Local Pro-Israel Policies in Miami Beach Helped Normalize Zionist Vigilantism

On November 4, 2024, the Miami Jewish Film Festival screened June Zero, an Israeli American film about the 1962 Israeli execution of Nazi official Adolf Eichmann. Miami Beach Mayor Steve Meiner opened the showing with remarks about the threat of antisemitism.

In the speech, Meiner glorified Miami Beach as the best place in the entire world for Jews to live. The audience began to grumble, and he nervously corrected himself, “except for Israel!”

The film he introduced portrayed an Israel that was not exactly ideal to some of its Jewish citizens. Its opening scenes exhibited Libyan Jews facing discrimination and difficulty assimilating into Israeli society. The recent Miami Beach shooting should make these contradictions at the center of the Jewish state more obvious.

Police alleged that on February 15, 2025, Jewish resident Mordechai Brafman shot two men, father and son Yaron and Ari Rabi. Brafman was driving south on Pine Tree Drive, minutes away from the heart of Miami Beach’s Jewish community at 41st Street. The police report stated that Brafman, unprovoked, made a U-turn before exiting his car and firing 17 times at the victims’ vehicle. According to police, in the interview room Brafman “stated that while he was driving his truck, he saw two Palestinians and shot and killed both.” In actuality, Brafman seriously injured the two men who were in fact Israeli Jewish tourists. Police claim Brafman and his victims did not know each other.

Given his alleged statement to police, the Florida chapter of the Council of Islamic-American Relations (CAIR) called for Brafman to be charged with federal hate crime charges. On February 24, Miami-Dade County prosecutors added a hate crime enhancement to Brafman’s charges. Brafman’s arraignment will take place on March 10.

You might find it hard to believe that a Jewish vigilante shot two Israeli Jews he believed were Palestinian. But to Israelis, headlines of Zionists targeting Palestinians but mistakenly attacking Jews are quite familiar. The February 15 shooting is traceable to a longer history of systemic anti-Arab racism in Israel.

Anti-Arab racism in Israel has not limited itself to Christian or Muslim victims. As far back as 1988, the scholar Ella Shohat published an essay on Israeli discrimination against Arab Jews, or Jews from the Arabic-speaking world. Her essay noted that, “‘the Semitic’ physiognomies of the [Arab Jews] led to situations in which they were mistaken for Palestinians and therefore arrested or beaten.”

In 2015, journalist Sigal Samuel wrote about a man who stabbed a fellow Israeli Jew, “believing him to be an Arab. In fact, this man was an Arab — only not the kind that the assailant took him for.” The attack was part of a greater wave of Zionist vigilantism in 2015.

Such incidents are rooted in Zionism’s insistence on a dichotomy between “Arabs” and “Jews.” According to scholar Avi Shlaim, the establishment of “Israel was a reaction against the Jewish [diaspora]” and centered on “creating a new Jew.” Zionism therefore eliminated Arab Jewish identity. Additionally, because of the historic belligerence between Israel and its neighboring Arab states, Israelis consider anything Arab to be “hostile, foreign, alien, and primitive.” Because “Arabs were the enemy, and Arabic was considered the language of the enemy,” Zionism forced Arab Jews to forsake crucial parts of their culture. As scholar Orit Bashkin has revealed, Israel also humiliated, suppressed and discriminated against its Arab Jewish citizens.

It might seem unlikely that the alleged shooter was unfamiliar with Arab Jews and the possibility that his alleged victims were Jewish. Arab Jewish life is quite prevalent in Miami Beach. The city is home to several synagogues catering to Arab Jewish congregants, it hosts Israeli restaurants serving food associated with Arab Jews, and a nearby Israeli radio station often plays Arab Jewish artists.

But the visibility of Arab Jewish culture does not prevent Zionist vigilantism. In fact, it’s a liability. Writing about the February 15 shooting, journalist Orli Noy argued that when the alleged “shooter left his house with the intent to kill Palestinians, he wasn’t thinking about Palestinians in a political sense. Even if his victims had been Palestinians, he had no way of knowing whether they were Zionist Palestinians, like Yoseph Haddad. His target was Arabness itself.” Noy connected the Miami Beach shooting to “a well-known Israeli rule of thumb: the more tense and violent the reality, the more dangerous it is to seem Arab.”

Immediately before the shooting, it didn’t appear Miami Beach had matched that Israeli calculus. However, it’s likely racism was already brewing in Brafman’s community. For example, since October 7, 2023, it’s not uncommon for some Miami Beach synagogues to honor congregants-turned-soldiers returning home from periods of service with the Israeli military. Beyond the celebration of violence in Miami Beach’s Zionist community, and beyond the anti-Palestinian racism implied by Brafman’s alleged statement, a long series of pro-Israel policies have fostered a reality of anti-Arab racism in the city. To begin with, in October 2023, Miami Beach pledged to double its investment in Israel bonds to $20 million, hoping to show “support for the people of Israel.”

As Israel’s genocide against Palestinians escalated, Palestinian, Jewish, and other social activists took action against the city’s policies. In December 2023, activists protested at the signature Miami Beach “Art Basel” fair. In February 2024, Jewish activists disrupted a talk by Alan Dershowitz, a former law professor who often appears on television to defend Israel, at a local synagogue. In March 2024, activists gathered at the Miami Beach Convention Center. According to an activist, the demonstrators sought to distribute leaflets about Israel’s genocide against Palestinians to attendees of an ongoing climate conference. But police removed them to a “free speech zone” surrounded by barricades, explaining that only credentialed conference attendees could enter the “security zone” they established around the convention center.

The so-called “free speech zone” indicated the city’s changing approach to Palestinian advocacy. In March 2024, the city passed a resolution sponsored by Meiner and Commissioner David Suarez “to implement […] time, manner, and place restrictions […] to control future protests and demonstrations.” The resolution claimed its aim was “public safety […] and preserving the rights of all.” But during the meeting, Meiner backed up the proposal by referencing the recent Miami Beach pro-Palestine demonstrations. A draft of the proposal framed the resolution as pro-Israel. It originally condemned the phrase “from the river to the sea” as “pro-Hamas,” and cited Miami Beach’s sister city relationship with Nahariyya, Israel.

In June 2024, the commission adopted a resolution prohibiting the city from contracting with any parties boycotting “Israel or Israeli-controlled territories.” In September 2024, the commission considered a proposal to fund a delegation to Israel “to demonstrate the city’s unwavering support … for the Israeli people … and to help bolster the Israeli economy.”

At city commission meetings, activists criticized the pro-Israel ordinances for being “motivated by [the city commission’s] and the Mayor’s hostility to any criticism of the State of Israel.” They blasted the commission for voting “for any bill that appears to be in the interest of the government of Israel, whether or not it is in the interest of the people of Miami Beach.” The commission responded by routinely interrupting activists and muting their microphones. At the June 2024 meeting, Meiner claimed that criticisms of the boycott prohibition were “not just hostile, not just anti-Zionism, they’re antisemitic.” At the September 2024 meeting weighing a solidarity mission to Israel, Commissioner David Suarez exploded, saying, “I’ve had enough of these so-called ‘Free Palestine activists’ marching into city hall pretending to be champions of LGBTQ rights, women [sic] rights and human rights.… I’m calling out ‘Queers for Palestine’ and the rest of you shamelessly standing here today…. If you took your so-called ‘woke’ nonsense and your pronouns to Gaza, you’d face a much harsher reality.”

Rather than mitigate anti-Palestinian racism in the wake of the February 15 shooting, the Miami Beach Commission continues to propose pro-Israel policies. For instance, they added to their February 26 agenda an item to approve a $50,000 grant to the Center for Combating Antisemitism, launched by the Zionist group StandWithUs in 2019. The vote for the grant was unanimous.

When addressing the February 15 shooting, local social activist groups emphasized the need to prioritize anti-Palestinian racism in Miami Beach and nearby cities. Students for Justice in Palestine at Florida International University, for instance, highlight in a press release the city’s Zionist atmosphere systematically targeting advocates for Palestinians. Jewish Voice for Peace South Florida, which I organize with, argued in a separate press release that the shooting itself was “fueled by a [Miami Beach] city administration” which has celebrated Israel’s genocide of Palestinians while silencing dissent. Both groups were clear: The February 15 shooting ultimately stemmed from the dehumanization of Palestinians.

In advancing these policies, ignoring any criticism and dismissing Palestinian voices, Miami Beach has entangled its citizens in Zionism. In the process, some of its Zionist citizens have begun to emulate the racism and violence inherent to Israel’s existence. Mirroring the land between the river and the sea, Palestinian and Jewish citizens of the city are intertwined. Jewish safety cannot come at the expense of Palestinian lives. Rather than continuing to bolster Zionism and to eliminate Palestinian advocacy, Miami Beach must take seriously the dehumanization of Palestinians in its own right.