Lawmakers couldn’t agree to rebuke a San Francisco Bay Area socialist mayor after he shared shocking antisemitic posts, even after a coalition of 80 local officials and community groups demanded his resignation — leading one councilwoman to blast colleagues as a “complete embarrassment.”
The city council in Richmond, Calif., a suburb of Oakland failed for a second time to formally censure Mayor Eduardo Martinez, who shared an antisemitic conspiracy theory about the Bondi beach terror attack that killed 15 people in Sydney in December.
“This is a complete embarrassment,” councilor Jamelia Brown reportedly said as her colleagues punted a resolution to condemn the mayor’s remarks.
“We say this was antisemitic, yet we don’t want to formalize it and put it on record,” she said, calling it “coward behavior.”
The group had previously failed to take any action on the resolution as some had failed to read it. “To say that you didn’t have an opportunity to read a resolution does not negate the fact that we have a responsibility as a council to answer to the community,” Brown said during the previous hearing.
Martinez, a member of Democratic Socialists of America, was called out for a history of antisemitic rhetoric — once comparing himself to Hamas, according to The Jewish News of Northern California.
The hardcore lefty once reposted an image blaming antisemitism on “Israel and Israelis,” sported a red hat emblazoned with “Death Death to the IDF” and spewed antisemitic rhetoric at a pro-Palestinian conference that hosted a well-known terrorist.
After the Bondi Beach massacre, Martinez shared loony LinkedIn posts calling the attack a “false flag” and another questioning whether Jews celebrating Hanukkah on the beach were engaging in “assertions of dominance,” per Jewish News.
The mayor took down the antisemitic posts and apologized on social media, but has resisted calls to resign from leading the city of 116,000 people in Contra Costa County.
A coalition of Bay Area officials issued a “Unity Letter,” asking Martinez to meet privately with local Jewish leaders, publicly apologize, and condemn antisemitism.
Martinez reportedly apologized during the Tuesday meeting: “I’m asking for you to accept me as a fellow human who is trying to do better,” he said.
The council did approve a motion calling for a “restorative process” of making amends with the local Jewish community, including trainings at a synagogue.
Martinez had also previously apologized in a post on social media.
“I want to apologize for sharing my previous posts without thinking,” he posted. “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.”
