California state Sen. Scott Wiener (D) says he was “verbally and physically” harassed while trying to attend San Francisco’s annual Trans March by a group of people he claims misrepresented his stance on Israel and Gaza.
In a statement posted to Instagram on Saturday, the gay Jewish lawmaker said he was on his way to attend a trans-led Pride Shabbat service in San Francisco’s Dolores Park Friday evening ahead of the march when “a group of people began screaming at me, ran up to me, surrounded me and began harassing me.”
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“They made statements about my ‘Israeli handlers,’ among many other inaccurate, extreme, and vile statements,” Wiener, who is currently running to replace former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), said. “They were so physically and verbally aggressive that it was impossible for me to safely remain in the park.”
As a result, Wiener continued, he was unable to participate in the march for the first time since its inception in 2004.
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Video of the incident, apparently recorded by one of the people who confronted Wiener, surfaced on social media Friday night. The clip shows Wiener walking through the park as the person recording approaches him, initially expressing support for the lawmaker’s pro-LGBTQ+ legislation before criticizing his housing policy and his “policy on the genocide in Gaza.”
The confrontation quickly escalates, with several other people crowding around Wiener and shouting at him. The person recording begins to shout as well. Shouts of “Everybody hates you” and “f**k you and your Zionist handlers” can be heard in the clip as Wiener exits the park. It’s unclear from the footage posted online whether anyone made physical contact with Wiener, as he claimed in his statement.
Wiener said the Friday incident followed another earlier in the week, when a man cornered him at a San Francisco bar and “screamed abuse at me and our staff before being ejected by the bar’s employees.” Wiener’s statement claimed that both incidents were sparked by people who have previously targeted him “with aggressive behavior in the past.” Both incidents were reported to police, a spokesperson for Wiener told local ABC affiliate KGO.
According to the outlet, while the state senator has supported Israel’s right to exist, in January, he characterized the Israeli government’s bombardment of Gaza as “genocide” against the Palestinian people. Backlash to that statement led, in part, to Wiener’s resignation from the California state legislature’s Jewish caucus earlier this year.
“I have no objection whatsoever to anyone disagreeing with me, opposing me, or protesting me,” Wiener said in his Saturday statement. “But when opposition and disagreement transition to harassment, including cornering me, touching me, or trying to physically bully me out of a public event, that crosses a line.”
Wiener stopped short of accusing those who confronted him in Dolores Park of antisemitism. Others, including many who commented on his Instagram post, did not.
In one such comment, Human Rights Campaign senior vice president of campaigns and communications Jonathan Lovitz wrote, “We’ve allowed too many people to mistake outrage for justice and hate for activism. If we won’t confront antisemitism within our own movements, we undermine everything we claim to stand for.”
In a statement, San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie described the language directed at Wiener as “targeted, hateful and antisemitic.”
On Saturday, the California Legislative LGBTQ Caucus, state Senate President pro tempore Monique Limón, and the California Senate Democratic Caucus released a joint statement denouncing the “harassment and violence” directed at Wiener as “unacceptable.”
Wiener’s campaign website notes that he opposes the Israeli government’s West Bank settlement policies, has pledged to reject financial support from AIPAC, and opposes U.S. military support for Israel’s “destruction of Palestinian communities” in Gaza and the West Bank.
At the same time, Wiener criticized Rome Pride for barring Keshet Italia from its 2026 festivities over the Jewish LGBTQ+ organization’s failure “to distance itself from the ongoing genocide in Gaza.” In a May 26 X post, Wiener described the move as “antisemitic.”
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