Thoughtcrimes In San Anselmo: SF JCRC Cohort’s Attack On A Library Turns Up Ties To Jeffrey Epstein-linked Wexner Foundation; A Powerful State Prosecutor; And A School Board Candidate
What Do Berkeley And San Anselmo Have In Common? Both Were Recently Targeted By The Jewish Community Relations Council and Related Pro-Israel Cohort
Editor’s Note: Last week in Berkeley, Jewish Community Relations Council CEO Tye Gregory publicly organized the cancellation of a regular meeting of the City of Berkeley’s Peace and Justice Commission. This was done in retaliation for the commission finally agendizing a nearly year-long effort on a ceasefire/arms embargo resolution. There is much to unpack in the JCRC’s brazen attack on the Berkeley commission, including an undisclosed JCRC Israel junket that Berkeley City Councilmember (and current mayoral candidate) Sophie Hahn apparently took in 2023.
On Friday, I was able to obtain partial confirmation from Hahn’s office of the trip, and am waiting for a full response from Hahn before I cover the Berkeley incident in greater detail. Meanwhile, in Marin, a less public attack on free speech came to light, thanks to a young father who ran a public records act request on the cancellation of a San Anselmo public library presentation on Middle East history.
The742 pages of San Anselmo library correspondence retrieved via CPRA show that the cancellation of the Middle East history presentation was forced by a cohort of Marin residents affiliated with powerful institutions including:
1) the San Francisco/Bay Area Jewish Community Relations Council and the San Francisco Jewish Community Federation;
2) the Wexner Heritage Program (inextricably linked to now-deceased human trafficker Jeffrey Epstein through a $46 million donation from Epstein to an earlier Wexner charity and other business dealimgs between the two men);
3) the California Attorney General’s Office; and
4) the wealthy Tiburon congregation Kol Shofar. (Kol Shofar has taken such an aggressively pro-Israel position that it has previously generated at least one letter of concern by a member to the Marin County Board of Supervisors.)
The San Anselmo library presentation was a straightforward overview of Middle East history by a well-respected and highly recommended young professor, Alex Boodrookas, who himself had grown up in San Anselmo and graduated from Marin Academy before getting his Ph.D. from New York University. He now teaches at Metropolitan State University in Denver, Colorado.
San Anselmo library staff had taken great care to ensure that the presentation would be unbiased, and had scheduled it to take place in two online sessions, the first of which was well-attended and garnered only positive feedback. None of those who demanded the cancellation of Part 2 had attended Part 1.
Library Censorship Has A California Lineage: “Obscene In The Extreme”
If you’ve read Rick Wartzman’s terrific account of Kern County librarian Gretchen Knief’s 1939 actions to protect John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath against a book-ban by powerful agricultural interests, much of the correspondence surrounding the San Anselmo library presentation will be familiar.
But the comparison is sobering: Steinbeck’s work was genuinely and loudly radical — it came out swinging in support of the much-hated Okies, and it raged against police and the wealthy growers. Steinbeck’s novel contains foul language, violence, premarital sex, and a still-controversial ending that was deeply offensive to many Christians. (Worse, the protagonist, Tom Joad, is a “convict”, recently released after fatally stabbing a man in a fight over a woman.)
And yet a single librarian managed to save Steinbeck’s masterpiece from a book ban in her County library system.
Conversely, Boodrookas’ presentation had been entirely fact-based, soberly presented, and utterly unbiased. But despite real support from the Town Librarian and even elected officials, the second part of Boodrookas’ presentation was cancelled.
It was heartbreaking to read of the courage of the library staff (and even elected officials) in the tiny town of San Anselmo as they tried to shield the town’s First Amendment Rights. San Anselmo Town Council Meeting video shows all but one councilmember (Brian Colbert, now running for County Supervisor with apparently little endorsement from his own Town Council), expressing heartfelt and strong support for the embattled library staff. Still, none were at liberty to point out the obvious: that those who protested the presentation were not mere County residents – they were almost to a person linked very powerful and well-funded pro-Israel institutions in the Bay Area — entities which in turn wield enormous political power at every level of local government. Let’s examine seven of the emails:
1. Deputy Attorney General Roni Pomerantz’ June 4 Email To Town Librarian and Town Council:
To receive a letter falsely accusing you of hosting an speaker who “seemed to promote ongoing violence against the state of Israel” has got to be a little uncomfortable when the letter writer has the power of the California Attorney General’s office behind her. But especially now, given recent proposed legislation making mere criticism of Israel a criminal matter. Bad as that may have been for library staff, it was no doubt more unsettling for the young professor whom Roni Pomerantz slandered.
But it should terrify all of us that a prosecutor is so willing to openly lie, and to mischaracterize a simple act of speaking at a college protest encampment. Recall that while police enjoy qualified immunity, prosecutors like Pomerantz have full immunity. That means they can lie all they want, and they will likely never meet justice for ruining peoples’ lives.
Prior to taking the position at the California Attorney General’s office, Pomerantz was a Deputy DA in Jeff Rosen’s District Attorney office in Santa Clara. Rosen, who is so pro-Israel that he drove out to the airport to greet Bibi Netanyahu when he visited the Bay Area in September 2023, has been repeatedly accused of corruption from people across the political spectrum. (Rosen is also, per his Form 700’s, a frequent flyer on paid junkets to Israel.)
Without Drew Alitzer, how would we even know this happened? Photo below included for fact-checking:
Pomerantz is also on the local League of Women Voters and the Marin County Bar Association where she serves on the “diversity” team, although what diversity she brings to that largely white body is unexplained.
I invite you to watch the video of Boodrookas’ address to students at the protest encampment in Colorado and compare it to how Pomerantz mischaracterized it in her email.
2. Wexner Heritage Program Alumnus Greg Neichin’s Email to the Town Manager and Town Council on June 3, 2024, with Subject Heading “concerns about antisemitic library speaker”:
Greg Neichin is Managing Director and Board Member at Ceniarth, which, per the Ceniarth website, is “the single family office of Diane Isenberg. We manage Diane’s personal assets, as well as the philanthropic activity of the Isenberg Family Charitable Foundation.” Nice work if you can get it: the Isenberg fortune was estimated at approximately $313 million in 2022, so a letter from Greg Neichin carries with it both a carrot and a considerable stick.
But Neichin also a member of the San Francisco Jewish Community Federation, which helped to fund the Israeli spy outfit Canary Mission.
Neichin was also a Wexner Heritage Program recipient in 2018, and thus he traveled to Israel during the time of the Great March of Return, a series of largely peaceful protests that occurred from March 30, 2018 to December 27, 2019. In this nearly two-year period of protest by Palestinians, Israeli forces shot and killed 223 Palestinians who participated. The IDF also maimed and injured 9,702 Palestinians, often by aiming bullets to strike the knees and thighs of peaceful protesters. Israel’s extreme violence and cruelty during this period is often used to rebut Israel’s claims that the problem is simply “violent” Palestinians.
Neichin wrote a brief commentary on his time in Israel for the Wexner Heritage Program website, but Neichin made absolutely zero acknowledgment that this historic protest and subsequent slaughter by the IDF was ongoing when he was visiting Israel.
The Wexner Heritage Program claims to promote Jewish life and community, but it does not seem too welcoming of Jewish Americans who reject the state of Israel. The fact that the program’s namesake, Les Wexner, had deep ties to deceased human trafficker (and, per The Times of Israel, rumored Mossad agent) Jeffrey Epstein is no coincidence.
At one point, Epstein funneled $46 million into one of Wexner’s earlier charitable foundations, at a time when Wexner was claiming to distance himself from Epstein. (Ostensibly, the $46 million was in compensation for monies that Wexner alleged to have been taken from him by Epstein.)
There are some Wexner alumni who did the right thing and distanced themselves from the Wexner Foundation. In at least one case, a woman rabbi took the sum of money that she received from a Wexner fellowship and gave it to an organization that helps sex trafficking victims. But this does not appear to be the case with Greg Neichin, nor any other Marin County-based Wexner fellows/grant recipients that I have been able to identify.
What’s in Neichin’s email:
Neichin’s email introduces himself immediately as a Board member at Kol Shofar, a wealthy and politically powerful congregation in Tiburon. (Kol Shofar has deep ties to powerful families such as Varda Rabin’s, who have demonstrated a proven ability to fundraise hundreds of thousands of dollars for Democratic candidates within a few hours.)
In the same paragraph, and with absolutely zero proof, Neichin then claims that Professor Boodrookas is “polarizing” and “antisemitic.” He goes on to state: “I believe in the spirit of open minded dialogue with reasonable people. Dr. Boodrookas is not that.”
But Neichin gives no evidence or even explanation for why he things Dr. Boodrookas is not a “reasonable” person. He never explains why he believes Boodrookas to be “antisemitic.” Neichin doesn’t need to, because Neichin has the political power to get his way. In fact, Neichin does not even have to instruct the library to cancel the event – he merely has to signal his displeasure in order to tip the scales in his favor. Neichin’s complaints about Boodrookas, a man he has never met, carry throughout the email; he goes on to identify the credentialed Ph.D. Boodrookas as not a “true historian” but rather a “political activist.” And here, again, Neichin offers absolutely zero evidence for his claim:
3. Regina DeAngelis’ email to Town Librarian Linda Kenton June 1, 2024:
You might recognize Regina DeAngelis, a CPUC administrative judge, from earlier articles about Fairfax Town Council, in which she appeared alongside JCRC/BANJO principals like Jonathan Mintzer and Rachel Kertz. In Fairfax, DeAngelis had insisted that the Town of Fairfax should not consider a ceasefire resolution on the spurious claim that a town should not ever wish to contradict higher levels of government, such as the State Department, the Office of the President, and the Pentagon. (Wait, what’s the point of living in a democratic society if you can’t criticize your government?)
The tortured logic of DeAngelis’ letter to the Town of San Anselmo regarding Boodrookas’ library presentation raised eyebrows not only within the library community, but amongst several elected town officials. As one town official pointed out, DeAngelis was concerned not about anything Boodrookas had done or said, but simply that he might say something that was different.
In other words, Boodrookas was, in DeAngelis’ mind, capable of a “thoughtcrime” and thus his presentation had to be opposed.
Further, DeAngelis mischaracterized the presentation itself, and implied that Dr. Boodrookas could not be trusted as a speaker because he had been arrested at a campus protest. But even the Denver Chief of Police has questioned the legality of the arrests that took place at the Colorado campus where Boodrookas was unnecessarily arrested.
DeAngelis was trained as an attorney and has been employed by the State of California as a judge for many years, yet she was apparently incapable of recognizing that simply being arrested in this country is not an indictment of character or skill, nor is it confirmation that someone has committed a crime or even violated the law. (If it were, we would have to immediately rename every building and street already named for Martin Luther King, Jr., because MLK Jr. was arrested no fewer than 29 times – very often for incidents of civil disobedience.)
Even in the unlikely event that the charges against Boodrookas were to stick, it is incredible that a judge, even a mere administrative law judge, would imply that someone who has been arrested is incapable of performing duties related to their job. After all, in the State of California, we cannot even fight forest fires without prison labor. In California, even people sentenced to prison are still trusted by the state with the profound responsibility of working alongside some of our most valued state workers: firefighters.
4. Email from Laliv Hadar to Town Council and Town Manager, June 3, 2024
Laliv Hadar is a “high performing B2B Sales & Marketing executive hailing from prominent media companies” according to Hadar’s LinkedIn page. But Hadar has somehow found her true calling attacking ethnic studies programs, and has been platformed by Kol Shofar as a valuable resource on the “Ethnic Studies Bad!”™️ circuit. But it does not appear that Hadar has any background in education, a gap that raises as many questions about Kol Shofar as about Laliv Hadar.
If you can for just a moment maintain a sense of ironic detachment, Hadar’s letter is almost funny. She stresses that officials should watch the video of Boodrookas speaking at the encampment “and observe his attire.” I have watched the entire video of Boodrookas speaking at the protest encampment, and not only is there nothing particularly radical about his statements, but there is nothing off-putting about the mild-mannered young professor’s “attire”. He looks a bit like Mario Savio but with eyeglasses and wearing a kuffiyeh. So what?
But it gets weirder: Hadar closes her letter with concerns about how ceasefire resolutions create bias. Consider the profound irony of Hadar writing that ceasefire resolutions were in any way a threat to Jewish people when just last week hundreds of thousands of Israelis were out in the streets demanding… a ceasefire-for-hostages deal. (And some Israelis were just asking for a ceasefire.)
Do you think that at any point in the future individuals such as Hadar are ever going to admit that those of us who pushed for a ceasefire were actually acting in the best interests of Israelis as well as Palestinians? Nah.
Hadar’s email:
5. Email from Larry Slayen To Town Council, Town Librarian and Town Manager, June 3, 2024
Slayen does not claim to be a San Anselmo resident; but a resident of San Francisco/Ross. Opensecrets.org shows a Larry Slayen in San Francisco and in Ross who made significant donations to AIPAC and pro-Israel Democrats including Marc Levine (now a director of the now-exposed Anti-Defamation League) and to Hakeem Jeffries, also a fiercely pro-Israel Democrat.
Slayen’s donations to AIPAC, bundled with near-countless others from pro-Israel Jewish and Christian Americans, allowed AIPAC to spend millions defeating both Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush, two Black progressive congressional representatives who even mildly criticized US-Israel policy. In doing so, AIPAC and its supporters sent a strong message to younger Americans that the system is entirely buyable, which is having some obvious results in an upsurge of cynicism, as well as an alienation from American electoral politics amongst the newest voters.
Like Neichin’s email, Slayen doesn’t actually provide any evidence that the invited professor, Boodrookas, is “biased.” Like Neichin, Slayen had not attended Part 1 of the library presentation. For Slayen, the mere possibility that Boodrookas might say something critical of Israel was enough to generate opposition.
6. Email from Jenny Holden to Town Council, Town Manager, and Town Librarian June 2, 2024
Jenny Holden’s letter mirrors Laliv Hadar’s letter, which should not be too surprising as they are both enjoined in the “Ethnic Studies Bad!”™️ effort in Marin. Holden is running for school board, and thus her letter does give an indication of how aggressively anti-intellectual her real-life positions are.
7. Ari Green Email to Town Council and Town Librarian on Monday June 3, 2024
Ari Green is a UCSF physician (neuro-ophthalmology) who relates in this email that he lost a family member and another family member was grievously injured on October 7. That is a terrible thing to happen to anyone, and my sympathies are extended to Dr. Green’s family for the tremendous loss.
But where does this end? The new estimates of Palestinian civilian deaths now stand at over 300,000. How many Palestinians must be killed to avenge those killed on October 7?
The Hannibal Directive
Dr. Green may not be aware of an issue that has repeatedly been reported in Israeli media since late October 2023, and which was more recently reported in Australian media: that a very significant number of the victims of October 7 were killed by the IDF intentionally, under the Hannibal directive. Depressingly, some proportion of the severity of the Hamas attack of October 7 is actually due to deliberate killing of Israeli civilians by the IDF.
Would that change how Dr. Green viewed Israel’s conduct? And thus, possibly, how he would view the mild criticism of Western powers that he seemed so intent on blocking from a library presentation? If we had permitted even some criticism of Israel in our discourse, could we have prevented the situation Israel now finds itself in?
The latest report of Israel’s October 7 implementation of the Hannibal directive is damning, including evidence that as many as 70 fleeing Israeli vehicles were deliberately fired upon by the IDF in an effort to prevent the vehicles from later being seized by Hamas.
That Israel implemented the Hannibal directive against civilians does not mean that Hamas is in any way not culpable for any war crimes that it committed. But it also does not change international law, which clearly states that a people under occupation have a right to resist the occupying power.
Last week, a retired Israeli general, Yitzhak Brik stated that given the mismanagement of the war, Israel stood the chance of collapsing within the year. Is Marin County’s pro-Israel crowd even capable of digesting such information? Their collective failure to reckon with basic facts on the ground or even international law has placed Israel at risk of collapse - and for what? To assist Netanyahu’s desperate attempts to salvage his own political career?
Whether we like it or not, Boodrookas is not the enemy for telling the truth about the history of the Middle East any more than General Yitzhak Brik is for providing a realistic account about Israel’s limits.
An accomplished physician like Dr. Ari Green, a supposedly rational man of science and medicine, should be capable of reckoning with these facts, and with the hundreds of thousands of protesters filling the streets of Israel demanding a ceasefire-for-hostages deal.
And if so many Israelis can finally see things for what they are, if even they can reach the end of this particular Oresteia trilogy, surely Americans like Roni Pomerantz and Greg Neichin can, too.
©️2024 Eva Chrysanthe