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Community outraged at hate-fueled tweet from SF district attorney
by Arab Resource and Organizing Center
The DA’s tweet comes amid deadly attacks against Palestinian Americans as human rights violations escalate in Gaza
San Francisco – In the wake of a massive peace rally in San Francisco on Saturday that saw over 10,000 San Francisco residents take to the streets to call for an end to US support of bombings, forced displacement and other human rights violations in Gaza, San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins vilified the rally on Sunday, claiming without evidence that it was associated with the militant Hamas organization. Jenkins also attempted to associate without evidence anti-Israel graffiti with the peace rally.
San Francisco residents, community organizations and legal advocates are now calling for a full investigation of DA Jenkins’s claims, noting that her attacks come amid deadly hate violence against Palestinian Americans over the weekend.
“We are shocked and appalled by DA Jenkins’s hateful, libelous and dangerous attacks on San Francisco residents, especially at this moment. This is a clear incitement to violence against an already vulnerable community,” said Lara Kiswani, executive director of the Arab Resource and Organizing Center. “We are calling for a full retraction of DA Jenkins’s unhinged statement, and we are calling on the Mayor’s office and the Board of Supervisors to open an investigation into how the DA was empowered to launch this sort of a hate attack as an elected official of our city.”
Jenkins’s incitement comes as heightened anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab and anti-Muslim rhetoric has reached a fever pitch in reaction to violence and war in Israel and Palestine. Over the weekend, spurred on by anti-Palestinian and Islamophobic media coverage, a suburban Chicago landlord attacked his Palestinian tenants, stabbing to death a 6-year-old boy and wounding his mother. In the Bay Area, Palestinian-Americans have been scared to send their children to school in fear of hate attacks and accusations echoing those made by DA Jenkins.
“DA Jenkins’s biased mislabeling of a peaceful rally in support of Palestinian people – attended by 10,000 people – is incredibly troubling,” said Zahra Billoo, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, San Francisco Bay Area. “At a time when our community is reeling from the vicious hate motivated murder of a 6-year-old in Illinois and the killing of over 700 children in Gaza, our civic leaders need to do better to keep our communities safe. Their inflammatory words have consequences. While Israel perpetrates war crimes abroad, DA Jenkins is enabling hate in our backyard.”
“DA Jenkins absolutely does not speak for Jewish San Francisco residents. Countless members of our community were a part of Saturday’s march demanding peace in Gaza and an end to the genocide being committed by the Israeli military, and we are appalled and offended by her hateful remarks,” said Ellen Brotsky of Jewish Voice for Peace, Bay Area “There’s a word for when politicians seek to exploit our Jewish community to incite violence: anti-semitism. We call on the Mayor and the Board of Supervisors to hold the DA accountable.”
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