Eduardo Martinez, mayor of Richmond, Calif., in the San Francisco Bay Area, believes that having apologized for sharing anti-Israel material on social media, the matter ought to be closed.
“I retracted my mistakes. I own them,” he told JNS on Thursday afternoon. “I was hoping that people would listen to me with compassion and understanding, but apparently that doesn’t seem to be the way in the world.”
The mayor said that he had reached out to the local rabbi for a “heart-to-heart.” JNS asked which rabbi, and Martinez said that he didn’t recall the name.
JNS spoke to Martinez after Chaya Leah Sufrin, a podcaster, publicized two LinkedIn posts, in which the mayor shared other people’s posts referring to the “behavior of Israel and Israelis” as the “root cause of antisemitism” and suggesting, in the context of the antisemitic mass shooting in Sydney, that Chanukah was being “appropriated by Jewish Zionist organizations and weaponized as a political tool.”
The Jewish Community Relations Council Bay Area called for the mayor to resign.
In a phone conversation, which ran about 15 minutes and during which Martinez repeatedly asked a JNS reporter what his personal views were on the matter, the mayor said that he had “misread” the posts that he shared on LinkedIn.
“That’s what I saw, but it did not say that,” he told JNS. “Netanyahu and his disregard for human life is causing an increase in antisemitism, especially when he conflates Zionism with Judaism.”
The JCRC stated that the mayor “has posted repeatedly on LinkedIn spreading false conspiracies blaming Jews for the Bondi Beach terror attack,” and that “such rhetoric is dangerously antisemitic, deeply offensive and wholly unacceptable—particularly coming from a sitting mayor.”
The Jewish group also shared other posts it said were from Martinez, including one that asked if the alleged shooter in the Bondi Beach attack was a former Israeli soldier, and another calling the massacre “Israel’s false flag attack.”
The JCRC said that the mayor’s recent behavior “does not exist in isolation.”
“Earlier this year, Mayor Martinez spoke at a conference in Detroit where he compared himself to Hamas and wore a hat that read ‘DDTTIDF,’ an acronym calling for ‘death, death to the Israel Defense Forces,’” it said. Just two weeks after Oct. 7, Martinez “led Richmond to become the first city in the United States to pass a resolution calling for a ceasefire without including any condemnation of Hamas,” it added.
“Taken together, these actions reflect a consistent and deeply troubling disregard for the safety and dignity of Jewish people,” the JCRC stated. “The tragic mass shooting in Sydney last week is just the latest example of how exactly this sort of antisemitic rhetoric can lead to violence,” it added. “For these reasons, Mayor Eduardo Martinez must resign.”
Martinez told JNS people who said that he compared himself to Hamas in his Detroit speech “actually hadn’t read the speech, because I did not compare myself to Hamas.”
“I compared a part of me, which I did not condone, but I compared, in fact, I even said, there is that part of me that lashed out when I could not tolerate any more harassment, any more bullying,” he said.
“I endured it for as long as I could, but occasionally there was a moment when I just couldn’t take it anymore and I lashed out physically, and then I was accused of being the culprit,” Martinez said. “I feel like the Palestinians in Gaza are that child that I was.”
He claimed further that he “never condoned” the Oct. 7 attacks.
“I’m a pacifist. I condemn all violence,” Martinez told JNS. “I live quite an easy life, but if I were in a situation, who would I be? I don’t know. I hope I could maintain this sense of humanity that I like to think I carry, but I really don’t know, and I don’t think anyone else does.”
“I don’t think anyone knows how they would react if they were in a situation where they were being bullied,” he told JNS.
As for the hat, Martinez said that someone at the conference told him that the hats were made in response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” hats and asked him to take a picture of him wearing one.
The mayor told JNS that he didn’t know at the time that the acronym on the hats referred to “death to the IDF” and that it was “a mistake” to wear it.
Northeast of San Francisco, Richmond has a population of about 115,000, per the city’s website, and “hundreds of Jewish residents,” according to the JCRC.
‘No place in public discourse’
Prior to the JCRC statement calling for his resignation, the mayor stated that he wanted to “apologize for sharing my previous posts without thinking.”
“Of course, we know that antisemitism was here before the creation of the state of Israel,” Martinez wrote. “As I’ve said many times before, we should not conflate Zionism with Judaism. They are two separate beliefs.”
He added that “these postings are my opinions (or my mistakes) and mine only. They are not statements from my office or the city of Richmond.”
Marc Levine, director of the Anti-Defamation League’s central Pacific region, told JNS that “this isn’t the first time Mayor Martinez has spread antisemitic tropes about Jews and their relationship to tragic events.”
“There’s no excuse for an elected leader to be amplifying warped antisemitic conspiracy theories that seek to blame the victim,” Levine said. “The Australian community has already faced enough tragedy over the last few days. We hope Mayor Martinez will reconsider his hurtful words, which have absolutely no place in public discourse.”
Seth Brysk, director of the American Jewish Committee’s Northern California region, told JNS that Martinez “disgracefully amplified antisemitic tropes by promoting dangerous conspiracy theories, which deny or seek to justify the horrendous murders of the terrorist assault on Bondi Beach on the first night of Chanukah.”
“It is irresponsible and unacceptable for anyone, let alone an elected official, to peddle such hatred,” Brysk said. “Mayor Martinez has excused and rationalized terrorism in the past. His dangerous rhetoric must be unequivocally condemned. He is unfit to represent the people of Richmond, Calif.”
According to his official biography, Martinez “has been a strong advocate for protecting the environment, strengthening the police review process, increasing the minimum wage, stabilizing rents and transferring public money from jail expansion to public services.”
