Promoting peace, never repeating the genocide in Gaza, ending the occupation of the West Bank, combating antisemitism, and supporting Jewish and Palestinian communities.
Scott believes Israel and Palestine must co-exist side by side in peace. There are over 7 million Jews and over 7 million Palestinians living in the region, and neither group is going anywhere. Endless violence, destruction, and displacement are untenable and must end. Peace through a two-state solution is the only answer.
Scott’s approach to Israel and Palestine is very basic: Stop killing civilians. Stop destroying communities. Stop empowering governments — whether Netanyahu or Hamas — that commit massacres.
Within weeks of October 7, the worst massacres of Jews since the Holocaust, which Scott harshly condemned, Scott opposed Israel’s destructive escalations in Gaza and supported a ceasefire. Scott is one of the very few Jewish elected leaders in the country to declare the Netanyahu government has committed genocide in Gaza.
Scott strongly supports Israel’s existence as Jewish homeland, and he strongly supports creation of a Palestinian state under a two-state solution. Scott opposes efforts to destroy Israel, such as Hamas’s October 7 terror attack and taking of hostages, as well as the global BDS movement.
WEST BANK/SETTLEMENT POLICY:
Scott has been speaking out for years against the Netanyahu government’s West Bank settlement policy, which is systematically dismembering Palestinian communities. Scott believes settlement expansions are illegal, designed to prevent the creation of a Palestinian state, and a step toward ethnic cleansing. Settler land grabs and violence must not be tolerated.
AIPAC FUNDING:
Scott has taken the Reject AIPAC pledge and is neither seeking nor accepting support from AIPAC, due to significant policy differences.
U.S. MILITARY SUPPORT FOR ISRAEL:
Scott will not support U.S. funding for the destruction of Palestinian communities in Gaza or the West Bank and thus will not support offensive arms sales to an Israeli government not committed to peace. Scott also believes the U.S. should continue to provide Israel with defensive systems, such as Iron Dome and David’s Sling, which protect ten million Jewish, Muslim, and Christian civilians from near-constant missile and drone attacks, whether from Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, or Iraqi militias. Scott believes that Israel, not U.S. taxpayers, should pay the cost of these life-saving defensive systems.
SCOTT’S HISTORY ON ISRAEL:
As a Jew whose family members fled antisemiticanti-Jewish violence in Eastern Europe and Russia, Scott deeply believes in Israel’s critical importance to Jews globally, as a Jewish homeland and home to half of all Jews on the planet. Scott also strongly believes Palestinians deserve a state in the West Bank and Gaza, and that both Israel and Palestine must be governed by leadership committed to peace and democracy. Scott has long protested the Netanyahu regime, referring to Netanyahu as a “cancer,” and has publicly called for a new government in Israel. Scott has also been clear that Hamas, a genocidal terrorist organization committed to the destruction of Israel and the killing of Jews, must disarm and have no role in a future Palestinian state.
On October 7, 2023, when Hamas engaged in mass slaughter, rape, and kidnapping of Jews, Muslims, Christians, and others in southern Israel, Scott immediately condemned Hamas’s pogrom and supported Israel’s right to defend itself. However, Israel quickly went beyond self-defense. Scott began opposing Israel’s escalations in Gaza on October 13, 2023, and he supported a ceasefire on November 17, 2023. Examples of Scott’s statements are below.
The Netanyahu government — which includes vile messianic extremists who have made indisputably genocidal statements about Palestinians — is a barrier to peace, and has deeply harmed both Palestinians and Israelis.
The Netanyahu government has also expanded its destruction to Lebanon, with massive bombardment and civilian displacement. Scott has harshly condemned this expansion, including an Israeli general’s statement that Israel would use a “Gaza strategy” in Lebanon.
SCOTT IS A LEADER IN THE FIGHT AGAINST ANTISEMITISM:
Scott has consistently called out antisemitism on both the right and the left — whether Trump’s empowerment of antisemites or the casting out from progressive spaces of Jews who support Israel’s existence. Scott has vocally opposed antisemitism in our local community, whether the targeting of Jewish-owned businesses, the targeting of Jewish kids in our public schools, or antisemitic atmospheres at UCSF and San Francisco State University.
Scott helped lead the California Legislative Jewish Caucus for over five years and helped pass California’s law to address antisemitism in our schools. He has also vocally opposed Trump’s disingenuous use of antisemitism to defund universities and scientific research, which makes Jews less safe.
Scott is also proud of San Francisco’s vibrant Palestinian community. Scott has condemned bigoted attacks on Palestinians and Muslims, including violence directed at the community and political attacks by MAGA Republicans and others. Scott has long championed California’s nonprofit security grant program, which has helped make both Jewish and Muslim community institutions in San Francisco and throughout California more secure from hate crimes.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is illegal, brutal, and a direct challenge to the international order that has kept great-power conflict at bay for decades. What Trump is doing is not isolationism. It’s weakening the U.S. and giving up on our values of supporting democracies around the world. Letting Putin win sends a clear message to every authoritarian government watching: aggression pays. Scott will fight to restore U.S. military and economic aid to Ukraine so it can negotiate from a position of strength, not desperation. America’s credibility as an ally is on the line.
Trump’s tariff regime is a tax on American consumers and is directly causing soaring prices. Hike tariffs by 145% on Chinese goods overnight, and prices go up at large and small U.S. retailers alike. Supply chains freeze up. Threaten democratic allies with tariffs, and they stop trusting us and start building trade relationships without us. Real trade policy protects American workers through enforceable labor standards, supply chain resilience, and partnerships with democracies that share our values. Impulsive proclamations that whipsaw markets and tank retirement accounts don’t qualify. Scott supports trade agreements that are actually negotiated, with real worker and environmental protections. We need a coherent strategy, not chaos.
China is America’s most consequential geopolitical challenge and a critical partner on so many of the globe’s pressing issues. The economic, cultural, and economic ties between California and China run deep, and we must foster and respect those ties. We can have disagreements with China — and protect American interests — without unnecessarily escalating to the point of conflict. Indeed, the U.S. and China have a solemn responsibility to collaborate on the major challenges confronting our planet, including climate change, AI risk, pandemics, economic stability, and avoiding catastrophic wars.
Navigating this relationship requires clear eyes and a coherent strategy. Scott supports existing U.S. policy toward Taiwan and opposes any forceful attempt to change the status quo across the Taiwan Strait. War with China would be catastrophic for the entire world, which means deterrence must be backed by serious diplomacy. The U.S. should compete with China the right way: by leading. That means investing in domestic semiconductor manufacturing, AI infrastructure, and clean energy so we’re not dependent on countries overseas for critical supply chains.
We must end the brutal and illegal war Trump is waging in Iran. It is destabilizing the region, driving up prices across the globe, and making Americans less safe.
Trump blew up the Iran Nuclear Deal and got nothing in return. Iran is now closer to nuclear capability than it was before he did that. The Iranian regime — still in power despite Trump’s horrific war — is now actively seeking to establish a toll booth on the Strait of Hormuz, forcing the rest of the world to fund its terror campaigns. Allowing free navigation of international waterways has been a pivotal pillar of U.S. foreign policy since our nation’s founding. Trump is putting that at risk. Scott will push to restore meaningful negotiations while maintaining multilateral pressure. Military force is a last resort, and any use of it requires explicit authorization from Congress
When Trump gutted USAID, he handed a strategic gift to our adversaries and brought immediate suffering to millions around the globe. Foreign aid prevents wars, disease, and famines. It builds stable governments, keeps pandemics from becoming global crises, and creates the kind of goodwill that military budgets can’t buy. Programs like PEPFAR have saved over 25 million lives and built real U.S. credibility across Africa and Asia. For every dollar we spend on development assistance, we save many more in military spending down the road. When America walks away from this work, China and Russia fill the vacuum. Scott will fight to fully restore USAID and rebuild America’s diplomatic and development capacity.
One of America’s greatest strategic foreign policy assets is our alliances. The relationships, treaties, and institutions we’ve built since World War II give the U.S. a coalition of democracies that no adversary can match. Trump spent his terms treating allies like adversaries, threatening to abandon security commitments, and pulling back from the institutions that make collective action possible to solve the world’s biggest challenges. That damage is real, and it needs to be undone. Scott will work to rebuild trust with democratic partners across the globe. No country solves climate change alone. No country counters authoritarian aggression alone.
