Minutes after honoring victims in Israel and Gaza with an expression of solidarity and a moment of silence, Palo Alto City Council members found themselves confronted by racist and antisemitic comments during the public comment period of their Oct. 16 meeting.

The city was the latest to experience "Zoom bombing," a national trend in which commenters call in to public meetings with lewd, homophobic, racist and vulgar remarks. Similar incidents have recently happened in communities such as Atherton and Redwood City.

Response from the cities has been varied. As The Almanac reported earlier this month, Atherton recently removed the ability of speakers to unmute themselves, share screens or independently change their login name. Redwood City abolished the ability of public speakers to address the council by Zoom altogether.

Palo Alto hadn't experienced the phenomenon since the early days of the pandemic, when Zoom meetings became a norm. Several council members were left visibly stunned and disgusted Monday after the comments and responded by publicly denouncing them.

The comments were delivered shortly after Mayor Lydia Kou kicked off the meeting with an address that denounced the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas on Israel and implored members of the community to comfort each other during a time of sadness and uncertainty.

"Member of our Jewish community have expressed deep fear during these attacks and threats, which have compounded the community's fears, already heightened by the rise of antisemitism around our nation," Kou said.

"Members of our Muslim community also feel the pain and fear of rising Islamophobia, and we are all shocked and saddened by the murder of a young American child, targeted simply because he is Muslim," she added, referring to the Oct. 14 murder of a 6-year-old boy in Illinois.

She urged residents to "take a moment to care for each other, console each other and embrace each other, not through the prism of politics, but through the connection of our shared humanity."

"Many of our residents are not OK. I am not OK. Let's remember that and speak with kindness to each other," Kou said.

After the first of the two antisemitic speeches, Kou interjected to say that she and her colleagues "denounce the speakers' message of discrimination and hate" and said the city is "committed to a culture of acceptance where all members of our community feel included, safe and respected."

She repeated the comment later in the meeting, when a third speaker asked to comment on a separate agenda item and made an antisemitic comment. And she reiterated it again several times during the council's subsequent discussion about the proposed redevelopment of Cubberley Community Center, when an additional eight speakers addressed the council with vulgar and racist comments.

"We have allowed this speech only because the First Amendment of the Constitution requires us to give everyone an equal chance to express their views," Kou said after the second comment.

She also welcomed city staff to leave the room if additional speakers use hate speech during their public comments.

After the second comment, Kou suspended the public speaking period until later in the meeting so that the council could proceed with its regular business. Several of her colleagues quickly joined her in denouncing the speakers' comments.

"Everybody in this room deserves better than we just went through," Council member Julie Lythcott-Haims said. "For staff, for whom this is the workplace, for council members for whom this is the workplace, for the public for whom this is our public meeting place, I want to express compassion for all who've been attacked by the reprehensible things we just heard."

Council member Pat Burt also denounced what he called "the hatefulness and ignorance of the speakers who just spoke before us so despicably."

"This has been going on throughout the Bay Area," Burt said. "City councils have been Zoom bombed by a group of white supremacists, and unfortunately the legal restrictions do not allow us to prevent them from speech that is not truly disruptive of the meeting so we all must sit through it — and I won't say tolerate it."

Council member Vicki Veenker also expressed sympathy for all the victims in the current conflict and said she has been reaching out to friends who have been affected.

"My heart bleeds for those who lost or will lose loved ones in the conflict or who feel unsafe here at home," Veenker said. "It is easy to feel powerless, but what we can do is to take care of each other in our own city."