Before I get to the heart of this letter, I need people to read that quote.
"The biggest problem with the school board is that it’s run by the Jews"
Oscar de la Torre, SMMUSD School Board Member, August 6, 2019
This "statement" was corroborated by four people, one of whom had first-hand exposure and three who confronted Oscar after being told that "a board member has said this…" and he admitted it was him. I am one of those three. There is no scenario in which it is possible to deny that those words were his response when he was asked to describe the biggest problem facing the school board.
I have hesitated to write this letter but not because I am scared of retribution. I expect retribution. Oscar can say whatever he wants about me. Call me a racist. Call me an elite north of Montana, white, privileged, out of touch jerk. I can handle his personal attacks. I do have a fear that he will hold a grudge against the school district and intentionally take actions and votes to secure revenge and I think that is a legitimate concern. But, my greatest fear in sharing this story is that no one will care. I have told select individuals this quote and have been met with everything from shock to rationalizations to indifference. In the fall of 2020, a political ad was placed in the SMDP that reeked of antisemitic tropes in how it portrayed Michael Dell. What I learned then was that if you were anti Michael Dell and the proposed development at the Miramar you could excuse away this image that seemed to be plucked from the pages of Der Stürmer and the Third Reich’s propaganda machine. Antisemitism is hurtful. Seeing friends, colleagues, and fellow Jews dismiss it merely because the source of it is a politically expedient tool for achieving preferred outcomes is doubly hurtful. Does politics really trump all? Sadly, Santa Monica has become a microcosm of our country as a whole. We have become binary with only two sides and two choices.
To return to the quote in the beginning, I want to say that I am not calling Oscar antisemitic. His comment certainly is, but I can’t point to what is in his heart. I can only go by what I have seen and heard in my four years spent as his colleague on the school board and what I have witnessed since. Oscar seems to see all issues through a deficit lens. If one group has something it means that another group has less of the same thing and, with Oscar, that "thing" is usually the concept of who has power. As he sees it, Jews have power and power is the goal in any situation. So, if the Jews run the school board, they have power and therefore, as he sees it, his quote is a compliment. This was literally his rationalization to me, that his statement was a compliment. I did try to explain 6,000 years of Jewish history to Oscar and hoped that we had started the beginning of a longer conversation. After all, at that time Oscar just equated "Jew" with "white", disregarding the presence of Sephardic, Mizrahi, and Jews of color globally.
My biggest regret from that time is saying nothing publicly. Back then, I was cognizant of antisemitism on the right: very fine people on both sides, Kanye West, the Tree of Life mass shooting. What I failed to realize was the extent of antisemitism on the progressive left. I honestly thought that Oscar had heard me and would seek out a greater understanding going forward. I guess that one is on me. His comments during the Ethnic Studies conversations on the school board should have tipped me off as should have his comments after the George Floyd murder. His deficit thinking was on display and I down played it in order to avoid conflict. I failed to speak up.
I still am not certain if any reader of this letter will change their thinking or even seek out further information on the subject which is why I was hesitant to write it. But at a council meeting a couple weeks ago a member of the public made a comment critical of Oscar and he responded by defending his "Jewish bona fides", mentioning two people who I will have to assume are Jewish and how they supported him so therefore how could he be an antisemite. The "some of my best friends are Jews" defense was infuriating to me and made it clear that my failure to speak up years ago played a role in allowing this to happen. I would like to point out his vote in favor of the ceasefire resolution in Israel/Gaza (5/14/2024 council meeting at the 8:33:47 mark). After a short speech about civilians dealing with hardships and how as a father he could relate so deeply to the struggle (he seemed to be speaking on behalf of Palestinians in Gaza) he then stated, "and definitely there’s some responsibility for what Hamas did on October 7th". Some responsibility? Allow me to translate that: the Jews had it coming and their actions justified the brutal attack on October 7th where girls and women were subject to the most depraved sexual violence imaginable, babies and children were killed in front of their parents or kidnapped, and hundreds were slaughtered merely for being Jewish. That’s not a dog whistle, that’s a scream and a damning statement.
There is a story in the Old Testament describing Terach, arguably the worst man of the ancient era. He was completely irredeemable. But he was also the father of Abraham and before he died he insisted on bringing Abraham to Eretz Canaan, the Land of Canaan (eventually Israel). The biblical lesson here is that any person, no matter how repugnant and terrible can still do one thing that can change the world for the good. This is how many people justify their current support of Trump, "Yes, he’s a terrible person but he is doing well for Israel, or the courts, or giving me a tax break". I see this as a similar moment here in Santa Monica. Are we so consumed with getting what "we" want that we are willing to ignore or even embrace values that we find abhorrent? I am not trying to tell anyone who to vote for. If the ends justify the means for you, the vote is yours to cast. For me, I cannot ignore what I have experienced and felt that if I failed to speak up before this important election, I would have failed the Jewish people once again. That was a bridge too far for me to stay silent any longer.
— Jon Kean
Read Oscar de la Torre's response here.
