Jewish and Palestinian Marinites Again Show Solidarity Supporting Ceasefire Resolution at Board of Supervisors
Local Media Looks Away (Again); Federally-funded Local Drug Warrior Laurie Dubin's Chilling Pro-Infanticide Statement; Chabad of Marin's Rabbi Rice Patiently Answers Questions
On December 12, 2023, the same day that 153 UN member nations voted for a permanent ceasefire to stop Israel's genocidal attacks on Palestinian civilians, young Palestinian and Jewish Americans solemnly joined one another to urge the Marin Board of Supervisors to propose and pass a permanent ceasefire resolution. This solidarity is something that has not been seen before in Marin County, which has both a relatively high Jewish population that is well represented in local elected offices, and a Palestinian population whose presence is so subdued that it is difficult even for Palestinians living in Marin to parse their actual numbers.
In other words, the combined Jewish-Palestinian effort was newsworthy on the local level. But of course, none of the County's local media covered the meeting. Nor have local media yet tracked any of the substantial progress of the ceasefire resolution petition started by Joe McGarry, a resident of Fairfax. Per a screenshot I received from a private citizen, it appears The Marin Independent-Journal's Richard Halstead claimed in an email that the decision not to cover the matter was up to his editor, Jennifer Upshaw, and that Halstead agreed with her decision because he didn't "see either side of this issue as having a claim to the moral high ground."
"Moral High Ground"
This is an interesting explanation for a reporter, because determining "moral high ground" has never been a prerequisite for reporting on the facts of a matter, and morality would be a subjective determination to begin with. For example, it would have been difficult for American reporters to determine who had the "moral high ground" during the difficult early years of US involvement in Korea or Vietnam. But it also would have been impossible for any reporter to plead to their editors at The New York Times, "now hold on a second, I can't possibly report on this until I first determine who possesses the moral high ground."
Meanwhile, the alt-weekly Pacific Sun skipped the ceasefire story to report on the logistics of a singular porta-potty in San Rafael, a matter of genuine public health significance, but also an issue that The Pacific Sun has had over a year to cover. This reporting comes in the wake of Pacific Sun publisher Dan Pulcrano's boycott-inspiring spiking of coverage of a ceasefire protest for The Pacific Sun's sister publication, North Bay Bohemian. The article, which Pulcrano denies was spiked, resulted in the resignations of the award-winning investigative reporter Peter Byrne, who wrote the story, and news editor Will Carruthers.
The porta-potty article also comes in the wake of a bizarrely biased article that The Pacific Sun ran about an Israeli family taken hostage published the week earlier. There's a pattern of bias in The Pacific Sun and the I-J against Palestinian Americans and other nonwhite minorities in the County, even when they are part of a legitimate news story. (More detail on the curious path of The Pacific Sun later in this article.)
McGarry's Petition and Terra Linda's HS activists Summon a 28-2 Pro-Ceasefire Public Speaker Group
Joe McGarry's "little petition" in Fairfax is making news and possibly history as the ceasefire movement chugs along in the otherwise hostile territory of Marin County. As with last week's pro-ceasefire speakers, I cannot possibly capture how effective and persuasive their pleadings were. In the interest of time, I highlight only a handful of the 28 who urged a ceasefire resolution from the BoS, with a note on the two remaining anti-ceasefire speakers, and the high-handed conduct of BoS President Moulton-Peters.
Young Palestinian Americans Weigh In:
This was the first time that we had more than one Palestinian American speaker, and each provided important context. One speaker explained Palestinian Americans’ reluctance to speak publicly:
"I am a Palestinian Israeli citizen and resident of Marin County for 30 years…. I would like to bring the Marin Board of Supervisors attention to the fact that Palestinians living in Marin County live under a climate of fear that is fueled by the US funding of Israeli war crimes. We have hundreds, maybe thousands of Palestinians here, living in Marin County, many of whom are afraid to be here speaking right now. I myself am risking my citizenship, my ability to go to my home country by speaking right now. People don't understand this. Palestinians living in Marin County have been living in fear for decades."
Later, a petite young Palestinian American woman appeared in person and stated the following:
"When I saw the photos yesterday of men being kidnapped, stripped of their clothes, blindfolded and bound, and paraded around it reminded me of when they did this to my own great grandfather in a town called Ramla, which is now part of Tel Aviv. But to be more recent, there is now a story I want to share of something that happened only yesterday. The IDF conducted a military raid of a UN school where thousands were displaced. A child was shot by the IDF, filmed briefly as getting help, and then, when the cameras were turned off, forced to bleed out as people watched. They (the IDF) then kidnapped dozens of Palestinian civilians for use as human shields, something the USA and Israel falsely accuse Palestinians of doing. There was a story of a child as young as 15 being forced to wear an explosive vest and enter tunnels before the IDF. That all happened yesterday. Each day things like that happen, and we need to call for a ceasefire today showing we don't support that."
This graceful young woman's calm and precise words, limited by Board President Stephanie Moulton-Peters at only one minute, may have been the first fact-check at Marin BoS against earlier claims by anti-ceasefire speakers about Palestinian use of human shields. In fact, it is the IDF that had been using Palestinians as human shields, a practice which the Israeli Supreme Court ruled against, thus initiating Netanyahu's war on the Court.
Jewish Americans Speak In Solidarity:
Many Jewish ceasefire advocates also spoke, including an older Jewish American man who cautioned against the conflation of Judaism and Zionism (the subject of an amazing. multi-hour, two-part interview with Professor Shaul Magid), and a very young Jewish woman:
"I am a first generation Jewish American. My family came here from Ukraine because of the rampant antisemitism that exists in Ukraine. I am grieving with and for Palestine. In just six weeks, Israel was able to drop over over 22,000 US-provided bombs on Gaza. That is the equivalent of two nuclear bombs."
Kids Who Overdose Are News in Local Media; Kids Who Are Politically Engaged Are Not:
I note that almost all of the young people stayed in the lobby outside of the Board Chambers after their comments, exchanging information and planning next organizational steps, and they did not shun us "oldsters" who wanted to participate. The seriousness and focus of these young people is something to behold.
Many of the speakers referenced the healthcare disaster unfolding in Gaza due to Israel's blockade. And an Armenian Jewish woman made an especially plaintive call for ceasefire. Sadly, the recording appears to have crashed on the County website. Given the County's history of deleting essential meeting videos, I am hoping this is not a permanent loss. (While the video appears to have been lost, the audio was still downloadable. Meanwhile, the captions transcript only start at mid-day, omitting the ceasefire comments entirely.)
Before the video recording of the BoS meeting recording crashed on the County's website, I was able to download the comments of 87-year-old Jeannine Herron, and in fact-checking this article, I realized that she is the widow of legendary photojournalist Matt Herron. Ms. Herron spoke of starting her teaching career at the Ramallah at a Quaker school. Yes, the same Quaker school attended decades later by the three Palestinian men who were shot in Vermont this past Thanksgiving simply for wearing keffiyah scarves and speaking Arabic. The rest of Ms. Herron's compelling statement should be heard in her own voice, and I submit to you her comments before she was coldly cut off by Moulton-Peters.
https://x.com/marindatanow/status/1736106377821757832?s=46&t=q4VsCWEzorcI3TrikyJ90g
The Only Two Anti-Ceasefire Speakers:
It went over my head at the time, but someone else pointed out to me the bizarre comments of one of the only two anti-ceasefire speakers, Laurie Dubin, a former attorney who started "Be The Influence", an anti-drug nonprofit tightly linked to local law enforcement, and the recipient of federal monies through the ONDCP.
Just one week after a pro-Israel attendee at Marin Board of Supervisors draped herself in the Israeli flag and wished death and rape on the children of ceasefire petitioner Joe McGarry, Dubin made these bizarre comments:
"We've raised three children here and our family is hoping that this board will not consider a resolution on the Middle East. We have mourned too many deaths since October 7. It's been a devastating period for our Jewish community and we've also been heartbroken over the devastation of Gaza and the deaths of palestinians. But as Golda Meir, Israel's former Prime Minister said in 1969: 'When peace comes we will perhaps in time be able to forgive the Arabs for killing our children, but it will be harder for us to forgive them for forcing us to kill theirs,' Over 50 years later Israel is again being forced to defend itself against jihadist groups who use their own people as human shields, and block their people from leaving when Israel gives them advance warning. Repeating falsehoods of genocide, apartheid and ethnic cleansing over and over again does not make them true."
The Golda Meir quote is controversial for a variety of reasons, not least because it has been contested that Meir ever actually said anything so inflammatory and bizarre. But many ardently pro-Israel backers continue to demonstrate an affinity for that quote which casts the ex-Milwaukee schoolteacher Golda Meir (née Mabovitch) and Israel itself look very bad.
Incredibly, Ms. Dubin made these statements in defense of child-killing when the fatality rate of Palestinian children due to Israel's bombing campaign was already north of 7,000. As for the debunked claims she made about Palestinians using human shields, one would think that a retired attorney would recognize the judgement by the Israeli Supreme Court against the IDF regarding their illegal use of Palestinians as human shields. Is Dubin merely uninformed? Well, consider her subsequent claim that Israel gave advance warning to Palestinians. Not only was there nowhere for Palestinians to escape to with barely any warning, but Israel, as reported in nearly every legitimate news source, was subsequently bombing those areas it had instructed Palestinian civilians to flee into.
Rabbi Rice Answers His Own Phone, Answers Questions
The only other anti-ceasefire speaker was Guila Rice, Co-Director of Chabad of Marin, a group which most people do not recognize as being linked to the Lubavitcher movement. Even though I myself had covered aspects of Lubavitcher Rebbe Schneerson's burial in 1994, I had not made the Chabad-Lubavitcher connection in Marin, 3,000 miles away from Crown Heights. In the process of fact-checking, I called Chabad of Marin and had a lengthy phone conversation not with Guila Rice but with Rabbi Rice (yes, unlike your local Supervisor, Rabbi Rice is not too busy to answer his own telephone.) A good part of the conversation dealt with the anti-Zionist, pro-Zionist and Zionist-agnostic aspects of the Lubavitchers.
I obviously do not share Rabbi Rice's views on the matter of the ceasefire, but I appreciate that he took a call from a random reporter and patiently answered questions and engaged in some question-asking himself for over half an hour. A few takeaways/confirmations from the phone call with Rabbi Rice: Chabad and Lubavitcher are inseparable; Lubavitcher leaders were not always in agreement on the matter of Israel; and yes, Schneerson did take a hard line on lands captured in 1967. We talked about Philip Roth, the Satmar-Lubavitcher disagreements, Art Spiegelman's graphic novel Maus, and Chabad's resurgence even after the death of Schneerson.
Rabbi Rice seemed to agree that Judaism should not be conflated with Zionism. Rabbi Rice also explained that he didn't see a solution to the current conflict, stating that the only thing that can bring a solution was the Messiah. I wanted to make sure that I understood that, so I asked him to confirm that I had heard him correctly. He confirmed the only solution was the Messiah.
A Few Words on Stephanie Moulton-Peters:
President of the Marin Board of Supervisors Stephanie Moulton-Peters (SMP) has always been treated very gently by local media, and in the case of The Pacific Sun, rather fawningly. This media coverage is in line with SMP's wealthy donors, who flooded the phone lines to gush over SMP when she was first sworn in. But for most of the poor and workingclass who suffer the brunt of her policy decisions, she is seen as wholly inadequate to the various issues confronting her district. Being the Mayor of Mill Valley confirms only that you can effectively kowtow to some of the wealthiest and most conservative elements in the County.
This is never more apparent than when SMP has to deal with a younger crowd and grows prickly, testy, and defensive. During last Tuesday's meeting, SMP not only refused to acknowledge the violence of the language used against Joe McGarry by the woman wrapped in the Israeli flag, but she opened public comment in a very strange manner.
To start, SMP asked for a count of speakers in the room and on zoom, and then calibrated that speakers would only have one minutes because "I'd like to hear everyone in 45 minutes."
The Brown Act requires the Board to hear the public. It does not require that public comment be capped at 45 minutes, and capping public comment on such an important topic is a clear means to diminish public input which has been overwhelmingly in favor of a ceasefire resolution.
But the phrasing itself was interesting. SMP said that she would like to hear everyone. But SMP's responsibility to the public is not to state her favor or inclination to hear everyone. Her job is, rather, to hear everyone.
SMP then went on to ask speakers to "come together" as that is what she says people in Marin County do, rather than to be “divisive”. But SMP's vision of "coming together" has always been the tradition of squashing dissent. This is not "coming together", but weighting the scales toward the powerful. And once again, SMP cut off a number of pro-ceasefire speakers on Zoom, which she acknowledged herself on the recording, much to the consternation of the young students in the room.
Increasingly, SMP has seemed out of it, confused about the agenda, and generally annoyed to have to appear in public where she might be considered more critically than she was as a Mill Valley Councilmember and Mayor. To see her in a room dealing with a bunch of high school and college students, not to mention many older ceasefire advocates who have lived life with much more courage than she has, is to see finally how brittle and inept her leadership has been. Moulton-Peters will run unchallenged in the next election, and that strikes me as far more offensive even than the woman wrapped in the Israeli flag who shouted such crude threats the week before.
The Pacific Sun Is Sunsetting
I've written previously about The Marin IJ's biased reporting, which is not limited to its coverage of Israel-Palestine. The reporting failures of The Pacific Sun and its abandonment of its antiwar roots deserve consideration, too:
The most recent coverage in The Pacific Sun about the Israel-Palestine conflict was a report on a Marin-linked family that was taken hostage by Hamas on October 7 from their kibbutz Kfar Aza. (Tragically, two of the three Israeli hostages who escaped Hamas last Friday were also from Kfar Aza; all three of these hostages were shot dead by the IDF. The IDF report claims the IDF soldiers mistook the hostages for Hamas fighters, even though the hostages were shirt- less, waving a white flag, and pleading in Hebrew.)
Silverstein's article is typically glaring in its omissions. No mention is made of the manner in which Israel's genocidal bombing campaign in Gaza (which, per The Financial Times, is one of history's heaviest conventional bombing campaigns) imperiled the very hostages that Israel claimed it wanted to rescue, nor does it acknowledge Israel's refusal to trade Palestinian "prisoners" (many of whom are Palestinian children held in indefinite detention for infractions as minor as waving a flag) in an earlier swap proposed by Hamas. In the meantime, as Palestinians civilian deaths hover near 20,000, the actual number of Hamas fighters captured or killed by Israel is only in the hundreds.
To describe the Israeli Defense Forces as incompetent would be far too mild. The actions taken by Israel with only a hiccup of protest from the US, on whose financial teat Israel depends, constitute a series of war crimes that have outraged all of the so-called "global south" and almost everyone else.
But you would not know that reading Silverstein's article in The Pacific Sun, which describes the existence of the kibbutz as merely "egalitarian", without acknowledging that a vast, Israeli- imposed Palestinian ghetto exists in the shadow of the otherwise-once-cheerful kibbutz. In fact, no less a literary light than Masha Gessen had an award suspended last week for comparing Gaza to Nazi-era Jewish ghettos in an essay for The New Yorker Magazine. Oh, the irony: it was The New Yorker that, in 2022, reported the "abject" conditions in the San Rafael "SSA", (a police-run internment camp into which San Rafael's unhoused population had been remanded) which The Pacific Sun's Nikki Silverstein had whitewashed.
Some Notes on The Pacific Sun's Anti-war Roots, and How Publisher Dan Pulcrano Changed All That
The alt-weekly format of The Pacific Sun has its roots in the antiwar movement, and the publication maintained an anti-war stance during the Vietnam era. But that began to change in the 1980s as part of a general trend, of which Pulcrano was part: The New York Times reported in 1984 on a very young Dan Pulcrano and his 15,000-circulation Los Gatos Weekly. Per the Times, Pulcrano was seeking membership in the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies, but the directors had not yet decided on whether Pulcrano's publication was actually "alternative" enough to qualify.
The New York Times describes this as a moment when the alt-weekly, several years into the Reagan Revolution, was in flux. And Dan Pulcrano was proposing a different future more in line with the back-to-the-1950s direction the country was headed in:
"'There's not too much room for 'hip' anymore,' said Dan Pulcrano, 25 years old, the editor, publisher, and owner of The Los Gatos Weekley, whose cirulation is 15,000. The Weekly is a 'hometown' paper for a community in California's Silicon Valley that, Mr. Pulcrano said, mostly wants to know about school boards and police reports. 'We do rent control,' he said, 'not Central America.'"
We do rent control, not Central America. Or maybe not much of either.
From Leviathan To A Mini-Media Empire
Approximately seven years before Pulcrano appeared in that New York Times article, he had taken over as editor at Leviathan, a UC Santa Cruz Jewish student publication that was exciting, creative, and decidedly progressive. The publication had lost its private funding when it took a position in 1976 against land annexation in the Galilee, and had been forced to sell advertising to survive.
"In 1976, Leviathan published a controversial front-page editorial, signed by the full editorial staff, with the headline, 'Zionists Condemn Israeli Policy.' Feldman said he wrote the first draft, which criticized new Israeli land annexation in the Galiliee that threatened the homes of Israeli Arabs. 'It inhibited cooperation and coexistence,' he said."
The jweekly.com article is an important reminder, one of many, of a time when Jewish Americans were more free to criticize Israel, a necessary factor in achieving any sort of peace in the region.
Pulcrano's role at Leviathan was to impose a kind of standardization, a path he would follow later at the Los Gatos Weekly and other publications.
Along with that standardization there appears to have come something else at some of the North Bay publications Pulcrano later acquired: a surfeit of sponsored content. As I have reported earlier, Pulcrano has declined to answer questions about "media buy" monies The Pacific Sun is receiving from the County of Marin for drug messaging, but some of its 2023 reporting on OD Free Marin certainly seems tightly in line with the County's particular brand of anti-drug messaging.
Questions about more blatant sponsored content at The North Bay Bohemian also remain unanswered by Pulcrano. It is one problem to take money from the County that influences a publication's reporting; it is another problem not to respond to questions about those monies. What role may those monies have played in the serial censorship of even polite reader comments made in response to Pacific Sun and North Bay Bohemian articles? (When I contacted Dan Pulcrano about these issues, he repeatedly said that they would discuss it, but I never received a response after that, and Pulcrano has since stopped responding to emails.)
I reached out to Norm and Jan Frankel, who had edited Leviathan prior to Pulcrano's arrival. They had not interacted with Pulcrano, as they moved to a kibbutz in Israel the year that he took over as editor at Leviathan. The conversation with the Frankels was sobering; they have long been involved in the peace movement, and have a son and grandchild living in Israel. Jan Frankel told me that she had a bad feeling in the past year about potential harm to the larger Jewish community; like many others, she had no idea October 7 loomed on the horizon.
The Frankels seemed still proud of the work they did with Leviathan. They should be. Leviathan is still publishing, and it will be interesting to follow in which direction a younger generation of writers takes it. Watching the young Jewish and Palestinian ceasefire advocates at Marin Board of Supervisors offers a glimpse into one possible, hopeful direction. May we listen and learn from them.
©️2023 Eva Chrysanthe