Hate crimes are on the rise in “tolerant” California under the watch of Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA), raising the question once again of what exactly it is that his “leadership” is doing positively for the state.

A grotesque antisemitic display occurred in Los Angeles when pro-terrorist (pro-Palestinian) protesters surrounded a synagogue and reportedly tried to block the entrance. These hateful, masked antisemites who are chanting for genocide and targeting Jewish communities ostensibly to protest Israeli policy unsurprisingly turned violent, and Los Angeles leadership was apparently asleep at the wheel.

Newsom posted on social media that “the violent clashes outside the Adas Torah synagogue in Los Angeles are appalling. There is no excuse for targeting a house of worship. Such antisemitic hatred has no place in California.” But that hasn’t been true. We know because California and Los Angeles allowed antisemitic activists to take over parts of the campus at the University of California, Los Angeles, letting them set up an illegal encampment on campus and violently assault students while Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass blamed each other for not acting.

Bass’s weak leadership aside, this problem is not exclusive to Los Angeles. Hate crimes are rising throughout the state of California, thanks in part to the permissive attitude California (and Los Angeles) leaders took toward illegal protests such as the UCLA encampment. There were antisemitic encampments at universities up and down the state, including at the University of Southern California, UC Riverside, UC Davis, UC Berkeley, Stanford University, San Francisco State University, and Sonoma State University, among others. All were allowed to sit for days or even weeks, allowing antisemitic hatred to fester and legitimizing the hateful activists taking part by their continued presence and by university leaders negotiating with them.

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Newsom has watched and not done much of anything. He didn’t pressure universities to allow law enforcement to clear illegal antisemitic encampments. It took him five months after the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attacks against Israel to come up with a grand “Plan to Counter Antisemitism,” which mostly amounts to spending $150 million on hate crime “prevention programs.” Given California’s track record under Newsom of spending obscene amounts of money on things such as homelessness or the high-speed rail, one can imagine that money likely won’t be used very efficiently.

Newsom is spending his time now trying to figure out how to manipulate voters into leaving California’s soft-on-crime policies in place. For someone who has clear ambitions beyond his current office, his absence of moral leadership as the state he presents as a model to the country falls into more antisemitic hatred is a damning indictment — and something he should be asked about each and every time he decides to lecture everyone else on moral governance.