New Video Release: The Man The SF JCRC's Crowd Called A "Kapo"

I. New Video; II. Fairfax Peace Activist David Glick Reveals A Heroic Family History; III. New Docs Released By San Rafael Shed Light on JCRC's Reach in Bay Area; IV. Marinites Review Spotswood Column

Part I: Video Release. Last Sunday, I released an article with video showing the unlawful grabbing of my phone camera on June 5 by a member of a small gang of enraged, pro-Israel women linked to the San Francisco Jewish Community Relations Council (SF JCRC). This group had regularly appeared at Fairfax Town Council meetings to oppose any ceasefire resolution, and showed up most recently on June 5 to oppose the Council’s watered-down “peace proclamation”, which omitted any mention of the words genocide, war crimes, or famine.

The SF JCRC-linked group was made livid by the Council’s June 5 passage of the mild proclamation, and by the civil public comments of Jewish ceasefire advocates. They became even more enraged upon realizing I had filmed the tail end of their harassment of an older Jewish peace activist, David Glick. During this incident, they had crowded Glick, and called him a "kapo" and "Hamas". Even exclusive of the JCRC-linked group's conduct during the meeting, it was hard not to see their bullying of Glick and other ceasefire advocates as an open act of political intimidation.

I repeatedly reached out to leadership at SF JCRC (including voicemails and emails to CEO Tye Gregory and Director of External Relations Jonathan Mintzer) regarding the incident but have received no reply.

I did not release the limited video I had recorded of the group's harassment of Glick because I had not asked his permission. But less than 24 hours after the last article was published, I received a voicemail from David Glick:

"I think you wanted to know if you have my permission to post the despicable way they were treating me – yeah, you have it. I want their behavior exposed."

David Glick and I met the following day, and he explained more of what happened when he tried to exit the council meeting through the gauntlet of pro-Israel supporters. He said that he had tried to reason with the group, but they in turn had repeatedly called him a "kapo” and "Hamas". For Glick, these insults were infuriating, especially the "kapo" epithet, and he realized that he needed to walk away from the group. (That is approximately the moment when I turned on my camera to record, and was able to catch the tail end of their harassment of Glick. As I stated last week, I have submitted a public records act for the bodycam of the officers present so that the public can have a clearer understanding of the harassment Glick and others endured before I turned on my camera.)

In the above brief video clip:

1. Note the voice of the father of a young ceasefire advocate (offscreen) pointing out to the JCRC-linked group that they had filmed his daughter (while she was politely speaking at the podium during public comment). He thus implied they had no reason to complain about anyone else recording their public harassment of an elder. This was followed by the JCRC-linked group denying that they had done so;

2. Note how readily the group moves to block my filming. This is consonant with the JCRC-linked group’s subsequent conduct when I had to walk back through the area to retrieve my bicycle (video below). It seems clear that the JCRC-linked group wanted the privilege of harassing and intimidating others, but they did not want anyone to record their misconduct (fuller video in last week’s article);

3. Note at the end of the newly released clip that I was able to capture Marin Independent-Journal columnist Dick Spotswood quite literally with his back turned to the harassment enacted by the JCRC-linked group — and thus the group’s subsequent misdemeanor assault. More on this in Part IV.

Part II: The Goldenson/Glick Legacy

The epithet “kapo” is particularly hateful given that Glick is not only a longtime peace activist, but the grandson of Dr. Samuel Goldenson (1878-1962), who headed the prestigious Congregation Emanu-El in Manhattan, the first Reform Jewish congregation in New York City. Goldenson was an early advocate of social justice and, like many rabbis and Jewish leaders of his era, an ardent anti-Zionist. Per Glick, Goldenson was “one of more than 300 Americans rabbis and prominent Jewish commmunity leaders who signed a letter sent to President Wilson opposing the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine in 1919”, screenshot below:

The letter to President Wilson had 31 principal signatories, including Henry Morgenthau Sr., who had served as ambassador to the Ottoman Empire during WWI. The letter concludes: “We ask that Palestine be constituted as a free and independent state, to be governed under a democratic form of government, recognizing no distinctions of creed or race or ethnic dissent, and with adequate power to protect the country against oppression of any kind. We do not wish to see Palestine, either now or at any time in the future, organized as a Jewish state.”

Uncle David’s Heroic Rescue Mission:

David Glick's uncle, also named David Glick, was a less-recognized but no less important public figure: an attorney who, as the unofficial representative of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, was sent from the US to Germany in the mid-to-late 1930s to advocate for Jews who were being targeted, beaten, and killed by their German neighbors. When “Uncle” David Glick realized the gravity of the sitution, he worked to shepherd many thousands of German Jews to safety in South America, at significant risk to himself. Likely traumatized by his inability to rescue more people from the Holocaust, "Uncle David" spoke little about this, and the records were only later preserved by David's cousin, Allen Hepner. They are now part of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.

A short video of Glick’s rescue mission is available here.

The Glick Activist Tradition Continues:

David Glick's own commitment to peace included, but was hardly limited to, refusing induction into the US military during the Vietnam era despite the risk of a years-long prison sentence, and bringing Pentagon Papers' Daniel Ellsberg to a Fairfax Town Council meeting in 2003 to urge the council to pass a resolution Glick himself had written against the now-infamous "Patriot" Act. Ellsberg had been unfamiliar with the Patriot Act, but when asked by Glick to come and speak, Ellsberg began researching the matter, and became one of the Patriot Act's fiercer critics.

As former seven-term Fairfax Mayor Frank Egger related in a phone call, Ellsberg's appearance, made possible by Glick, reportedly brought the largest-ever crowd to Fairfax Town Council, with the room packed to the rafters.

Glick then worked closely with many other Marin County residents to help craft similar anti-Patriot Act resolutions that passed in other towns and cities in Marin County. As he tells it, his Fairfax resolution spurred others to create their own versions, a process that knitted together activists across the County.

David Glick and Fellow Activists Continued Their Work As Marin Grew More Conservative:

As Marin County grew richer and more conservative — as Range Rovers and Teslas clogged the streets and new McMansions were built up to ridiculous proportions — many longtime residents remained true to their ideals, quietly continuing their work without benefit of publicity or nonprofit status. For David Glick, who told me he is not a pacifist but is opposed to imperialism in all its forms, the Israel-Palestine issue was of special concern, he felt it personally. An analysis Glick wrote in 2014 of Israel's hostility to a peace process, published in Tikkun Magazine, seems utterly prophetic now, but was in 2014 controversial enough that Editor Michael Lerner was prompted to append an introduction to it. The subsequent comment by Glick, at the end of the article, neatly encapsulates Glick’s position.

And on the night he was jeered, harassed and mocked by the JCRC-linked group, Glick had told Fairfax Town Council that a ceasefire resolution "is not a statement against Israeli Jews or any Jews. It is a statement on behalf of the innocent children of Gaza who are dying on a daily basis from both the bombing and the systemic starvation that Israel has imposed. My Jewish upbringing means I am here to speak up on their behalf."

Glick has spent nearly 50 years listening to patients as a psychotherapist, and when he speaks, he gets straight to the heart of the matter in way that's hard to shake. I hesitate to relate any more details of his experience as a peace advocate, as it is my hope Glick will relate these stories in his own compelling voice in future podcast interviews — many of the details are astounding.

Part III. New Documents Released By City of San Rafael Show JCRC Recruitment of Elected Representatives to Advocate Against Ceasefire Resolutions in Richmond, Oakland, Berkeley, and San Francisco

Independent reporters and activist groups outside of Marin have monitored the role of SF JCRC in pushing back against ceasefire resolutions and any criticism of Israel in the Bay Area. Hitherto unexamined is the role that the JCRC played in recruiting elected representatives from Marin County to assist in this effort.

Two days after I met with Glick, and while I was combing through recent scholarly articles that cite his anti-Zionist grandfather, I received dozens of documents from the City of San Rafael in response to my April 9, 2024 California Public Records Act.

Many of these documents showed the heavy hand that the SF JCRC had played in local politics not only in Marin, but throughout multiple Bay Area counties and cities. (It is perhaps an indication of the growing power of the JCRC, led by Tye Gregory, that the CPRA retrieved so many SF JCRC documents, and to date, little from the ADL.)

One thing to keep in mind when reflecting on the SF JCRC's involvement in organizing the crowd that harassed and intimidated ceasefire advocates in Fairfax is the singularity of Marin County, exceptionally white and starkly segregated. And in recent decades, Marin has grown more conservative as its pro-Israel faction has grown. This trend cannot and should not be separated from the fact that Marin has increasingly become a kind of second bedroom community for Silicon Valley tech fortunes, including those linked to military and surveillance technology.

Thus, the fact that ceasefire advocates got as far as a soggy "peace proclamation" on the agenda for the June 5 Fairfax Town Council likely set off alarm bells within JCRC and its offshoot group, BANJO. (Leadership from JCRC and BANJO appeared repeatedly at council meetings alongside — and distributed documents to — the all-female crew that harassed David Glick and subsequently unlawfully blocked my recording.)

Not all of the CPRA requests have been fulfilled, nor is there space enough in this article to present all of the material already delivered, but I present the following documents as a preview:

1. SF JCRC began its anti-resolution-of-any-kind activity as early as October 9, 2023, less than 72 hours after the October 7 Hamas attacks, as the email document from Mintzer to San Rafael City Councilmember Rachel Kertz shows.

JCRC noted: "The coming weeks will be harrowing and there will likely be high numbers of casualties, including of many innocent civilians in Gaza." But JCRC omits that the disproportionate targeting of civilians in retaliation for the Hamas attack would constitute a war crime.

And note JCRC’s italicized paragraph:

"We recognize that some elected bodies may feel compelled to issue resolutions and joint statements about the current sitution in Israel and Gaza. While the intention is commendable, JCRC believes that it is not productive for local bodies to weigh in on international affairs, in part because such efforts may create or exacerbate unwanted community tensions. Please connect with JCRC if you wish to discuss further."

This suggests that leadership at one of the most influential pro-Israel groups in the Bay Area was not only aware of the strong possibility that Israel's military response would be disproportionate, but that support for that response would be controversial even within the US. And yet the JCRC's response wasn't to rally Jewish residents to consider advocating for a saner response and a peace process, it was to push back even on anyone, Jewish or otherwise, who advocated for a ceasefire.

2. The multimillion-dollar SF JCRC with its highly compensated executive staff was not only organizing people to speak against ceasefire across the Bay Area, it was officially registering and training Marin County elected representatives to speak against ceasefire resolutions, as this October 23 email from SF JCRC Director of External Relations Jonathan Mintzer to San Rafael Councilmember Rachel Kertz (co-Chair of JCRC offshot BANJO) indicates.

Despite its money and connections, the SF JCRC failed to block Richmond’s ceasefire resolution, the strongest and earliest ceasefire resolution passed in the entire country.

3. JCRC was also introducing its “Community Labs” program to Marin County officials, among others. This included a February 26 "Local Advocacy Training" described in the following manner:

"It's often said that 'all politics is local' and this includes the Bay Area. Join Director of External Relations Jonathan Mintzer to learn how to best advocate for the Jewish community with your local elected officials. During the presentation, we will review best practices, outline key talking points, and answer all your advocacy questions."

Given that Mintzer was clearly involved in organizing the group that called peace activist David Glick a "kapo" and "Hamas", was JCRC tacitly encouraging that kind of political intimidation as "local advocacy"?

The same Community Labs program also offered February 29 "Israel Advocacy Workshop." That's right, during a month when Jewish Americans who opposed Israel's genocidal bombing of Palestinians in Gaza were being arrested in the hundreds for peacefully protesting, the JCRC was making clear that there was only one position for Jewish people to take: pro-Israel.

If the JCRC organizes so fiercely against pro-Palestinian Jewish Americans, a number that continues to grow since October 7, can the JCRC truly claim to be a "Jewish Community Relations Council"? SF JCRC's activity is clearly more in line with a pro-Israel lobbying group, so why doesn't SF JCRC have to register as a 501(c)4?

Or, for that matter, why is JCRC not required to register as an agent for a foreign country under FARA, the Foreign Agents Registration Act? Since the Kennedy era, officials have tried to enforce this with regard to various Israeli lobbying groups, but have been stymied, while FARA has routinely been used to push back on advocates for environmental causes, and on peace activists with ties to African, Asian, and Latin American countries. There is a notable European exception: FARA has previously been used to punish groups linked to Ireland.

4. Back in early October (10/12/23, the JCRC's Mintzer was distributing emails to local Marin officials instructing them how to talk about the incident: "To ensure your Jewish residents feel seen and heard, it is important to name what happened to Israelis directly as "a terrorist attack with 1,300+ victims" and not simply say "a conflict broke out in the Middle East."

But instructing officials to use such language denied the reality that, regardless of the horrors of October 7, under international law, Palestinians had a right to resist the illegal occupation of their land by Israel. And at no point does Mintzer or Gregory indicate in their emails what even multiple Israeli media outlets later reported: that there was no evidence for Israel’s most shocking claims about the October 7 attacks. Rather, groups like the JCRC continued to double down on such exaggerated claims.

5. JCRC was organizing Marin County officials to speak out against ceasefire resolutions well beyond their jurisdictions: in Richmond, in Oakland, in San Francisco, and in Berkeley. This email to Rachel Kertz demonstrates the level of organizing local activists had to contend with. Note that Kertz is an elected official in Marin County, not an elected official in Oakland. It is perfectly permissible for Kertz to speak in Oakland, but she is doing so in the same manner that Tiburon councilmember Holly Thier appeared in Richmond: as a very wealthy white property owner from a very white and segregated county telling a multiracial demographic in Oakland how their Council should vote.

Money Talks, But Not Always Convincingly

Contrast the SF JCRC's well-funded effort to activists like Joe McGarry, who started the County-wide petition for a ceasefire resolution out of Fairfax on a zero-dollar budget on his days off. The blue-collar McGarry, who works on his feet 40 hours a week, frequently has to direct reporters to call him on his lunch break, and yet he still responds to questions more readily and forthrightly than has JCRC's Tye Gregory or Jonathan Mintzer. On one of those lunch breaks, McGarry pointed out to me the irresponsibility of men like Mintzer, who instill false fears into people, such as the all-female group that harassed David Glick at Fairfax Town Council, "then walking away and washing his hands while they do his dirty work.” Which is to say that as poorly as this group of women behaved, most of us were still capable of seeing that, as a group, they had been manipulated toward such conduct.

I had not seen Mintzer speak in public until June 5, at Fairfax Town Council. I was surprised by what a lousy public speaker he was, particularly when compared to the powerful comments of so many in Fairfax. But Mintzer, who likely makes a six-figure salary in his role as Director of External Relations for SF JCRC, knows he doesn't need to be an effective communicator. He's got the money and the power to back him. He and Tye Gregory can keep losing these battles, and they’ll still get paid.

Part IV: Spotswood's Latest Column

Late last week, I received a note from San Rafael redident Chris Jewell regarding Dick Spotswood’s column about the Fairfax Town Council’s “peace proclamation”:

“You have probably already seen Spotswood's disingenuous report in the I-J — basically he's saying local councils have no business wading into state and federal politics as it is 'divisive'. He fails to acknowledge that pressure asserted from the local authorities on state and federal officials is crucial for accountability on major issues, and that in our case, Huffman, Butler, Padilla and Biden have ignored our demands to end the genocide. Short of rioting on the streets, resolutions passed by local councils and county supervisors are a really effective way of sending a strong message up the 'chain of command'. Spotswood clearly doesn't understand how democracy works.”

I really can't say it better than Jewell, and he wasn't alone among Marin residents who took issue with Spotswood's faulty reasoning. Others have pointed out that Spotswood never had a problem with local Marin councils wading into foreign policy when they issued proclamations about Ukraine. And even I caught that, while Spotswood’s column falsely implied that ceasefire advocacy is somehow antisemitic, his column is genuinely antisemitic as it completely ignored all the Jewish people involved in ceasefire advocacy (whom he had just heard speak well past midnight on June 5.)

But back to the new video shared in this article, Spotswood was present during the JCRC-linked group's harassment of David Glick and the group’s subsequent unlawful conduct that night, and yet he made no effort to interview Glick. Or McGarry, who was a witness.

But as I learned, Glick has a great story to share, one that is rich in Jewish American history. And McGarry's own work as an activist is a model for how even a blue-collar renter can challenge the power of one of the strongest lobbying groups in the Bay Area.

Spotswood’s decision to ignore their stories should tell you everything you need to know about the irrelevance of the Alden Global Capital-owned Marin Independent-Journal.

©️2024 Eva Chrysanthe

PS: Thanks for making it through another (yikes) long article. With all of our email inboxes so full, I've been trying to get as much of the under-reported county news into a single, weekly newsletter. Going forward, I may try posting articles that don't go out by email, so pls. feel free to check the substack for “midweek” reports.