💔After He Denies Genocide and Professes His "Crystal Clear Love" for Israel, I Will Oppose Gavin Newsom if He Runs for President

When a future presidential contender denies genocide in Gaza, we’re obligated to say it plainly: no.

Gavin Newsom is the Governor of California. He’s a gifted politician. And yes—many people expect he’s going to run for President.

I know him personally. I’ve campaigned for him, met with him privately, and I’ve had real hopes for his future in national politics. I know his wife and worked to support projects she cared about in the past. I saw them both as allies.

But genocide is a red line for me. I will never feel bad about this. And Gavin Newsom just crossed it.

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I’m embedding a clip from an interview between Ben Shapiro and Governor Gavin Newsom right here because I want you to hear his words with your own ears.

In the clip, Shapiro says: “Democrats have now been dragged into the conversation about [genocide in Gaza]. What is your opinion of this?”

Newsom responds: “I don’t share that opinion as it relates to genocide [in Gaza]. I do not agree with that notion. I’m also crystal clear on my love for Israel.”

That is disqualifying to me.

Not because I’m looking for a politician to agree with me on every policy detail. Not because I’m interested in purity tests. But because genocide isn’t a belief. It’s not a team jersey. It’s not a rhetorical flourish. It is a legal and evidentiary classification—built on documented actions, patterns, and intent.

Genocide is not a vibe. It’s a case.

Here’s the plain-language version: under the Genocide Convention, genocide is about acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. That’s not “my opinion.” That’s the definition the modern world agreed to after the Holocaust—because humanity promised itself it would not look away again.

So when a politician says, “I don’t share that opinion,” what they’re really doing is waving away mountains of documentation and the conclusions of leading human rights organizations, genocide scholars, and legal experts who have assessed the evidence and warned the world.

And in 2026, the evidence is not thin. It is staggering. It is constant. It is recorded from every angle—video, satellite imagery, hospital records, eyewitness testimony, mass graves, starving children, flattened neighborhoods, parents sifting for bones. If anything, Gaza is among the most documented atrocities in human history.

That’s why I’m going to say what some people are scared to say: to deny genocide in Gaza is, to me, like denying the Holocaust. It is a denial of reality. A denial of recorded human suffering. A denial of the basic moral line that makes law possible at all.

“Crystal clear love for Israel” is not moral clarity

Newsom didn’t just deny genocide. He added, proudly: “I’m also crystal clear on my love for Israel.”

Family, I need you to hear how insane that sounds in this moment.

“I love Israel” while Israeli leaders face grave war-crimes allegations and international legal scrutiny.
“I love Israel” while Israel bombs across borders, escalating a regional war.
“I love Israel” while Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have described Israeli policies toward Palestinians as apartheid—and while Israel’s own leading human rights organization B’Tselem has also used that word.

Apartheid is not a slur. It is a legal description of systematic domination—one group ruling over another through separate rights, separate laws, and enforced inequality.

And South Africans who survived apartheid have been saying for years that what Palestinians endure is worse than what they lived through.

Imagine, at the height of apartheid in South Africa, a major American politician saying, “I’m crystal clear on my love for apartheid South Africa.” You wouldn’t call that “pragmatic.” You’d call it what it is: morally deformed.

So yes—to profess “crystal clear love” for a state operating an apartheid system while it conducts mass slaughter is absurd to me. And even evil.

My history with Gavin Newsom makes this hurt more—not less

This isn’t a cheap shot from someone who never believed in him.

I did believe in him.

I worked for him. I supported him. I saw the talent. I saw the discipline. I saw the future.

And that’s exactly why this moment matters: because it tells me what kind of President he would be when the pressure is high and the donors are watching and the “smart” people in Washington are telling him which words are “safe.”

In that moment, with the world watching Gaza burn, he chose denial—and devotion.

That’s not leadership. That’s cowardice dressed up as caution.

The pushback I can already hear

Some people will say, “He’s just being careful with language.”

No.

The careful position is: “I’m going to follow the evidence, respect international law, and protect human life.”
The careful position is: “I don’t have the authority to erase what the world’s leading experts are documenting.”
The careful position is: “No matter what you call it, the slaughter must stop.”

“I don’t agree with that notion,” while declaring love for the state carrying it out, is not careful. It’s a signal.

Here’s my line—and I want you to draw yours

I will oppose Gavin Newsom if he continues to hold these views. And I will oppose any politician—Democrat or Republican—who denies genocide in Gaza and wraps themselves in “love for Israel” while Palestinians are being annihilated and dehumanized.

Because if genocide doesn’t end a political career, then elections are just theater.

If you’re with me, don’t just feel it—say it. Share this clip. Force the question onto the record. Make every would-be President answer it plainly: Do you respect the evidence? Do you respect the law? Do you respect Palestinian life?

And if you want The North Star to keep telling the truth with no paywall, no corporate leash, and no softened language—please become a member today. click here to become a member and click here to join as a monthly, annual, or founding member.

Here’s a line you can copy/paste and send to three people:

Genocide isn’t an opinion. It’s a legal classification based on facts—and any politician who denies it in Gaza is disqualified from my vote.

Love and appreciate each of you.
Your friend and brother,
Shaun

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