A rising variety of Jewish, Democratic and LGBTQ figures are condemning the harassment of Jewish congressional candidate Scott Wiener by anti-Zionists on the San Francisco Trans March on Friday.
Wiener’s political opponent, in the meantime, didn’t condemn the incident immediately when requested, as a substitute disavowing “threats of violence and hate speech” extra usually.
Wiener had been filmed on the march whereas a number of activists, together with the person filming him, surrounded him and yelled at him about Gaza and Israel; he in the end left the scene. The incident adopted one other at which Wiener was accused of supporting genocide whereas at a sports activities bar, and preceded a filmed anti-Zionist harassment of one other native Jewish LGBTQ politician at a San Francisco Delight march.
The incidents have retriggered discourse about Jewish inclusion in LGBTQ and different left-wing areas as anti-Zionist activists change into extra quite a few and strident.
Assigned Media, a preferred trans information outlet, denounced the Trans March harassment of Wiener led by native activist Dimitry Yakoushkin as “left antisemitism.”
“We have to reckon with the truth that Yakoushkin was in a position to incite an outpouring of rage towards a Jewish man by mentioning Gaza,” the writer, Evan Urquhart, wrote on Monday. “The one rationalization for that’s antisemitism. Sufficient attendees on the Trans Delight March have been open to seeing a Jewish man as a proxy for Israel that Yakoushkin was in a position to whip them right into a frenzy for his personal functions.”
Donations have additionally poured into Wiener’s marketing campaign following the incident, along with his marketing campaign telling the San Francisco Normal that he obtained his highest single-day donation numbers afterward. But the harassment has raised questions in regards to the viability of Jewish candidates like Wiener, who has mentioned Israel dedicated genocide in Gaza whereas nonetheless in search of to sustaining a liberal Zionist id.
Folks collect at state Senator Scott Wiener’s election get together at his marketing campaign headquarters on election evening in San Francisco, Calif. on Tuesday, June 2, 2026. (Gabrielle Lurie/San Francisco Chronicle by way of Getty Photographs)
Wiener, who’s homosexual and is operating for the seat being vacated by former U.S. Home Speaker Nancy Pelosi, wrote in a prolonged assertion that he had been chased out of the annual Trans March occasion whereas on his approach to a Delight Shabbat. It was, he mentioned, the primary time he had been unable to take part within the occasion because it launched 22 years in the past.
“They have been so bodily and verbally aggressive that it was unimaginable for me to securely stay within the park,” Wiener mentioned in his assertion, noting the protesters had “made statements about my ‘Israeli handlers,’ amongst many different inaccurate, excessive, and vile statements.”
The California Senate’s Democratic statehouse caucus condemned the harassment as “unacceptable,” calling Wiener “a fearless champion for the LGBTQ+ neighborhood even when it was not politically widespread.” The caucus didn’t point out Israel or antisemitism in its assertion.
“We’re saddened and appalled that Senator Scott Wiener skilled antisemitic invectives, harassment, and bodily intimidation whereas making an attempt to hitch the Trans March,” Jaimie Krass, president of the LGBTQ Jewish group Keshet, mentioned in a press release to the Jewish Telegraphic Company.
San Francisco’s Jewish mayor Daniel Lurie, the native Jewish Group Relations Council, and The Nexus Challenge, a nationwide antisemitism watchdog group that’s extra forgiving of anti-Zionist critiques than the Anti-Defamation League, all known as Wiener’s harassment antisemitic.
At a Delight breakfast Sunday morning hosted by a historic San Francisco LGBTQ Democratic group, different native and nationwide leaders expressed assist for Wiener.
“Hate has no place in our neighborhood,” Imani Rupert-Gordon, president of the Nationwide Heart for LGBTQ Rights, instructed Wiener on the breakfast, based on the Bay Space Reporter, a neighborhood LGBTQ information web site. “Scott, you have been handled horribly.”
San Francisco Board of Supervisors president Rafael Mandelson, who’s homosexual and Jewish, mentioned that what occurred to Wiener “occurs to homosexual Jewish electeds far too typically. It’s about Jew hatred. It’s unsuitable.” Wiener himself didn’t point out both of his harassment incidents in his speech on the breakfast, based on the Reporter.
A spokesperson for Wiener didn’t reply to a JTA request for additional remark. A request for remark to the Trans March was additionally unreturned; the march has launched a press release on a separate incident, during which a number of members have been arrested following an altercation with police.
The concentrating on of Wiener was particularly notable on condition that he has been celebrated domestically for years as a lawmaker with a powerful file on trans rights — one thing acknowledged by Yakoushkin, who in a video he filmed and posted, yells, “I believe your coverage on the genocide in Gaza is horrible,” as others yell expletives on the state senator.
“It’s unhappy as a result of whereas he’s written some good laws for queers, hes [sic] in the end a genocidal-supporting heart proper shill,” Yakoushkin wrote on social media in a submit accompanying his video of himself harassing Wiener. On Instagram, Yakoushkin known as Wiener a “Yimby zionist,” utilizing a shorthand for activists who push for extra housing.
A JTA request to Yakoushkin for remark was not returned. A life coach, Yakoushkin instructed one critic on X, “i[f] he was nice on Gaza I’d nonetheless roast his ass.”
Wiener had mentioned throughout his major marketing campaign earlier within the month, during which he got here in first, that he believed Israel had dedicated genocide in Gaza — a shift that got here after stress from the left and one which value him a management function within the statehouse’s Jewish caucus and led to backlash from the Bay Space Jewish neighborhood.
Native anti-Zionist activists have continued to focus on him. The Trans March incident was the second such harassment Wiener confronted prior to now week. Days earlier, a neighborhood artist filmed himself confronting the candidate at a sports activities bar, shouting, “Wiener, you gotta get the f-ck up out my hood, bro,” and “It’s free Palestine right here, you already know what it’s — we towards the genocide.”
The artist, Jesus “Frisco Lens” Coba, didn’t return a JTA request for remark. In his assertion, Wiener mentioned that Coba had in 2023 “stalked me on a aircraft and in an airport, shouting at me about my ‘tainted bloodline.’”
San Francisco Supervisor Connie Chan, who’s operating towards Wiener within the November congressional runoff, didn’t immediately handle Wiener’s harassment in a press release she despatched after JTA requested remark.
“As an elected chief, and a candidate operating for workplace, I’ve skilled the tough and tumble of San Francisco politics together with of us who disagree with us publicly and typically vehemently,” she mentioned. “And I settle for and perceive this duty. And as somebody who has been a goal of hate and threats of violence, I stand agency towards threats of violence and hate speech. There isn’t any place for hate and violence in our Metropolis.”
Chan had additionally attended the Trans March and was feted there, together with by a number of the activists who harassed Wiener on digital camera. Requested by JTA if the harassment of Wiener was antisemitic, a Chan spokesperson responded, “On this second, what issues is how State Senator Scott Wiener felt and feels in regards to the interactions. We should stand in solidarity towards hate at any time when somebody tells us they’re experiencing hate.”
Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna, who represents a distinct Bay Space district, known as the harassment of Wiener “merely unsuitable.” In the identical assertion, he promoted laws to finish the sale of army weapons to Israel.
“There isn’t any place for harrasment [sic] or bodily violence in our democracy,” Khanna, among the many Home’s fiercest Israel critics, wrote on X. “Let’s deal with passing @RepThomasMassie modification to zero help to Israel. Maintain elected officers accountable. However accomplish that within the spirit of constructing a politics of conviction and dignity, not insult and aggression.” A consultant for Khanna didn’t return a JTA request for additional remark.
A marketing campaign advert for Jewish restauranteur Manny Yekutiel, a candidate for San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors, September 21, 2025. (Screenshot by way of YouTube)
Additionally over the weekend, an anti-Zionist activist filmed themselves harassing Manny Yekutiel, a neighborhood Jewish restaurateur operating for San Francisco’s board of supervisors, whereas Yekutiel marched in a Delight occasion. The activist criticized Yekutiel, who can be queer, over having hosted Hen Mazzig, an LGBTQ pro-Israel activist, at his restaurant, as a result of Mazzig served within the Israel Protection Forces.
Yekutiel’s marketing campaign didn’t return a JTA request for remark; Yekutiel’s restaurant, Manny’s, has been focused a number of instances by anti-Zionists prior to now.
“The individual that you’re speaking about, he was Israeli. I didn’t know that he was an IDF soldier,” he instructed the activist who confronted him in video from the march. The activist responded, “Effectively, perhaps having Israelis on the cafe isn’t a good suggestion as a result of it’s an apartheid state committing a genocide.”
Some native politicians collectively condemned the harassment of each Wiener and Yekutiel, linking their identities as Jews.
“The harassment marketing campaign towards Jewish candidates @Scott_Wiener + Manny Yekutiel is gross and unacceptable,” Trevor Chandler, a member of the San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee, wrote on X. Chandler added that the native Democratic group “condemns antisemitism.”
The day after Wiener’s harassment, two completely different teams of LGBTQ Jews had contrasting receptions at a New York Delight march.
One, Jewish Queer Youth, skilled a largely peaceable march; a second, fronted by Zioness, a extra explicitly Zionist group, confronted harassment. One other outstanding Delight occasion, the NYC Dyke March, was staged on Saturday with out a lot of its longtime Jewish members, the Ahead reported, after organizers said for the second yr in a row that anti-Zionism was a core worth of the occasion; many Jewish former Dyke March organizers break up away to kind their very own group.
Some Jewish LGBTQ leaders say nearly all of such areas stay welcoming. Krass, the Keshet president, mentioned in her assertion to JTA that “practically each occasion” of the “practically 100 Delight occasions Keshet has organized this yr” have been “met virtually solely with celebration.”
Dillon Perez waves a Jewish satisfaction flag on the New York Metropolis Delight March on June 29, 2026. (Grace Gilson)
In a e-newsletter on Monday, Krass instructed Keshet’s followers that she was “appalled” by a number of the reactions to Wiener’s harassment.
“Some persons are refusing to acknowledge that antisemitism performed any function. Others are utilizing this incident as a possibility to undertaking false, dangerous generalizations onto the complete trans neighborhood,” Krass wrote. “I’ve even seen fellow Jews name for the Jewish neighborhood to desert the LGBTQ+ neighborhood and our shared struggle for equality. This isn’t the way in which.”
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