Ask most pro-Palestine activists in San Francisco about the congressional race, and they’ll tell you who they don’t want: Sen. Scott Wiener.
That’s despite the fact that Wiener’s Israel platform is not massively different from that of his opponent, Supervisor Connie Chan. They both call Israel’s destruction of Gaza a genocide, reject money from the pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC and pledge to vote against military funding to Israel.
The main difference is that Chan supports a full arms embargo, a position she adopted within the last few months, to prohibit U.S. citizens and companies from selling military equipment to Israel; Wiener wants Israel to keep the ability to purchase missile defense systems from the United States.
And a long history: Pro-Palestine advocates and Wiener have never gotten along, and Chan has been working to leverage that conflict into votes. She is posting videos criticizing his record and encouraging PACs to attack him. In late September, a pro-Palestine PAC did so, spending $100,000 on digital advertisements.
If these efforts are successful, it may be a problem for Wiener. Since Oct. 7, 2023, the issue of Israel-Palestine has risen in prominence, and public opinion has shifted rapidly. On that day, Hamas killed 1,200 Israelis and took another 250 hostage. Hours later, Israel began bombing Gaza and, three years later, has killed over 74,000 Palestinians and imprisoned over 9,000.
Now, 65 percent of Democrats say their sympathies lie more with the Palestinians than the Israelis, up from 38 percent in 2022. In an August 2025 poll, 77 percent of Democrats thought Israel was committing genocide in Gaza.
The shift upended decades of firm bipartisan support for Israel. Pro-Israel politicians have increasingly drawn flak for their positions, including Rep. Nancy Pelosi, who is less critical of Israel than either of her potential successors, Chan and Wiener.
Still, even with the rapid shift in views, it is unclear how Israel will play out in the San Francisco congressional race.
In a recent poll of likely voters by the University of Southern California, respondents were more likely to identify Wiener as a YIMBY (7 percent) or an LGBTQ advocate (5 percent) than as someone associated with “Israel/AIPAC” (3 percent).
That same poll found Wiener leads Chan 47 to 41, but with 9 percent undecided and a 5 percent margin of error, the race is competitive.
Wiener, feeling the heat, is being proactive. At house parties, he hands out flyers explaining his policy positions. One side has his plans on housing, transit, immigration, fighting Trump and more. The other is wholly dedicated to explaining his views on Israel.
Some say the criticism of Wiener on this issue is antisemitism. Wiener is Jewish, and was heckled at the Trans March in June by people who screamed at him for being “terrible on Gaza.” One person in the background of the viral video says, “Fuck you and your Israeli handlers.”
But criticizing Wiener — and Israel — is not inherently antisemitic, and most of the politician’s critics are not antisemites.
Jason Mandell, a San Francisco volunteer with JStreet, a pro-Israel lobbying group that supports Palestinian statehood, has another explanation. He attributes the anger to Wiener, whom JStreet endorsed, being “supportive of both Israel and Palestine” rather than “choosing one.”
“The people who are extreme on one side or the other, they don’t like that,” he said.
Ask the pro-Palestine advocates themselves, though, and many say that understanding why they don’t trust Wiener requires looking beyond his platform — and into his record.
Long history of clashes
Wiener and pro-Palestine activists’ disagreements go back years.
At a convention of the California Democratic Party in 2019, the two sides sparred over whether the party’s platform should call for a two-state solution, which has been supported by the Democratic Party for decades.
Standing in front of a crowd holding “Democratic Majority for Israel” signs, Wiener spoke in favor of a two-state solution and opposed calls to allow displaced Palestinians to return to what is now Israel, a core demand of the pro-Palestine movement and a right the United Nations and other human rights organizations consider protected by international law.
“I am opposed to this amendment, which would advocate for the end of the state of Israel,” he said. “It advocates for a one-state solution of Palestine.”
Many view the Palestinian right of return as incompatible with Israel remaining a Jewish state, something that is important to Wiener and many other Jews, who want the country to serve as a safe haven for Jews facing persecution around the world.
Mandell recalls meeting a Jewish woman on a recent trip to Israel whose mother was from Tunisia and whose father was from Iraq. “Why are they in Israel? Because they faced systemic discrimination and worse in those countries,” Mandell said. “It wasn’t safe for them to live there.”
But anti-Zionist activists don’t see it that way.
“We want all people, regardless of their faith, to live as equal citizens in a singular state with equal rights and equal access to resources,” said Mohamed Shehk of the Arab Resource and Organizing Center, an Arab and Muslim advocacy group.
As Shehk sees it, Zionism is a “political ideology that has, at its foundation, the violent displacement of the native Palestinian population in Palestine in order to create a Jewish state.”
Palestinians remember the Nakba, or “catastrophe,” when around 750,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes as modern Israel was founded in 1948.
Since then, Israel has continued to oppress Palestinians, they say, pointing to actions like Israeli settlers’ expansion into Palestinian territory in the West Bank and the blockade of Gaza starting in 2007, which decimated the economy and led to shortages of basic goods.
Wiener, for his part, had been critical of Israel’s right-wing, violent drift for years.
During a two-week bout of violence in Israel and Gaza in May 2021, for instance, Wiener released a statement “unequivocally” condemning Hamas but also lambasting the Netanyahu government.
“Through its settlement and land expropriation policies, the Netanyahu Administration is escalating the conflict, making both Palestinians and Israelis less safe, and jeopardizing world support for a nation that absolutely must continue to exist as a democratic haven for Jews around the world,” Wiener wrote, criticizing “the right-wing extremists fueled by anti-Arab rhetoric by Prime Minister Netanyahu and his Administration.”
But for him, adopting a Democratic Party platform that did not support Israel’s continued existence as a Jewish state was a non-starter — and others at the Democratic convention agreed. The vote to eliminate a two-state solution from the platform failed overwhelmingly.
As of 2019, the anti-Zionist perspective was still relegated to the margins of the Democratic Party.
Mainstream voters then would likely not have given credence to critics calling for the end of Israel as a Jewish state. But, following three years of carnage in Gaza and a sea change in American perceptions, these voices are no longer sidelined.
Chan, for her part, gave an ambiguous answer when asked whether she supported a two-state solution. She unambiguously said that she supports a right for Palestinian refugees to return to the present day state of Israel.
Oct. 7, 2023
In the aftermath of Oct. 7, Wiener continued to espouse support for Israel’s existence as a Jewish state while criticizing the Netanyahu government.
On Oct. 11, when Israel had killed more than 1,000 Palestinian civilians, he wrote that Israel has “every right to fight back” even as it should “protect as many innocent Gazan civilians as possible and minimize casualties.”
In November, as Israel continued to bomb Gaza and the death toll surpassed 11,000, he condemned the violence in Gaza and also spoke out against Israelis expanding into Palestinian territory and assaulting and harassing the people there.
“Netanyahu already was tolerating illegal settlements in the West Bank — which undermine any possibility of a 2-state solution — & is now tolerating this escalation,” he tweeted about settler violence on Nov. 12, 2023. “It must stop.”
In February 2024, Wiener co-led a delegation to Israel, meeting with a Palestinian journalist, families of Jewish and Arab Israelis held hostage by Hamas, Bedouin tribe leaders with family in Gaza, and Israeli government leaders.
Summarizing this on Instagram on Feb. 18, 2024, he posted a picture of himself across from Israeli President Isaac Herzog.
The appearance alongside Herzog particularly jarred pro-Palestine activists: Herzog had by that time said that an “entire nation” was responsible for the Oct. 7 attacks, remarks that a United Nations commission found had incited genocide in Gaza.
“Before, during, and after this trip, I opposed Israel’s destruction of Gaza and dismemberment of the West Bank,” Wiener said, adding that the trip came “four months after the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust” and that other politicians took similar trips around the same time.
Wiener also frequently called out what he saw as antisemitism within the pro-Palestine movement. That included taking aim at AROC, which planned many of the Bay Area’s pro-Palestine protests.
In the aftermath of Oct. 7, AROC put out a statement saying that “recent events did not occur in a vacuum but as a result of unrelenting colonial aggression,” and urged people to “take this moment as an invitation to recommit ourselves to the revolutionary roots of Palestinian liberation,” including abolishing Zionism.
“I have no problem w/ folks criticizing Israel. I’ve been public in my own criticisms. But AROC goes way beyond,” Wiener wrote on X on Oct. 18, 2023, the day AROC had planned a student walkout protesting Israel’s bombing of Gaza.
He accused AROC of violent rhetoric, attaching a screenshot of a 2014 tweet where they wrote, “Help us kick Zionism out of the Bay Area.”
“Words & violent rhetoric have consequences & violent antisemitism is on the rise. Just today, a German synagogue was firebombed,” Wiener wrote. “Sadly, AROC continually fuels the flames.”
Lara Kiswani, the executive director of AROC, said that Wiener’s remarks harmed their members and staff.
“In a climate of unprecedented Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian racism, and in the midst of a genocide, Scott Wiener used his office to target and smear the only Arab organization in San Francisco,” Kiswani said, adding that the organization had to “put in place measures” to ensure staff safety “in response to increased threats.”
Shehk, an AROC member, feels that Wiener’s focus was misplaced. “As Israel was carpet bombing Gaza and decimating entire cities, Wiener was taking to Twitter,” Shehk said, “accusing pro-Palestine protesters of supporting extremism.”
Wiener also criticized Jewish Voice for Peace, another pro-Palestine advocacy group, from the floor of the state Senate in May 2024.
“As far as I can tell Jewish Voice for Peace has two primary missions. One is to advocate for the complete elimination of the state of Israel as a Jewish homeland. In other words, for Israel to no longer exist, home to 7 million Jews. And second, to repeatedly and persistently over time, give tokenistic cover to people who make antisemitic statements, whether in the Arab world or in this country,” Wiener said.
He criticized their advocacy against SB 1277, which created a statewide professional development program for teaching about the Holocaust.
Jewish Voice for Peace and other pro-Palestine groups wanted different organizations to be involved in developing the curriculum because the existing organizations were “pro-Israel” and “deny Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza.”
Wiener also accused the group of including “many non-Jews who purport to speak for Jews” and said it was “outrageous that this group puts the word Jewish in its name.”
He had identified non-Jewish activists at the statehouse who were handing out Jewish Voice for Peace flyers. While that did happen, said Seth Morrison, a Jewish Voice for Peace member, those people were not a part of the organization.
Morrison was horrified by Wiener’s remarks. “He somehow assumes that we’re not good Jews or reliable Jews just because we disagree with him,” Morrison said, criticizing what he sees as Wiener’s attempts to “delegitimize” anti-Zionist Jews.
Wiener defended his comments about AROC and Jewish Voice for Peace. “We can and must speak out against both atrocities overseas and bigotry at home,” he said, saying that he considers himself a part of the movement “for Palestinian lives and peace in Gaza.”
“I have always kept my comments focused on specific actions and specific people who crossed lines.”
Israel, Palestine and antisemitism in the classroom
Other state-level conflicts between Wiener and pro-Palestine advocates centered on teaching and students.
By 2023, Wiener had become co-chair of the legislature’s Jewish caucus. Wiener’s forceful defense of mainstream Jewish positions — defending Israel’s right to exist, and particularly his vigorous condemnation of neo-Nazism on the alt-right — had made him a community leader.
“He has played a role as a prominent defender and advocate for the Jewish community,” said Sam Lauter, a board member of the pro-Israel advocacy group Democratic Majority for Israel.
In the aftermath of Oct. 7, the Jewish caucus, with Wiener as leader, would push for legislation to address what it saw as a rising antisemitism problem. But pro-Palestine activists felt that some of its bills were attempts to squash teaching and protests related to Israel.
SB 1287 in 2024, for example, required California state colleges and universities to create and enforce time, place and manner restrictions for protests — at the time, Gaza encampment protests had swept through the country’s universities.
Though caucus members said it was meant to curtail instances in which protesters had targeted Jewish students on campus, some pro-Palestine advocates felt it was an attempt to curb the protests entirely.
In 2025, a bigger fight broke out over K-12 education. Assemblymembers Dawn Addis and Rick Chavez Zbur, with the support of the Jewish caucus, introduced AB 1468, which was intended to prevent antisemitic content from entering ethnic studies teaching materials.
It called for the curriculum to “focus on the domestic experience” rather than focusing on faraway problems.
Many pro-Palestine advocates saw that as an attempt to write teaching about Israel and Palestine out of the high school curriculum. That bill could not muster the support it needed, and was eventually withdrawn.
But soon after, a new bill was introduced — AB 715, which ended up being the sole bill backed by the Legislative Jewish Caucus in 2025. Wiener was a cosponsor.
It was intended to address antisemitism in schools. Wiener said that since Oct. 7, he and other legislators had heard many accounts of antisemitic abuse in schools and “all too often these kinds of issues have just been brushed aside.”
Graffiti of swastikas and “kill Jews” appeared on campus, students shouted antisemitic slurs in the hallways, and more. One SFUSD junior told Mission Local that students at his high school regularly used “Jew” as an insult or made “jokes about me being Jewish. Like, ‘What’s faster than a speeding bullet? A Jew after a coupon.’ Stupid things like that.”
The school responded by speaking briefly with the students and then moving them to a different table in the classroom, he said, a response that felt insufficient.
The Legislative Jewish Caucus decided it needed to do something, Wiener said. “It was our responsibility as Jewish legislators, not just to say, ‘Oh, well, that’s the way of the world.’”
They introduced AB 715, which created a new state-level antisemitism prevention position and office to advise local school districts. But the bill’s definition of antisemitism controversially included anti-Zionist speech that suggested Israel should not exist.
The bill created uproar among pro-Palestine advocates, civil rights groups, and teachers coalitions and unions, wading into ongoing conversations about where the line is between criticizing Israel and antisemitism.
Jewish organizations and parents had been filing complaints and lawsuits about antisemitism in schools, ranging from clear-cut cases, like Nazi graffiti, to ones in more of a gray area. Parents have complained about schools flying the Palestinian flag, teachers who wore keffiyehs to class, and classrooms where discussions about whether Israel was a “settler colonial” state happened without presenting a counter argument.
Activists saw these complaints as attempts to shut down discussion about Israel and Palestine in the classroom, and AB 715 as an attempt to codify those efforts.
“This bill gives infrastructure to the censorship and the attacks that have already been happening the last few years around teachers and educators who are speaking up about Palestine,” said Musa Tariq, a policy coordinator at the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
Over the course of AB 715’s legislative process, the provisions defining what constitutes an antisemitic learning environment were narrowed. In the final version, it defers the definition of antisemitism to a Biden administration report, which included multiple definitions, some of which say that criticism of Israel can be antisemitic.
Beyond creating the new antisemitism coordinator, the bill mostly reinforced existing anti-discrimination law, which calls for instruction to be accurate and not involve “advocacy, personal opinion, bias or partisanship.”
Wiener said his goal was to address antisemitism while ensuring Israel and Palestine could still be taught in schools, something he thinks the final bill achieved.
“We slimmed the bill down to make it very, very focused on what its goal was and to make sure that we were not in any way inadvertently impacting people’s ability to learn accurate history and current events,” he said. It passed the state assembly 71-0 and the state senate 35-0 in September 2025.
Activists were not satisfied. They said that it would make teachers self-censor out of fear that having a discussion about Israel and Palestine would lead to a complaint.
Gabriel Kahn, a Jewish middle school teacher in the Oakland Unified School District, said he has observed teachers doing so. Kahn said that in his role as a Jewish educator, he feels it is important to “continue to name the difference between anti-Semitism, which is discrimination against someone explicitly for being Jewish, versus criticism of Israel.”
But, he said, he knows many other teachers in his district are “changing their curriculum or avoiding talking about things because they’re worried about their job.”
Activists sued after the law passed to try and stop it from being implemented, arguing that it violated teachers’ right to free speech. But a judge dismissed the lawsuit, pointing to the fact that while working, teachers do not have the same free speech rights as in their personal lives.
Is Israel committing genocide in Gaza?
In early January, Wiener made a notable shift in his views on Israel and Palestine: He started calling it a genocide.
The decision came after some pressure. During the lightning round at the first congressional debate on Jan. 7, candidates were asked: “Is Israel committing genocide in Gaza?”
Chan immediately held up the green “yes” on her double-sided sign. Wiener kept his sign in his lap, twirling it so the red “no” and green “yes” flashed in and out of view.
That clip went viral, and a few days later, on Jan. 11, Wiener released a video saying that though he had previously used phrases like “total destruction” and “catastrophic levels of death” to describe the situation in Gaza, he was now calling it a genocide.
“For many Jews, associating the word genocide with the Jewish state of Israel is deeply painful and, frankly, traumatic,” Wiener said, pointing to the fact that the word was created because of the Holocaust. “But despite that pain and that trauma we all have eyes and we see the absolute devastation and catastrophic death toll in Gaza inflicted by the Israeli government. And we all have ears and we hear the genocidal statements by certain senior members of the Israeli government.”
Several pro-Palestine San Franciscans Mission Local spoke with respect his shift, including Jake Price. “I appreciate that he has looked at what’s been going on in the Middle East and has recalibrated some of his positions,” said Price, adding that “updating their priors and evolving on issues” is “something that we should encourage in our leaders.”
But Wiener’s decision sent shockwaves through parts of San Francisco’s organized Jewish community.
“It was a gut punch for us,” said Tye Gregory of the Jewish Community Relations Council. “It was disappointing that someone that had led the fight in the public eye for so long felt the need to do this.”
Major Jewish organizations released statements disagreeing with Wiener’s position and letter-writing campaigns and petitions started circulating, calling for Wiener to step down as chair of the Legislative Jewish Caucus. He did so on Jan. 22.
But most pro-Palestinian activists are still not satisfied, including Kiswani.
“It’s not enough to just change your rhetoric if you haven’t done anything to take action around your policies that have been so harmful and go directly against everything you say you stand for now,” she said.
