Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen was adjudged to have a conflict of interest “so grave as to render it unlikely that the defendants will receive a fair treatment”
By Jonathan Urmeneta, reposted from Electronic Intifada, August 10, 2026
On 7 May, a California county district attorney and his office were recused from prosecuting a case against Stanford University students because a judge ruled that he was using it to raise money for his reelection campaign.
Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen was adjudged to have a conflict of interest “so grave as to render it unlikely that the defendants will receive a fair treatment,” in the words of the county’s Superior Court Judge Kelley Paul, who handed down the ruling.
Newly revealed financial disclosures expose a network of wealthy Silicon Valley figures financing Rosen’s reelection campaign. The individuals in these documents actively support Zionist causes, and have in some cases employed derogatory language about Palestinians, raising questions about Rosen’s aggressive posture toward prosecuting the Stanford students.
The so-called “Stanford 11” case was brought in 2025 against students at Stanford University, who were charged with felony conspiracy to trespass and felony vandalism in connection to an hour-long June 2024 occupation, during which the group barricaded itself inside the university president’s office to demand the institution consider a student proposal to divest from Israel, among other requests.
Stanford University at first punished the students by suspending them and barring them from campus. After a disciplinary process found the students had violated university policies, they were eventually allowed back on campus.
In April 2025, Rosen nevertheless decided to bring criminal charges against the 12 students involved, one of whom pleaded no contest and testified on behalf of the prosecution. Six other defendants took pretrial plea agreements or diversion programs, leaving five to subsequently stand trial.
That resulted in a mistrial in February of this year, but Rosen was determined to put the students on trial.
“This case is about a group of people who destroyed someone else’s property and caused hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage,” Rosen said in a statement. “That is against the law and that is why we will retry the case.”
Grave conflict
But his attempt to prosecute the retrial was rebuffed by defense lawyers who argued that Rosen should be recused because he had been “monetizing” the case by promoting it as part of his efforts against anti-Semitism in his fundraising campaign to secure re-election.
Judge Paul, who identified the “grave” conflict, was unequivocal that the case “is not a hate crime,” and its prosecution should not be characterized as a “fight against anti-Semitism.”
Rosen’s campaign finance records identify a network of prominent pro-Israel donors whose financial and political support coincided with this framing of the “Stanford 11” case.
Their involvement raises broader questions about the political interests surrounding the prosecutions of Palestine solidarity activists.
Rosen’s own loyalties are not in doubt.
“Fighting for Jews and for Israel is fighting for America,” Rosen said during a speech in March 2025 at San Jose Hillel. Operating in 850 colleges and universities worldwide, Hillel is the largest Zionist campus organization in the world.
In the same speech he also made disparaging remarks regarding Students for Justice in Palestine.
Rosen’s family took a “solidarity” trip to Israel in 2024. His daughter, Rachel Rosen, is a former senior research analyst for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
Jeff Rosen also met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyhu during the latter’s September 2023 visit to Silicon Valley, which is in Santa Clara County, to meet with tech leaders.
Rosen’s ideological commitment to Zionism – Israel’s state ideology – is also mirrored in his campaign finances.
Zionist funders
Public filings reveal an array of Silicon Valley Zionists funding Rosen’s 2026 reelection campaign.
Among these figures, the most familiar name on the list is Facebook’s former COO, Sheryl Sandberg, along with her husband Tom Bernthal.
Aself-proclaimed “proud Zionist,” Sandberg donated $5 million to United Hatzalah in 2021. This is the organization behind the claim that a baby was found burned alive in an oven following the 7 October 2023 attack, an unverified claim made in 2023 by Eli Beer, president of United Hatzalah, during a presentation at the Republican Jewish Coalitions’ Annual Leadership Summit. Sandberg also released the documentary “Screams Before Silence” which proliferated the false narrative of mass rape on 7 October 2023 with no forensic evidence to support it.
Another prominent billionaire donor is Laura Lauder, heir to the Estée Lauder fortune and a fellow with Wexner Heritage Foundation, along with Rosen. Lauder currently sits on the AIPAC Northwest Regional Board of Trustees while also sitting on the board of several other influential foundations.
An advisory board member to Birthright Israel Onward – a 2022 merger of the Jewish Agency’s Onward Israel and Birthright Israel – and an investor, her family foundation donated $100,000 during its first round of funding.
Besides being described as one of the “most effective” propaganda campaigns sponsored by the Israeli government, Birthright Israel has also been used to “encourage Jews to marry and increase the Jewish birthrate.” Under Israeli legislation, Jews from all over the world are automatically eligible for Israeli citizenship, whereas Palestinians uprooted from their homeland are denied the right to return home.
During Lauder’s tenure as the Jewish Federation endowment chair, from 2016 to 2020, the organization was reportedly funding hate groups, including anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant groups like The David Horowitz Center American Defense Initiatve, as well as the pro-Israel doxxing website Canary Mission.
The recent identification of the site’s content producers exposed that Canary Mission has long served as a site not only to dox individuals in the Palestinian solidarity movement, but also as an instrument of chaos used by the Trump administration to target individuals for deportation.
Hindutva and Zionism
Hindu Nationalism (Hindutva), is a major proponent of Zionism. Like Zionism, both share supremacist characteristics.
Early Hindutva activists saw India as the cradle of civilization and pushed for a return to a “pure India,” with Hinduism at the heart of society. These individuals viewed Hindus as the “original inhabitants,” with everyone else seen as “foreigners or invaders who had contaminated the nation.”
Hindu nationalists view Muslims as their main enemy.
A notable figure in this ideological movement is the Hindu American Foundation’s (HAF) co-founder Mihir Meghani, a doctor.
In Meghani’s anti-Muslim manifesto, he applauded the Hindu mob that destroyed the historic 400-year-old Babri mosque and threatened the Muslim community.
The only donor who is also pictured in Rosen’s campaign literature as part of “DA Rosen’s Coalition,” Meghani has positioned himself as a cheerleader for Zionism. An outspoken and firm believer, he admitted during a panel discussion sponsored by StandWithUs that he was behind an effort to defeat resolutions supporting the Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) and worked to get Rosen re-elected.
Lesser-known figures who have funded Rosen’s campaign – Los Altos City Council member Pete Dailey, Stanford Professor Jeffrey Ullman and entrepreneur and philanthropist Asha Jadeja Motwani – have each employed the kind of rhetoric often associated with Zionist political discourse.
No stranger to controversy, Dailey responded to US legislator Ro Khanna on Facebook regarding the 192-page Democratic National Committee (DNC) report, which detailed why Vice President Kamala Harris lost the 2024 election to Donald Trump, writing: “It’s not a genocide and most Democrats understand that was a red herring to rationalize not voting for the Black woman. Leftists who cry genocide were the same people who voted for [Green Party candidate] Jill Stein in 2020 and 2016 and for that matter, they are the same people who voted [Ralph] Nader in 2000.”
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) recognized Dailey as someone who has used hate speech. In an article by the Los Altos Town Crier, the organization alleged that he “accused Palestinians, Muslims and allies of volitional anti-Semitism, demonized them repeatedly by calling them ‘bathed in darkness,’ and accused peaceful protesters of bringing violence to Los Altos.”
Activists undeterred
For his part, Ullman told an Iranian student asking for Stanford admissions help: “Even if I were in a position to help, I will not help Iranian students until Iran recognizes and respects Israel as the land of the Jewish people. If Iranians want the benefits of Stanford and other institutions in the US, they have to respect the values we hold in the US, including freedom of religion and respect for human rights.”
The professor’s response drew condemnation from the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), which asked Stanford to censure him.
Motwani, meanwhile, in a social media post on X, displayed her contempt for Arab-Americans, stating that growth in the Arab-American population will bring “cultural and religious elements that will marginalize Muslim girls. Maybe even damage women. Demands for sharia compliance will go up, which means direct repression of women and girls. This stuff is toxic and is not compatible with Western values of equality between men and women.”
Other notable Zionists financially fueling Rosen’s campaign include:
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Developer Eli Reinhard, who gave $50,000 to Friends of the IDF – a group supporting Israel’s military.
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Congressional candidate Ritesh Tandon, who said on his campaign website, “How can we convince Palestinians to stop teaching their kids to hate Jews and to destroy them in order for themselves to survive?”
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Claude Stern – a member of the National Advisory Council with the Israel lobby group J Street and a Stanford Hillel Board member, who – along with the managing director of Half Dome Capital, Jason Matlof – endorsed a report that described anti-Zionism as a form of discrimination.
The Electronic Intifada reached out to Rosen’s office for comment, but was referred to California Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office. Bonta helped represent Rosen in his recusal case and, in court, denied, on Rosen’s behalf, that Rosen had used the Stanford case to help raise funds.
“DA Rosen neither vilified nor defamed defendants and/or their movement while fundraising and simultaneously prosecuting defendants,” Bonta wrote in court documents.
Following the recusal of DA Rosen, the decision to pursue a retrial for the remaining five members of the “Stanford 11” now hinges on Bonta.
Bonta’s track record of defending Israeli advocacy, however, leaves little doubt he will pursue a retrial.
Meanwhile, and in spite of donors with deep pockets and lengthy legal hurdles, solidarity activists remain defiant.
Just north of Santa Clara County, in San Francisco, the pro-Palestinian activists shut down the Golden Gate Bridge during a 15 April 2024 demonstration. Protesters in nearby Oakland simultaneously halted traffic on Interstate 880 in an “effort to disrupt local and global economies and put pressure on the US government” to end its support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Jonathan Urmeneta is an independent writer and journalist from the San Francisco Bay Area. Follow him on X @JonUrmeneta.
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