Many Californians sympathize with Palestine, but a third want Israel’s war to continue

Good morning and welcome to the A.M. Alert!

CALIFORNIANS ARE SPLIT ON ISRAEL-HAMAS WAR

Three months into the war between Israel and Hamas, Californians are divided in their sympathies.

A new survey from the Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies finds that 30% of voters sympathize with Israel in the conflict, while 24% sympathize more with the Palestinian people and 28% say they sympathize with both.

A plurality (44%) of voters believe that Israel’s actions, in response to Hamas’ bloody Oct. 7 attack, are disproportionate. Israeli strikes on Gaza have killed tens of thousands of people, and the Israeli action has led to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians going hungry, according to the United Nations.

Democrats and liberals are more likely to believe Israel’s attack is going too far, while conservatives and Republicans are more likely to believe Israel’s response is “about right.”

A plurality (41%) of California voters believe that Israel should call a ceasefire in Gaza, regardless of whether Hamas remains in existence. Israel has pledged to eliminate Hamas entirely. However, more than a third (36%) believe that Israel should keep going until Hamas is no longer viable.

Forty-seven percent believe that a two-state solution — where Israel and Palestine are two separate, independent nations — is the best long-term resolution to the ongoing crisis in the region.

The ongoing war is leading to a collapse in support for President Joe Biden, whose handling of the issue has a 33% approval rating. Even among Democrats, 40% say the president is doing a good job dealing with the war, while 28% of “strongly liberal” voters think so.

Conservative and moderate voters are more likely to disapprove of the president’s handling.

The poll surveyed 8,199 registered voters online from Jan. 4 to 8. Margin of error is plus or minus 1.5 percentage points.

RAMOS BILL WOULD REQUIRE SCHOOLS TO TEACH ACCURATE HISTORY

California K-12 schools aren’t doing enough to teach students about the historical mistreatment of Native Americans during the Spanish Mission and Gold Rush eras, one lawmaker argues, and so he’s introduced a bill to change that.

Assemblyman James Ramos, D-San Bernardino, the first and only Native American to serve in the Legislature, has introduced AB 1821, a followup to his 2022 bill AB 1703, which required local educational agencies to create California Indian Education Act task forces to develop a more robust curriculum about the history and culture of the tribes native to their region.

“For far too long California’s First People and their history have been ignored or misrepresented. Classroom instruction about the Mission and Gold Rush periods fails to include the loss of life, enslavement, starvation, illness and violence inflicted upon California Native American people during those times. These historical omissions from the curriculum are misleading,” Ramos said in a statement.

The bill has bipartisan support, with Republican Porterville Assemblyman Devon Mathis signed on as a joint author.

BILL TO BAN OFFSHORE DRILLING ADVANCES

SB 559, Irvine Democratic Sen. Dave Min’s bill to end offshore drilling in California, made it through its first big challenge last week, when it was approved 7-3 by the Senate Natural Resources and Water Committee.

OK, so it might not have been that big of a challenge — Min chairs the committee.

In a statement, Min condemned the decades-old offshore oil rigs as being long past their useful life.

“As the 2021 oil spill off the coast of Orange County starkly illustrated (as did the 2015 Refugio Beach oil spill), offshore drilling poses a clear and immediate threat to our beautiful beaches and our vibrant $44 billion a year coastal economy,” Min said. “...We simply cannot afford to have more oil spills, and SB 559 provides an immediate pathway towards shutting these offshore oil platforms down.”

The bill does so by requiring the California State Lands Commission to take immediate steps to terminate all existing offshore oil drilling leases.

Min had similar legislation in 2022, but it stalled in the Senate Appropriations Committee. He then introduced SB 559 in 2023, but asked that it be held until 2024 to allow the commission time to complete its study of the potential costs associated with shutting the rigs down.

SB 559 now moves to the Senate Appropriations Committee.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“In 2023, we saw an increase in anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric from far-right extremists in California that led to direct attacks on our youth in the form of forced outing policies that out transgender students without their consent and attempts to censor or ban books and curriculum that so much as mention LGBTQ+ people. Already vulnerable young people should not be subject to even greater harassment and harm in their learning environments.”

- Equality California Executive Director Tony Hoang, in a statement praising Attorney General Rob Bonta’s legal alert warning school districts not to pass such policies.

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