SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) — San Francisco’s Jewish community is outraged over a pro-Palestinian protest at a pumpkin carving event Saturday, hosted by State Senator Scott Wiener.
Video surfaced of the protesters descending on the Halloween event, chanting: “Wiener, Wiener, you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide. We charge you with genocide.”
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“People can have whatever opinions they want to have about the war, about Israel, about anything,” said State Senator Wiener on Sunday. “But to disrupt a pumpkin carving event for children – it crosses the line and it’s sad that it’s gotten to this.”
JCRC Bay Area says the anti-Semitic language that the protesters used made clear that he was targeted simply because he is Jewish.
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“I’m tired of hearing that same argument again and again,” said Jon Ramirez-Monaco, one of the protest organizers. “You cannot equate being against a government system with being antisemitic.”
Ramirez-Monaco believes the state senator isn’t doing enough to end the violence in the Middle East.
“We’re just really frustrated,” he said. “It did get very heated yesterday, but people are very angry. I mean, how much horror can we continue to see. He says that he wants peace, you know, and so on. Yet he’s not acting that way.”
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Hundreds of pro-Palestinian supporters, many of them faculty, staff and students of UC Berkeley, walked out of classrooms Tuesday afternoon.
State Senator Wiener reiterated his position Sunday.
“I want there to be a two-state solution with Israel and Palestine living side by side in peace. I’ve been very clear about that for a long time,” he said. “Yet, these folks continue to target me in a really vicious way and frankly, in ways that they’re not targeting non-Jewish leaders.”
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