What Justice Looks Like in Davis

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7 responses to “What Justice Looks Like in Davis”

1. Apr 26, 2026 2:11 PM

   Alan C. Miller

   This piece tries to dress up grievance politics as civil rights advocacy, but the mask slips almost immediately. It frames every disagreement as oppression, every critic as “far-right,” every Jewish communal institution as sinister, and every concern about targeted language as bad faith.

   Most revealing is the attempt to recast, and frankly misrepresent, who will be showing up in opposition. It won’t be some caricatured outside force. There will be local residents, mainstream Jewish community members, civil libertarians, people who reject selective identity politics, and neighbors who understand that city government should protect everyone equally rather than elevate one geopolitical faction’s preferred slogans into municipal doctrine. It will also include Jews who know from lived experience what happens when hostility to Zionism becomes hostility to Jewish identity, Jewish safety, and Jewish belonging.

   The author wants readers to believe this is about anti-discrimination. When “anti-discrimination” demands singling out one conflict, one narrative, and one approved set of political phrases, it becomes compelled ideology. That is exactly why staff moved toward universal language, because equal standards are how pluralistic societies function.

   And let’s be blunt and clear: antizionism is not the opposite of Zionism. Antizionism is a hate movement, even when, and often especially when, some of its loudest advocates identify as Jewish and antizionist. Zionism is the belief that the Jewish people have a right to self-determination in parts of their ancestral homeland. Antizionism uniquely denies that right to Jews while excusing or romanticizing movements that seek to eliminate the world’s only Jewish state. It routinely traffics in litmus tests for Jews, ostracism of Jewish institutions, and collective blame.

   Antizionists present themselves as if they speak for Jews broadly. They do not. Recent surveys place explicitly anti-Zionist Jews in the single digits nationally. They represent a tiny, highly organized, highly amplified minority that weaponizes Jewish identity for political ends while insisting everyone else ignore the overwhelming mainstream consensus of Jewish communities.

   Those many Palestinians who are simply living their lives, uninvolved in war and uninvolved in murdering Jews, deserve sympathy, aid, and a solution. Hamas will never be that solution. So why do antizionists chant “Free Palestine” instead of “Free Palestine from Hamas”? I am not trying to paint Israel as anything resembling perfect. But antizionists rarely condemn Hamas or even acknowledge it is part of the problem. Antizionists rarely show sympathy toward those kidnapped or killed on 10/7/2023, many of them not Jewish, and some not Israeli. Families facing death, displacement, trauma, and fear deserve compassion and serious efforts toward safety and dignity. Human empathy does not require embracing movements that target Jewish self-determination, Jewish lives, or glorify the destruction of a country.

   SS’s portrayal of who Jews in Davis are, who supports Israel, or who Israelis are, is deeply flawed. My relatives in Israel are hardly right wing. Many were in the mass protests to oust Netanyahu before 10/7/2023, and some lived and worked in kibbutzim alongside Gazans who worked in Israel pre-10/7. Most do not support the settlers movement, and many have worked for Palestinian rights.

   The portrayal of who will show up Tuesday evening is fiction as well. I know many people who will show up, and few to none fit the “far-right Zionist” description. Most are progressives, many who have been pushed out of progressive spaces in Davis simply for being Jews who will not publicly denounce the state of Israel. The insistence by the author on who is coming reveals something deeper about the author: in their mind anyone who supports Israel is labeled a far-right “Zio” by default, no matter their actual beliefs. Such thinking is not peaceful. It is prejudice.

   Nothing upsets activists identifying as Jewish and antizionist more than exposing their tiny numbers or stating plainly that they do not speak for Jews. Many Jews criticize Israeli politicians and policies, as happens in every democracy. That is entirely different from demanding that Israel itself cease to exist while raising no equivalent demand that dozens of Muslim-majority states cease to exist, some of which have committed great atrocities, such as the Iranian regime and its many proxies. Antizionist activists have been silent on the Iranian regime and the recent mass slaughter of its own people who dared to protest against it. Antizionists do not blame US Iranians for what Iran does, because that wouldn’t make any sense. But diaspora Jews are for some reason responsible, in antizionist eyes, for every action that Israel takes. That inconsistency speaks for itself.

   A city council’s job is not to ratify activist manifestos or import Middle East factionalism into local governance. Its job is to uphold equal protection, public order, and civic trust. The staff recommendations moved in that direction because they recognized a simple truth: discrimination against all people matters, and public institutions should not become a megaphone for movements that divide neighbors into approved and disfavored camps. Equal standards based on equal principles protect all the peoples of Davis.

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2. Apr 26, 2026 8:47 PM

   Scott Steward

   Finding a path forward in Davis requires looking past political labels to address the underlying human experiences being reported. Alan makes a valid point: characterizing those who attend City Council meetings as a monolithic “far-right” force is an oversimplification. Residents—mainstream Jewish community members, progressives, and civil libertarians—who act out of a sincere desire for equal protection and representation are likely to show.

   The main point is that Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian and Allies (MAPA) discrimination exists, has been reported, and must be named as part of making progress in Davis human relations. When a city moves toward “universal” or “neutral” language in response to specific reports of bias, it can inadvertently result in erasure. Naming a group’s specific struggle is not an act of favoritism or “compelled ideology,” but an act of visibility; you cannot effectively dismantle a specific form of discrimination if the policy itself is too timid to identify it by name.

   Recognizing the unique vulnerabilities of the MAPA community is vital to the city’s role in upholding civic trust. The city’s challenge remains how to protect all residents without silencing those who feel their specific experiences are being stripped from the record. We hope the city can do better by explicitly recognizing the MAPA community and not use the recommendations as a tool to render reported discrimination invisible.

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   1. Apr 27, 2026 10:31 AM

      Alan C. Miller

      Pfffft . . . not what this is about and you know it.

      Reply
3. Apr 27, 2026 9:45 PM

   Sue Greenwald

   Alan, look at what you’re doing. You complain that Palestinian rights advocates are caricaturing those who oppose the MAPA recommendations, and then you immediately turn around and charicature those who support the MAPA recommendations, labelling all of them as anti-Zionists and then charicaturing anti-Zionists as a “hate group” — singling out anti-Zionist Jews for particular demonization.

   Next, you proceed to present a tendentious description of anti-Zionism. You write:
   “Zionism is the belief that the Jewish people have a right to self-determination in parts of their ancestral homeland. Antizionism uniquely denies that right to Jews while excusing or romanticizing movements that seek to eliminate the world’s only Jewish state”.

   But Alan, there is nothing “unique” about denying an ethnic group the right to their own ethnostate. In fact, most ethnic groups in the world don’t have their own ethnostates, and that’s doubly true of small ethnic groups. And it’s triply true of ethnic groups that left their land of origin 2,000 years ago. Indigeneity does not survive a 2,000-year absence. I can’t return to the Rift Valley in Africa and establish an ethnostate, or even Eastern Europe where over half my DNA hails from. There are 55 ethnic minorities in China alone. None of them have their own ethnostate. There is absolutely nothing unique about a small ethnic group not having their own ethnostate. You might argue that it’s harmless, but in this case it isn’t, because it was established at the expense of the indigenous Palestinian population.

   Finally, you falsely claim that “anti-Zionist” Jews are insignificant in number.
   In 2017 – long before the current Israeli demolition of the entire Palestinian community of Gaza and the increasingly serious efforts to ethnically-cleans the West Bank – the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco, the Peninsula, Marin and Sonoma County commissioned a survey of Jews of the Great Bay Area. This region is as close as we can get culturally to Davis. And their results reveal a much more nuanced picture of Jewish sentiment towards Israel in our area.

   They found that only 11% of Jews of our part of the country under 30 and only 21% of Jews under 50, felt “very attached” to Israel. Even among Jews over 50, only 25% felt “very attached” to Israel. Only 30% of Jews under 30, and only 40% of Jews under 50 sympathized more with Israelis than Palestinians. Only among Jews over 65 did they find that a majority sympathized more with Israelis than with Palestinians, and even then, it was only 56%.

   Finally, this study did something unique and interesting. They asked the Jewish respondents whether they were “comfortable with the idea of a Jewish state”. Only 40% of the Jews under 30 were even “comfortable with the idea of a Jewish state”. In other words, only 40% of Jews under 30 could be defined as Zionists at all. And this was back in 2017. I’d attach the chart but the option doesn’t seem to exist here.

   So it’s critical to acknowledge the diversity of opinion in our Jewish community regarding Israel and even regarding Zionism itself.

   When Palestinian rights activists say: “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”, most are envisioning a normal, democratic state where Jews and Palestinians can together in equality.

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4. Apr 27, 2026 9:58 PM

   Sue Greenwald

   P.S. Is there any way to edit typos if you prematurely post?

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   1. Apr 27, 2026 10:23 PM

      Roberta Millstein

      Sorry, not that I am aware of.

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5. May 3, 2026 12:27 AM

   J.J. Surbeck

   Ms. Greenwald, Alan Miller didn’t “caricature” all the supporters of the MAPA Recommendations as anti-Zionists. He simply described them accurately since the MAPA Report in question is filled with hostile references to Zionists and Zionism. What did you expect him to say? “Oh yes, there were a few anti-Zionists in that crowd, but overall it really was a love fest? And never mind the fact, many times mentioned but never acknowledged by the City Council, that these “testimonials” came from a very small population sample, of which only 12 identified as Palestinians, even though none would stand behind their “testimonials” by identifying themselves by name. The whole thing has been a charade engineered by the HRC and approved by the City Council, and you quibble about calling them “anti-Zionists”?

   Then, when you say that “most ethnic groups in the world don’t have their own ethnostates… And it’s triply true of ethnic groups that left their land of origin 2,000 years ago. Indigeneity does not survive a 2,000-year absence.”, you are omitting one key factor that belies your assertion: Jewish presence has remained constant and continuous through millennia, even after the destruction of the Second Temple and the dispersion of the Jews in the diaspora. NOT ALL LEFT, and they remained through centuries of varied invasions and occupations, culminating with the Muslim invasion and occupation in the 7th century.

   And when you add that “There are 55 ethnic minorities in China alone. None of them have their own ethnostate.”, maybe this would be a good time to remind you that Tibet had remained such an ethnostate for millennia as well until Communist China brutally invaded it and declared it part of its territory in 1950.

   I agree with Alan that anti-Zionist Jews represent a minority of American Jews, and I would not give much credence to the survey you mention of Jews of the Great Bay Area to extrapolate into a national figure. Bay Area Jews are known nationwide for belonging to the ultra-progressive wing of the Democratic party, and are therefore regarded as unreliable to represent the entire corpus of American Jews.

   At this point in history however it doesn’t matter anyway because the rift between “liberal” American Jews and Israeli Jews is reaching its apex, particularly after October 7. While Israel, itself badly divided politically, is now united as one to fight the three HS (Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis… and Iran of course), American Jews are still in their delusional sandbox, reprimanding the Israelis for not doing what they, the liberal American Jews, in their bottomless wisdom, believe Israelis should do. It’s an astonishing level of arrogance if I’ve ever witnessed one. The Israelis are facing an existential crisis unlike any other they have faced since the Holocaust, and yet they are handling it far better than any of the other crises. And to get there, they did well to ignore at last the deluded and misplaced admonitions from their American cousins.

   I was also shocked to read your comment that the same study you quoted asked its respondents whether they were “comfortable with the idea of a Jewish state”. Wow. What better way to ask a liberal Jewish audience if they agreed (and essentially endorsed) one of the Palestinians’ most famous slogan, i.e. that “Israel has no right to exist”. When you were born, as I have and as everybody else on the planet has, did we all have to ask upon arriving if we needed permission from someone… to merely exist? Did anyone of these respondents? And how many other nations do you know that have been told they have no right to exist? None other than Israel it seems. Can you explain why? But according to you, if a majority of Bay Area liberal Jews were to declare that they are not “comfortable with the idea of a Jewish state”, said State would need to disappear to make them happy? And do you think the Israelis are going to disappear to make them happy? This notion is beyond the range of absurdity and obscenity.

   So yes, “it’s critical to acknowledge the diversity of opinion in our Jewish community regarding Israel and even regarding Zionism itself”, but at the same time it’s also critical to refrain from telling Israel how to manage its affairs. They’re not kids anymore. If anything, they have shown more maturity than too many American Jews who look down on them.

   I’ve kept your last comment for dessert: “When Palestinian rights activists say: “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”, most are envisioning a normal, democratic state where Jews and Palestinians can together in equality.” How can someone be so out of touch with reality? You appear to have not paid attention to what the Palestinians themselves have been repeating for years: the “Palestine” they refer to here is all of Israel, with nothing left for the Jews. They want it all. Zero-sum game. No compromise. No negotiations. No “normalization” of any sort. They’ve been offered incredibly generous peace plans not less than NINE times, and they rejected them all because it was never enough. All they know is terrorism until they have achieved that goal. The Palestinians who you claim “are envisioning a normal, democratic state where Jews and Palestinians can together in equality” simply do not exist. They are a figment of your imagination.

   Which is a very sad conclusion.

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