Gaza war threatens to divide O.C.’s Human Relations Commission from within
For Rabbi Rick Steinberg, a packed meeting of the Orange County Human Relations Commission in March proved to be a welcome reprieve.
Pro-Palestinian activists had dominated the past two meetings with calls for his removal from the commission after he voted against a statement denouncing Islamophobia in the wake of the Israel-Hamas War.
But on March 14, dozens of speakers offered hosannas for Steinberg, who serves as senior rabbi for Congregation Shir Ha-Ma’alot in Irvine.
Supporters described him as an interfaith activist, trusted hate fighter and “mensch” while denouncing attacks against him as antisemitic.
“Let there be no doubt he opposes Islamophobia and mourns the loss of innocent lives,” said Myra Firth, a Steinberg supporter, at the meeting. “If the resolution that started this was limited to that, none of us would be here.”
Steinberg nodded in agreement as the crowd applauded.
More than 1,100 Israelis were killed and 250 taken hostage in the brutal Oct. 7 Hamas attack. The Gaza Health Ministry death toll of the punishing Israeli airstrikes and ground invasion in the ensuing months has reached 31,500 people.
The uproar over the war overseas and rising hatred at home has raised questions from both sides about the commission, which is tasked with promoting harmony in a diversifying county where prejudice continues to plague its annual hate crime reports.
“We’re glad the [anti-Islamophobia] statement passed,” said Monica Rahim, senior policy and advocacy manager for the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ Los Angeles chapter. “But for an organization whose role is to ease tension, conflict, discrimination and intolerance, we hope that all commissioners would adhere to those values.”
Steinberg denies harboring any Islamophobia and deemed the commission statement in question as an objectionable “rewrite” of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict’s long history.
“Instead of dealing with any of the historical stuff, of which there are different narratives, I said, ‘Let’s just mourn the loss of innocent Palestinians,’” he said. “The prevailing opinion of the commission was to leave the statement as it was, so I couldn’t vote for it in that vein.”
An Orange County school district’s efforts to introduce lessons on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have ignited emotional discourse among Jewish and Arab American community groups.
Following the Oct. 7 Hamas attack and Israeli airstrikes on Gaza the commission called a special meeting to address an expected rise in local hate crimes through an original draft statement denouncing “hate and violence against Jewish and Palestinian people.”
It began by noting that the Jewish community has already borne the brunt of faith-based bias in the county while labeling the Hamas attack as “horrifying” and “abhorrent.”
The statement also expressed condolences for children caught in a “whirlwind of international violence,” including Wadea Al Fayouma, a young Palestinian American boy murdered in an apparent hate crime near Chicago.
Steinberg asked for revisions.
“Oct. 7 was a mass murder of Jews,” he said during the meeting. “I don’t know why we can’t just talk about that exclusively and how it impacts the Orange County Jewish community.”
Steinberg suggested changing the statement’s title and deleting a paragraph which included the reference to Al Fayouma, whose murder he otherwise called an “awful hate crime.”
But the special meeting ended with commissioners unable to agree on the draft and opting, instead, for a two-statement solution.
They debated language anew in November with a pair of separate statements on antisemitism, Islamophobia and the Gaza war.
Steinberg claimed the Palestinian and Islamophobia statement was “provocative” and “unfair” while challenging the inclusion of the Gaza Healthy Ministry’s death toll, since it’s Hamas-run.
“Hamas is responsible for the death of innocent Palestinians,” he further argued.
Through revisions, the Islamophobia statement kept references to a multigenerational Palestinian struggle for “land and home” while also noting that thousands of Palestinian Muslims and Christians have already been “massacred” in the current war.
By the meeting’s end, the antisemitism statement, which strongly condemned the Hamas attack as an act of terrorism, passed unanimously.
Steinberg and Commissioner Rhonda Shader, a Placentia city councilwoman, voted against the Islamophobia statement, which also passed.
CAIR-LA denounced Steinberg and Shader’s votes.
Lulu Hammad, a Palestinian American activist who co-founded Yalla Indivisible and is the coordinator for the SoCal Ceasefire Coalition, caught up on the debates over the statements after the votes.
She was troubled by what she heard.
“It was extremely painful,” said Hammad, who has lost seven extended family members in Gaza since the war’s onset. “I hoped that there would be one resolution. I’m not comfortable with the way Steinberg is separating the two communities and assigning certain grievances to one and not the other.”
When the commission met again on Jan. 11, Hammad helped organize a turnout of nearly 40 speakers who called on the commissioners to resign.
Steinberg faced accusations of being biased and even a “bigot” with activists claiming his vote served to increase the risk of hate incidents against Palestinian, Arab and Muslim Americans.
They also criticized him as a bully for statements he made about defunding Groundswell, a nonprofit that partners with the commission on its annual hate crimes report, after the group drafted a related statement of their own, which he found offensive.
Debate rages as California city councils take a stand on the Israel-Hamas war. As some champion the resolutions, others say they fan the flames of hate.
Steinberg did not attend the meeting, but Shader responded to critics.
“I made every effort to try to vote for that resolution, because it was a strong resolution,” Shader said. “Both of them were very good, but there was a historical reference that I felt this commission shouldn’t really put out there as taking a stand on something because it’s not our expertise.”
By February, the Jewish Federation of Orange County had a letter supporting Steinberg read aloud at the meeting that month.
“Rabbi Steinberg is universally respected in our community and is known as a champion of the cause of fighting hate and discrimination,” it read. “It is not only unjust to single [him] for removal because he disagreed with a statement he felt was inaccurate about the current war in Gaza; it is indeed antisemitic.”
The federation warned that Steinberg’s removal would cause the commission to lose all credibility.
But the authority to remove commissioners rests with the county supervisor or city selection committee that appointed them, not the commission.
Supervisor Don Wagner lined up as the first speaker to address the commission’s March meeting and lent support to Steinberg, who serves as his District 3 appointee.
“Rabbi Steinberg has a straight and true moral compass,” Wagner said. “He is going nowhere, if I have anything to say about it.”
Towards the end of the meeting, Steinberg thanked all who spoke in support of him and hoped that there would be no further referendums on his standing as a commissioner.
He also criticized the commission and Groundswell for not backing him up publicly.
It’s a sentiment he stands by after the meeting.
“Without question, I’ve been the victim of a hate incident at the very least,” Steinberg said. “Here we have one of the commission’s leaders experiencing hate and there’s no response.”
After Oct. 7, Groundswell has held a number of listening sessions for both communities and is looking to organize another interfaith convening on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict like the one they hosted in late 2019.
Pro-Palestinian activists decided against turning out to last commission meeting. Members say they are restrategizing, especially with Wagner having signed onto the O.C. Board of Supervisors’ own statement on the Gaza War, which was criticized as one-sided and Islamophobic by CAIR-LA and others at the time.
“What can we do with the commission to address this issue?” Hammad asked. “We’re not going to keep showing up, giving public comments and getting no response or redress to what’s happening.”
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