San Francisco Mayor London Breed will not sign a Gaza ceasefire resolution passed by its board of supervisors this month, she announced Jan. 19.
The city is the largest in the nation to declare support for a ceasefire.
“I cannot watch us divide ourselves even more,” Ms. Breed wrote in a letter to the board of supervisors Friday.
According to the letter announcing her decision, the mayor told county supervisors she struggled with her decision but after “much consideration and prayer,” she chose not to.
San Francisco, has an elected city council, a mayor, and a board of supervisors, the latter of which has jurisdiction over the city and the county.
Since the board of supervisor’s introduced the ceasefire resolution, the city has been “angrier, more divided, and less safe,” Ms. Breed wrote in the letter.
The resolution “was never about bringing people together; it was about choosing a side,” Ms. Breed said.
Pro-Palestine protesters harassed a Jewish man who spoke in support of Israel at the county’s Jan. 9 meeting, making pig noises, devil horns with their hands, and screaming for him to “kill himself” after he spoke about his family members who were killed by Hamas during the October attack, according to Ms. Breed.
The mayor said she had spoken with numerous Jewish San Franciscans who say they don’t feel safe in the city and were afraid to attend the supervisors’ hearing on the Gaza proclamation. The residents were fearful of the growing acts of vandalism and intimidation, and the targeting of Jewish-owned businesses, she wrote in the letter.
“They are worried this is the beginning of something worse, right here in San Francisco,” Ms. Breed said. “No one should feel unsafe in our communities. And no one should think that while advocating for peace abroad, it’s [OK] to stoke division and hate at home.”
The mayor said the supervisors should not have put the city in a position to sign the resolution. Supervisors are not elected or qualified to undertake complex foreign policy, she said.
She also considered the safety and unity of San Francisco, where antisemitism is real and dangerous, and she didn’t want to make things worse by signing the resolution, she added.
San Francisco was not the first California city to officially declare support for a ceasefire in Gaza. Oakland voted to support a similar resolution Nov. 27.
The city councils of Long Beach and Richmond have also passed ceasefire resolutions.
