Peter Liu is a candidate for Oakland mayor. He sends around emails about “crooked Jews” and “dirty Jews” and says an admirer of Hitler (rapper “Ye”) is a role model for him. He never mentions his views when he speaks at candidates forums, though. I am the only candidate who denounces him for what he really is. At a recent such forum, organized by the St. Columbia Catholic Church on Oct. 27, candidates were told to “say something nice” about a candidate sitting on one side or another of them. One front runner, Loren Taylor, chose to say something nice about the fascist. And the congregation laughed and applauded. No, there is nothing nice or funny about fascists. Here is a video of Taylor making light of the fascist and the congregation laughing and applauding:

Yes, Taylor’s making light of Liu’s anti-Semitism is shameful, but it was made possible by the fact that not a single other candidate other than myself spoke up against it. This is what makes this violence-inducing anti-Semitic comments legitimate, and from there somebody is bound to act on it. That is the process that creates attacks on Synagogues and from there to mass murder such as that on the Pittsburgh, PA, Tree of Life Synagogue in which eleven people were killed. If and when similar attacks are carried out here in Oakland, every one of the other candidates will of course denounce it, but what did they do to oppose the mentality that Liu expressed?

In fact, we have to ask why haven’t the Jewish community, including the synagogues, spoken up? The entire establishment, from liberal to conservative, gentile and Jewish, is ignoring this in the hopes that it will go away. It won’t. And then, when the next synagogue is defaced, or the next terrorist murder of Jews, as happened at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh PA in 2018 – when that happens, then all these politicians will be crying to high heavens. But where were they when Liu was spreading his poison?