Jew-hating California mayor must go

Sometimes it is best to put things simply: Eduardo Martinez, mayor of Richmond, CA, is a Jew-hating bigot unfit to serve in any official position. 

Were his hatred against any other minority group, he would have been expelled long ago. But because he hates Jews, other elected officials are wringing their hands.

Martinez recently shared a collection of material blaming Jews for being massacred while celebrating Hanukkah at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia. 

The posts included claims that it was a “false flag attack,” part of a “history” of attacks secretly done by Israel’s “paid actors” in order “to manufacture fear and hate.” 

Another said that celebrating Hanukkah on a public beach itself involves “performative assertions of dominance.” Yet another blamed Jews for 9/11. 

The one post which Martinez attempted to explain away stated more broadly that “the root cause of Antisemitism is the behavior of Israel & Israelis,” blaming Jews for Jew-hatred while engaging in precisely the sort of stereotyping he might denounce as odious against any other group. 

Neither is this merely a recent aberration. On the contrary, it was apparent even when Martinez was a councilman, becoming more obvious since he became mayor in 2022. 

Within weeks of the murderous Hamas-led pogrom of October 7, 2023, he put forward a resolution condemning Israel and “affirming Richmond’s support and solidarity with the Palestinian people of Gaza,” before Israel had even entered Gaza to root out the terrorists.

Earlier this year, Martinez spoke at the “People’s Conference for Palestine,” a gathering so replete with terrorists, murderers, and advocates for genocide hoping to participate that the State Department had to give related visa requests special attention. It was a conference for Jew-hatred, and Martinez earned a choice speaking spot because of how well he fit in.

During his address, he claimed that “part of me that couldn’t endure the abuse anymore would be Hamas,” not merely justifying but identifying himself with rape, kidnapping, and the beheading of babies, as long as the victims are Jews. He wore a hat reading “DDTTIDF,” an acronym for “Death, Death To The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF).”

Martinez would have found an equally receptive audience among readers of Der Stürmer, the German tabloid that did so much to incite the hatred behind the Holocaust. That is because Martinez puts an identical spin on current events.

Antisemites have always believed that Jews act together as a single cabal, conspiring against, dominating, and stealing from others. This is humanity’s most persistent, malicious, and dangerous lie. 

It would be false even were the diversity of Jewish opinion not legendary, or the names of Jewish philanthropists so disproportionate on major hospitals, charities, and other public institutions across America. 

More fundamentally, the bile spewed by Martinez runs counter to the specifically American traditions of liberty, tolerance, and mutual respect. He represents an attitude that hopes to tear down American values in favor of anarchy, hate, and mutual destruction—in much the same way that hate turned German academia from supremely-respected to much-despised, and collapsed entire civilizations from within. 

Yet despite all of that, the Richmond city council has failed to respond. California’s Governor Gavin Newsom, Senators Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla, and local Congressman John Garamendi have all been silent. In fact, Garamendi helped Martinez obtain nearly $10 million in federal funds for the city, while voting against censure of his colleague Rashida Tlaib for antisemitic bigotry and even against condemnation of antisemitism itself.

The great American experiment has no room for the hate represented by Martinez. He must go, and California’s leaders must acquire the fortitude to say so.

Rabbi Yaakov Menken is the Executive Vice President of the Coalition for Jewish Values.