A sold-out Global Conference for Israel is underway at the Gaylord Pacific Resort and Convention Center in Chula Vista, and San Diego groups aligned with anti-Zionist and pro-Palestinian movements have already taken the argument outside.
Jewish National Fund-USA is hosting the four-day meeting, which began Thursday and runs through Sunday. KPBS reported that organizers put significant security around and inside the hotel and convention center. The Gaylord Pacific had not responded to the station's requests for comment before publication.
A First for San Diego County
Board chairman Sol Lizerbram told KPBS this is the first time the conference has been held in San Diego County during the organization's 125-year history. Attendance was expected to reach about 3,000 people, a figure that matches an earlier projection of nearly 3,000 in the Jewish Journal. That number was a forecast, not a published head count.
The conference website describes four days of speakers, gatherings with Zionists, and an Israel expo. Attendees were expected from countries around the world, including mayors from Israeli communities and hundreds of locals. Before the event, organizers also advertised networking, live entertainment, and shopping for Israeli goods.
San Diego Jewish World reported the June announcement in an article titled "JNF-USA plans national get-together in Chula Vista," using "Global Conference for Israel: Unite for Israel's Future" as the event's name. The waterfront resort is doing the hosting; the political argument arrived with the guest list.
What Organizers Say They Are Building
Lizerbram said the conference brings together like-minded people seeking ways to promote peace. He described Jewish National Fund-USA as an organization that builds hospitals, schools, reservoirs, fire and emergency centers, parks, and other structures and spaces.
Sessions, he said, focus on facilitating more people moving to northern and southern Israel. He put the Negev at 60% of Israel's land and 10% of its population, and said the organization aims to move 500,000 people there. Those figures are his. They are not the same claim as a separate organizational target.
Coverage of the 2025 conference, posted by Jewish National Fund-USA, stated a vision of attracting 800,000 new residents to Israel's North and South. The Associated Press has previously reported a long-standing land dispute in the Negev desert between the Israeli government and the Arab Bedouin minority. Population targets and that dispute are different stories; both travel with any pitch about filling the south.
Protesters at the Overpass
On Thursday, protesters gathered at the Interstate 5 overpass near the convention center. KPBS reported that the conference drew objections from San Diego organizations aligned with anti-Zionist or pro-Palestinian movements, and that further protests were expected.
Jewish Voice for Peace San Diego called for the conference to be canceled. Nate Lacy, a coordinating committee member, said JNF uses charitable tax status in the U.S. and other countries to acquire land and plant trees over Palestinian villages, and that it promotes Zionism. That is his characterization of the charity's work, set against Lizerbram's account of schools, reservoirs, and parks.
The group planned to join nearby protests Friday and Saturday. It also planned a Shabbat service outside the hotel Friday night, then a rally and vigil Saturday. The vigil was intended to honor people killed and affected by Israeli violence.
Denver, Then Dallas
This is not the first city where the same conference has met a crowd on the sidewalk. Axios Denver reported that hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters gathered outside the Colorado Convention Center on a Thursday night in 2023 as that edition began. The report described a four-day event.
A year later, The Dallas Morning News reported that hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters marched outside the Hilton Anatole on a Saturday, one of several demonstrations that week targeting the conference. About 2,500 people were attending that four-day meeting, the paper reported. Dallas police issued criminal trespass warnings and arrested 10 protesters for obstructing a highway.
Those Dallas arrests belong to November 2024, not to Chula Vista. What repeated is the setting: a downtown or resort convention floor inside, and a pro-Palestinian demonstration at the door.
The Rest of the Weekend
Inside the Gaylord Pacific, the program still has Saturday and Sunday left, with mayors, an Israel expo, and sessions aimed at moving people toward Israel's north and south. Outside, Jewish Voice for Peace San Diego's planned Saturday rally and vigil is the next dated action on the calendar.
The conference was announced in June as a 125th-anniversary gathering. By Thursday night it was also a sold-out meeting with security on the property and demonstrators on the freeway overpass a short walk from the bay.
