California DMV apologizes for license plate that some say mocks Oct. 7 attack on Israel

By James On Dec 15, 2024

The California Department of Motor Vehicles has apologized for an “unacceptable and disturbing” personalized truck license plate that the agency said displayed hate speech in connection with the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.

LOS ANGELES — The California Department of Motor Vehicles has apologized for an “unacceptable and disturbing” personalized truck license plate that the agency says depicts hate speech related to the Oct. 7 attack on Israel. But a relative of the vehicle’s owner said the entire controversy was an unfortunate misunderstanding.

A photo posted on X from the watchdog group StopAntisemitism showed a license plate on a Tesla Cybertruck near Los Angeles that read “LOLOCT7.” LOL is an abbreviation for ‘laugh out loud’.

The group said the sign appeared to refer to October 7, 2023, when Hamas militants attacked Israel, killing hundreds of people and provoking an Israeli retaliation against Palestinians in Gaza.

But the truck owner’s son told the story ABC-7 in Los Angeles that the personalized sign was not a reference to the October 7 attack at all. He said it referred to the owner, a Filipino grandfather. “LOLO” means grandfather in Tagalog, “CT” refers to the Cybertruck, while 7 represents the owner’s seven children, the news channel said.

The DMV issued a statement Thursday saying the department is “moving quickly to recall these shocking signs, and we will immediately strengthen our internal review process to ensure such an egregious mistake never happens again.”

That’s according to a spokesperson for the DMV Los Angeles Times the license plate should not have passed the review process and after it was flagged on social media, many people who alerted the department found it offensive.

“The use of hate speech is not only a clear violation of our policies, but also a violation of our core values of proudly serving the public and ensuring safe and hospitable roadways,” the DMV statement said.

The DMV said the license plate holder will be notified of the recall of their plate due to the language. The vehicle owner has the right to appeal the department’s decision.