Progressives must condemn Hamas as antisemitic incidents occur across the East San Francisco Bay Area, a neighborhood safety activist and former union organizer told Fox News.
"The performative altruism that we've experienced in Oakland with our activist class has just been super cringe," said Seneca Scott, who founded the neighborhood safety nonprofit Neighbors Together Oakland. "These people are really useful idiots. And they're just parroting what they see in their algorithm."
"Synagogues being vandalized, Jewish students on universities not feeling safe and people walking in coffee shops in Oakland, California, having to see hate graffiti sprayed on the wall," Scott continued. "The real progressives need to take the lead and say 'We condemn Hamas. We don't agree with anyone who uses rape and torture and murder as a means of gaining power.'"
In recent weeks, Oakland residents praised Hamas at a city council meeting, a coffee shop was vandalized with antisemitic messages and nearby University of California, Berkeley, was accused in a lawsuit of "longstanding, unchecked spread of anti-Semitism." Mark Bloom, a rabbi at Temple Beth Abraham in Oakland, told Fox News that members of his congregation have faced antisemitism in local schools and at public Hanukkah celebrations.
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"We hired a guard any time anyone is at the synagogue, including all day long while preschool is in session," Bloom told Fox News in an email. "We know that anti Israel activity and messaging has led to more direct attacks around the world in the past and this is a deterrent."
Last week, a viral video showed Oakland coffee shop employees blocking a Jewish woman from entering the store's bathroom as they barraged her with anti-Israel remarks. Eventually, the employees relented and allowed her to film antisemitic graffiti written inside, though it's unclear whether they had any connection to the vandalism.
Following the viral incident, the shop's owners apologized and announced the employees in the video had been fired.
Additionally, during the public speaking portion of the Nov. 27 Oakland City Council meeting, speakers denied that Hamas was a terrorist organization after a Jewish council member introduced an amendment — which ultimately failed — aiming to condemn the group. "Calling Hamas a terrorist organization is ridiculous," one speaker said, while others denied some Oct. 7 atrocities.
"What it really means is they don't really care about the atrocity," Scott said. "They care about their own vanity. They care about their own narcissism, and it's more about them making them feel like they have the moral high ground."
On Oct. 7, Hamas terrorists invaded Israel from Gaza and murdered over 1,200 Israelis, including babies, and kidnapped over 230 men, women and children. "A baby, an infant, riddled with bullets. Soldiers beheaded. Young people burned alive. I could go on, but it's simply depravity in the worst imaginable way," Secretary of State Antony Blinken said after viewing images of the aftermath.
PRO-ISRAEL ADVOCATES DESCRIBE WITNESSING ANTISEMITISM SINCE OCT. 7: 'DON'T REALLY FEEL SAFE'
Scott told Fox News that Hamas supporters have given the progressive city a bad reputation and that their praise for the terrorist group is dangerous.
"There's now a spotlight that's been put on Oakland and other progressive cities and college universities and presidents, as we've seen in the last week, who are praising Hamas, offering no nuance with the situation and entering into another very dangerous territory for basically taking the side of terror," he continued.
On campus at nearby U.C. Berkeley, one Jewish student was assaulted with a metal water bottle while carrying an Israeli flag, one video shows. In another, two masked students aggressively try to rip an Israeli flag away from another individual.
Globally, Muslims outside of Gaza and the West Bank are facing persecution, Scott said, adding that those groups haven't received the same level of activism in the U.S. as Hamas and Palestinians.
"You have China and the Uyghurs. You have a civil war in Ethiopia. I could point to several instances where people of Muslim faith or descent are being persecuted around the world and genocide is happening," Scott said. "None of them enter the discourse. It's all about Palestine."
The Arab Resource & Organizing Center of the Bay Area did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Scott's remarks.
To watch the full interview about pro-Palestinian activists in Oakland, click here.
