South Florida outraged over string of antisemitic incidents

South Florida outraged over string of antisemitic incidents

Illustration: Shoshana Gordon/Axios

Police are investigating a string of antisemitic incidents in South Florida over the weekend that have sparked outrage among community members.

Driving the news: Someone used a light projector to display a swastika and antisemitic rhetoric onto a building in downtown West Palm Beach on Saturday.

  • One day later, Boca Raton homeowners reported finding plastic bags filled with anti-Semitic propaganda and wood pellets thrown onto their front yards.
  • West Palm Beach police said the incidents appear to be connected, and the department has referred the swastika incident to the state attorney’s office to determine if a crime was committed, WPTV reported.

The big picture: Florida has seen a large spike in antisemitic incidents in recent years.

  • The Anti-Defamation League found that the number of reported antisemitic incidents increased 50% between 2020 and 2021 — rising from 127 incidents to 190.

zoom in: Jacob Solomon, president and CEO of the Greater Miami Jewish Federation, told NBC 6 last year that South Florida sees antisemitic incidents roughly every week.

  • “Most of it, thank God, is not violent, but as we know words lead to action,” Solomon said

What they’re saying: Josephine Gon, a member of the Jewish Federation of Palm Beach County, tells Axios that “these few extremists are not welcome here.”

  • Gon, who’s vice president of the federation’s Jewish Community Relations Council, said the federation works closely with local and national law enforcement agencies to offer security resources and protocols for the synagogues and faith groups in Palm Beach.
  • “It takes each person’s involvement and dedication to ensuring we have an educated and empowered community that stands together to say ‘never again,'” Gon said.

🌱

Support local journalism by becoming a member.

learn more

More Miami stories

No stories could be found

Get a free daily digest of the most important news in your backyard with Axios Miami.

🌱

Support local journalism by becoming a member.

learn more

The post South Florida outraged over string of antisemitic incidents first appeared on Daily Florida Press.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Committee week in Florida’s Capitol: Welcome to the festival of ignorance

Image
Legislators came to town for the autumn ritual of political harlotry they call “committee week.” Tallahassee’s collective IQ dropped by a good 60 points. That’s bad, but what they propose doing to Florida is worse. Seems Sen. Joe Gruters, R-$ara$ota, who also is chairman of the Republican Party of Florida, was intimately involved with a plot to quash the Democratic vote. Remember that “ voting reform ” bill the governor signed on “Fox and Friends” last May? The one that restricts access to ballot drop-boxes, limits vote-by-mail applications, forbids giving people standing in long lines a bottle of water, and lets partisan poll watchers police canvassing boards? Even though Florida ran an immaculate election in 2020, Republicans goose-stepped in time with the Madman of Mar-a-Lago and claimed with straight faces they merely wanted to prevent election “fraud” — which is about as common as polar bears in Miami. (What fraud there was, was courtesy of the GOP .) Joe Gruters ...
Read more

U.S. House GOP would make it easier for feds to give public lands away to states

Image
U.S. House Republicans included in the new rules for the chamber they passed this month a provision meant to make it easier for Congress to give away public lands. The provision is a fairly technical piece of the 55-page  rules package . It affects internal House accounting and requires that anytime Congress were to give any federal lands to a state, municipality or tribe, it would not be counted as a loss to the federal budget. House Republicans had an identical rule when they controlled the chamber from 2017 to 2019. Advocates and critics agree the measure would be helpful to any effort by the House to transfer federal lands to states. But they disagree about the wisdom of such giveaways. Republicans and conservative groups see states as preferable stewards of most public lands. Those closest to the land are in a better position to make decisions on how to manage them than those in Washington bureaucracies, they say. Environmental groups and Democrats see federal divest...
Read more

Democratic governors press U.S. Senate to act on voting rights legislation

Image
WASHINGTON — Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and 16 other Democratic governors are urging the U.S. Senate to pass two bills that aim to protect voting rights. Both measures need 60 votes to advance under Senate rules but have been stalled by Republican opposition in the evenly divided Senate. “Without decisive action by the federal government this year to protect voters’ access to the ballot and ensure the integrity and transparency of our elections, the voices of Americans across the country, especially Americans of color, will be suppressed,” the governors wrote in a Monday  letter  to U.S. Senate leadership. Governors who signed the letter include Jared Polis of Colorado, Tim Walz of Minnesota, Steve Sisolak of Nevada, Phil Murphy of New Jersey, Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico, Roy Cooper of North Carolina, Kate Brown of Oregon, Tom Wolf of Pennsylvania and Tony Evers of Wisconsin, among others. One bill, known as the  John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act of 2...
Read more