Elected leaders across Orange County are facing pressure to take a stance on the Israel-Palestine conflict, but nowhere has the debate been hotter than Irvine.
Hamas took 250 hostages in a surprise attack on Oct. 7 that killed over 1,000 Israelis. That incursion into Israeli territory triggered retaliatory airstrikes from the Israeli Defense Forces that have in turn killed over 28,000 Palestinians and forced over a million people towards the Egyptian border, sparking a humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
The violence thousands of miles away continues to stoke debate in Orange County – home to tens of thousands of Jewish residents and Arab American residents, some of whom have come out to multiple Irvine City Council meetings over the past few months to speak for hours.
Irvine City Council members have yet to put any formal discussion on the agenda – something that’s frustrated pro-Palestinian activists who say the city government needs to speak up for their residents.
“Do we have to always pay with blood? I left Palestine because I couldn’t live there, because my current government supports the apartheid regime there,” said one commenter. “What have you done? Nothing.”
But many Jewish residents argued the exact opposite, saying it wasn’t the city’s business and they had no role in an international conflict.
“These public comment sessions are directly contributing to the problem,” said one speaker. “The citizens of Irvine deserve more from their leaders, leaders who solve local problems and don’t get distracted by entanglements that are far outside their areas of expertise.”
Over the past two months, public comments focused on just Israel and Palestine have often stretched on for hours, which pushed meetings past midnight multiple times, with both sides accusing the other of supporting genocide and encouraging hate locally.
Irvine City Council members called repeatedly for calm on Tuesday night, arguing the activists’ repeated interruptions and hours of public comment had hamstrung their ability to get anything done as over two dozen police officers monitored the crowd.
“Now I’ve got to sit through an hour of public speakers that are all going to say the same thing,” said Councilman Mike Carroll. “I’m willing to sit here and do it, but I also want to talk about trails I’m working on. I also want to talk about Councilmember Kim’s thing … I just want my time.”
Councilwoman Kathleen Treseder claimed she’d received multiple death threats, and refused to sit in the room during public comment on the issue.
“We can’t govern if we’re simply picking our positions based on who’s threatening us the most,” Treseder said. “When we go to public comments, that’s why I leave. Once people threaten to kill me, they don’t get my attention anymore.”
City attorney Jeff Melching said the city wasn’t allowed to cut off speakers for sharing hate speech, noting it was protected under the First Amendment, and that they were only allowed to remove or bar comment from people disrupting the meeting.
At one point, city leaders called a 20 minute recess to the meeting, with Mayor Farrah Khan threatening to throw everyone out, but the crowd calmed down and no one was removed.
After resuming the meeting, city leaders announced they’d be delaying any comments on the Israel-Palestine issue until the end of the meeting.
“We’re here to hear you out, but remember this is also the business meeting of the Irvine City Council,” Khan said. “All members need to remain respectful and quiet.”
Ultimately, the city council meeting ended at midnight, with no decision to schedule a discussion on the issue.
Khan called for a ceasefire at the end of the meeting and asked for residents to see one another through a “lens of humanity.”
“The fact that people, including our youth, are facing hate and discrimination in our city and our schools makes it a local issue,” Khan said. “I don’t need to be an international policy expert to have a heart.”
Noah Biesiada is a Voice of OC reporter and corps member with Report for America, a GroundTruth initiative. Contact him at nbiesiada@voiceofoc.org or on Twitter @NBiesiada.
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