought she had further stoked division on the issue nonetheless.
“I’m glad she didn’t veto it, but I’m sorry she further divided our community and put people on all sides of this issue through more uncertainty and trauma by playing craven politics with it for another week,” Peskin said.
The supervisors’ resolution urged the Biden Administration and Congress to call for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas War and the release of all hostages. It also condemned “Antisemitic, anti-Palestinian, Islamophobic, and xenophobic rhetoric and attacks.” It further condemned the Oct. 7 attack by the Hamas militant group on Israel that killed at least 1,200 Israelis and also condemned the Israeli government’s subsequent attacks on Gaza that have killed tens of thousands of Palestinians.
Finally, the resolution called for “new leadership on both sides” of the conflict and an investigation into “all parties and individuals who have overseen or engaged in war crimes and international human rights violations — including but not limited to gender based violence and killing of children.”
The resolution drew an outpouring of public interest, including from hundreds of pro-Palestinian demonstrators who swarmed City Hall when the resolution was introduced and again when supervisors considered it for a vote. The supervisors’ vote was tense at times as demonstrators loudly booed and chanted when some board members made critical statements about the resolution.
Breed invoked those and other incidents in her Friday letter to supervisors, saying “demonization, heartlessness, and abject antisemitism have, it seems, become politically and socially acceptable among a certain subset of activists.” Since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, Breed said she had spoken with “numerous” Jewish residents of San Francisco who said they felt unsafe. “They were afraid to attend the last Board hearing, and they certainly wouldn’t attend another,” Breed wrote. “They are fearful of the growing acts of vandalism and intimidation, and the targeting of Jewish-owned businesses. They are worried this is the beginning of something worse, right here in San Francisco.”
Breed released her initial statement condemning the resolution after receiving a concerned letter from the mayor of Haifa, Israel’s third-largest city. Breed went to Israel last year to celebrate the 50th anniversary of San Francisco’s sister-city relationship with Haifa.
Lara Kiswani, executive director of the Arab Resource and Organizing Center, an organization that has planned mass protests and demonstrations calling for a cease-fire in Gaza, said she is “really grateful for the advocacy and support of our allies and community” in getting the cease-fire resolution passed. But she slammed Breed’s letter as “amplifying dangerous, racist, wellworn anti-Arab tropes that seem to completely disregard our community.”Tyler Gregory, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of San Francisco, said in a tweet that “while we are disappointed not to have a veto today, we appreciate London Breed for this clear condemnation of the board of supervisors, who enabled illiberal antisemitic groups and their perverse denialism of Hamas’ pogrom on 10/7.”