A Better World for Everyone … Except the Jews

Editor’s note: This is second in a series on the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).

The Democratic Socialists of America of Los Angeles claim that their mission is to build a “better world” where “everyone can live a life of dignity,” but many in the Los Angeles Jewish community believe that the local chapter of the DSA has instead made life worse for Jews.

The national DSA is the largest socialist organization in the country, with tens of thousands of members and hundreds of elected officials aligned with its cause. The Congressional Progressive Caucus co-founded by the DSA and Sen. Bernie Sanders boasts of over 100 members of Congress who make up nearly half of the House Democratic Party delegation.

After DSA conventions platformed antisemitic European movements including the U.K.’s Momentum and Mélenchon’s La France Insoumise, and the DSA’s Palestine Working Group argued that “there are no such things as civilians’” in Israel and that all Jews are fair game, a growing number of Jewish DSA members, including founding member Maurice Isserman, have resigned.

This national conflict between the DSA and American Jews has played out explosively in Los Angeles whose chapter, DSA-LA, is one of the most politically powerful and influential in the country, in an area which has one of the largest Jewish communities in the country.

The DSA claims affiliation with multiple mayors, vice mayors, council members and other elected officials across California, but the price for a DSA-LA endorsement requires political candidates to not only commit to a boycott of Israeli and Israeli companies, but also Jews.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center had already named another version of the “Democratic Socialist of America (DSA) antisemitic questionnaire” as one of the Top Ten Worst Global Antisemitic Incidents for 2020, but the DSA-LA’s version now targets Jews more explicitly.

The BDS section in the DSA LA questionnaire for political candidates demands not only an end to aid to Israel, an end to trips to Israel by elected officials and by law enforcement officers, the boycott of Israel and Israeli companies by local governments, pension funds and universities, but also warns candidates not to accept money from “groups that reject Palestinian autonomy.”

The BDS section in the DSA LA questionnaire for political candidates demands not only an end to aid to Israel, an end to trips to Israel by elected officials and by law enforcement officers, the boycott of Israel and Israeli companies by local governments, pension funds and universities, but also warns candidates not to accept money from “groups that reject Palestinian autonomy.”

The DSA does not clearly define what “Palestinian autonomy” means but the phrase has been used in DSA circles to call for the destruction of Israel and to justify the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7. For example, a newsletter circulated by DC DSA members described the Hamas atrocities of Oct. 7 as an “audacious offensive” by “Palestinian rebels” against violations of “freedom and autonomy” and the “desecration of the Al-Aqsa Mosque” by Jews praying on the Temple Mount.

California and Los Angeles elected officials signing on to the DSA LA’s definition of BDS are not only waging a political war against Israel, but potentially agreeing to reject donations from the vast majority of Jews and Jewish groups unless they assent to the mass murder of Jews.

On social media, some Jewish activists have argued that the DSA’s support for a better world extends to everyone except the Jews. And political candidates appear to accept its “Jew Ban.”

The DSA-LA’s growing political power and lack of transparency by the candidates it supports have raised concerns by Los Angeles Jewish community members over its influence.

In 2024, two out of the three DSA-LA local endorsed candidates won elections, including Karla Griego, running to replace outgoing LAUSD school board president Jackie Goldberg, who had come under fire for condemning the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7. Griego refused to answer a question about her position on BDS and the LAUSD Resolution On Antisemitism. Newly elected DSA-LA backed City Councilmember Ysabel Jurado took part in an anti-Israel rally on Hollywood Boulevard that falsely accused Israel of genocide for battling against Hamas terrorists.

DSA-LA’s other endorsees include West Hollywood Mayor-Elect Chelsea Lee Byers whose activist nonprofit, Beautiful Trouble, featured a painting celebrating the Oct. 7 attacks with a bulldozer flying a Palestinian flag breaking through a wall.

The DSA’s support for the Hamas Oct. 7 atrocities by the national organization and local chapters, and a subsequent firestorm of anti-Israel activism that some Jews say verges on antisemitism, has led some elected officials to criticize and break with the DSA. The national DSA even pulled its endorsement of leading Squad member Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) for taking part in a panel on antisemitism which they claimed “conflated anti-Zionism with antisemitism.” But no such reckoning has come for the DSA-LA and other California chapters.

“This Was Not Unprovoked”

After the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7, the DSA-LA reposted a message from the national organization claiming that the murders, rapes and kidnappings of Jews were “not unprovoked.”

The national and local DSA did not express their solidarity with the Jewish community, which saw friends and family members killed and wounded in the terrorist attacks, but instead expressed its “solidarity with Palestine,” stated of Oct. 7 that “this was not unprovoked” and for over a year has urged its members to take to the streets for anti-Israel rallies that spilled over into violence in Jewish neighborhoods and area college campuses including at UCLA.

For over a year has urged its members to take to the streets for anti-Israel rallies that spilled over into violence in Jewish neighborhoods and area college campuses including at UCLA.

The DSA Long Beach chapter went even further in its “unequivocal support for the Palestinian liberation movement” and defended the Hamas massacres, arguing that “there is no symmetry between the Palestinian people’s struggle and the genocide being carried out by the Zionist terror state.” It urged “socialists, communists and progressives across the world to commit to solidarity with Palestine — full stop” and concluded with a call for the destruction of Israel.

The DSA-LA’s LGBTQ+ Caucus reposted a statement arguing that “it is our revolutionary duty to support the Palestinian resistance and all oppressed people who are fighting for liberation, by any means necessary” and highlighting the last four words with their implication of violence.

The statement from J-Town Action and Solidarity, a DSA adjacent radical activist group, would also serve as the first strand tying together support for Oct. 7 and antisemitic violence against the Los Angeles Jewish community.

On Nov. 8, 2023, a month after the attacks, the Los Angeles Museum of Tolerance screened “Bearing Witness to the October 7th Massacre”: a documentary showing some of the Hamas atrocities. While attendees inside wept, outside a masked mob raged, trying to block access to the documentary and assaulting Jewish community members gathered outside.

Among the organizations working to stop the screening of the documentary at a Holocaust museum was J-Town, whose social media account suggested, “it would be a shame if folks happened to be congregating at the below address this Wednesday evening” and The People’s City Council – Los Angeles, which urged a confrontation. “If people are passionate to show up and shut s–t down, they should. Make sure to mask up. ‘No justice, no peace’ means that.”

While neither group was the DSA-LA, they overlapped in terms of activists and candidates.

Steven Chun, J-Town’s most prominent activist, had worked on the political campaign of City Controller Kenneth Mejia, who had been strongly backed by the DSA. Chun had posted on Oct. 8, 2023 that, “we are watching decolonization and liberation in real-time. Within our lifetimes, the Israeli apartheid state will finally come to an end and Palestine will be free” and used the “red triangle” symbol associated with support for Hamas attacks on Jews. The Mejia campaign had become infamous for angry confrontations at two area synagogues: One of them involving Chun.

On June 23, 2024, a masked and violent mob showed up outside the Adas Torah synagogue, not far from the original riot at the Museum of Tolerance in the Pico-Robertson neighborhood, and assaulted local Jewish community members with fists, metal water bottles and toxic sprays.

The Palestinian Youth Movement, an organization closely involved with the DSA, was later sued for its involvement in the riot. PYM chapters have taken part in DSA events and groups, lobbied the DSA’s conferences and urged the DSA to hold “its leaders and members  accountable for any political or material support for Zionism” interpreted as support for the existence of Israel.

The DSA-LA has promoted PYM events including those targeting Jews on college campuses. A DSA-LA tweet in the summer of 2024 retweeted a PYM confrontation with law enforcement at USC and urged, “mask up, buddy up, and get yourself to Alumni Park.”

And the DSA-LA was directly present on the ground in supporting a “Jew Ban” at UCLA.

“In the year 2024, in the United States of America, in the State of California, in the City of Los Angeles, Jewish students were excluded from portions of the UCLA campus because they refused to denounce their faith,” US District Court Judge Mark C. Scarsi wrote.

UCLA YDSA (Young Democratic Socialists of America), the campus wing of the DSA, was an active participant in the encampment, which also made it morally responsible for the violent assaults on Jewish students and community members including a Jewish female student who was knocked unconscious after being kicked in the head. UCLA YDSA claimed that they were defending themselves against “violent Zionists.”

UCLA YDSA (Young Democratic Socialists of America), the campus wing of the DSA, was an active participant in the encampment, which also made it morally responsible for the violent assaults on Jewish students and community member

What had begun as DSA-LA support for violence against Jews in Israel had escalated into violence against Jews in Los Angeles.

“Jewish Arrogance is Spectacular”

Even as DSA-LA violence against Jews escalated, so did a culture of antisemitism.

A month after Oct. 7, DSA-LA announced its endorsement of Kahllid Al-Alim for the Los Angeles Unified School District Board. Al-Alim had promoted antisemitic material from the Nation of Islam accusing Jews of being “Satanic,” of being behind the slave trade and claims that “Jewish arrogance is spectacular”. Among Al-Alim’s hateful social media content was what The Los Angeles Times described as support for the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7 from J-Town Action & Solidarity which had been involved in promoting the attack on the Museum of Tolerance.

The DSA-LA’s antisemitism problem had long predated Oct. 7. It first reached national attention when the chapter backed Maria Estrada’s campaign for the California State Assembly despite a litany of hate toward Jews. Estrada, who expressed enthusiasm for Louis Farrakhan’s sermons, claimed that Jews were exploiting the Holocaust and attacked a Jewish Democrat for not keeping “your party, your religion and your people in check.”

“Anyone who believes they are one of ‘God’s chosen people’ automatically feels superior and justified in all they do,” she argued when describing her hostility toward Israel.

Despite condemnations from the Simon Wiesenthal Center, the ADL and numerous Jewish groups, DSA-LA continued to support her as recently as its 2022 voter guide and its 2024 voter guide failed to issue a recommendation, but did not actually disavow its past support for her.

Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martinez, who had been backed by the DSA, was forced to disavow a senior adviser and former DSA-LA Steering Committee member over remarks involving an essay about Oct. 7 that were condemned by Mayor Karen Bass as “antisemitic” as well as “reprehensible, disgusting, and dangerous.” Soto-Martinez would second the DSA championed ‘ceasefire’ resolution which demanded an end to Israeli military action to defeat Hamas and recover the hostages.

DSA-LA has also praised BLM-LA head Melina Abdullah despite a history of even more brazen antisemitic statements including  “We must dismantle patriarchy! Specifically Jewish patriarchy offending Muslims & controlling our economy & campuses!” and warning that “… more and more Jews [were] invading campuses, causing islamophobia, racism and intolerance.”

During the 2020 BLM riots in Los Angeles, synagogues and Jewish businesses were vandalized, including with anti-Israel graffiti. But the support for violence did not end there.

After Oct. 7, BLM Grassroots, Abdullah’s group, had called the attacks an “act of self-defense” and she had described the Hamas killings of Jews to CNN as a “counterterrorist response.”

The Coming Conflict

The DSA-LA expects its influence to grow in the coming election cycle and the campus YDSAs are ramping up their activities against Israel.

While DSA-LA claims to be focused on a “struggle against capitalism,” much of that struggle seems to be aimed at the Jews rather than at remedying conditions in California.

The DSA-LA’s 2024 State of the Chapter address began with a condemnation of Israel and used it as an argument for expanding the party’s infrastructure. The DSA-LA Palestine Solidarity Working Group is a full-time organization working on protests and “direct action.”

And the DSA-LA’s opposition to Israel extends beyond Hamas and Gaza.

A recent DSA article co-written by a DSA-LA member urged blocking weapons shipments to Israel in order to stop the military campaign against “Palestinian fighters in Gaza and the West Bank, Hezbollah” as well as “the Iranian Islamic Republic” and the Houthis.

That would put DSA-LA on the same side as not only Hamas and Hezbollah, but also Iran.

DSA-LA appears unlikely to back down from its support for hate and violence aimed at Jews.

The rise of the DSA in Los Angeles and on its campuses has made Jewish students, institutions and activists less safe. It has normalized antisemitic harassment, hate and even violence.

The rise of the DSA in Los Angeles and on its campuses has made Jewish students, institutions and activists less safe. It has normalized antisemitic harassment, hate and even violence.

And all efforts by Jewish activists within the DSA-LA to change that appear to have failed.

Four years ago, DSA-LA had accused Jews who complained about antisemitism from its sister chapter in New York City of “weaponizing Jewish identity and experience for political gain.” Rather than accepting that it had an antisemitism problem, the DSA-LA accused Jews of weaponizing their identity, making accusations of antisemitism into an act of war..

As the DSA-LA plays a greater role in determining Democratic Party candidates and the makeup of councils, local offices and school boards, some members of the Los Angeles Jewish community fear that they may be facing difficult choices over their political future.