FBI Protecting Orthodox Jewish Florida Mayor After Antisemitic Death Threat

The Orthodox Jewish mayor of Surfside, Florida, is being protected by the FBI following a death threat sent to him by an unknown person claiming to be a neo-Nazi, according to media reports.

“Essentially, the email said that perhaps it would be appropriate for the writer to come by my house and ‘teach my family a lesson,'” Mayor Shlomo Danzinger (R) — the first member of the Orthodox community to serve in the office — told VINnews on Wednesday.

After receiving the note on Aug. 4, Danzinger alerted the FBI, Florida’s State Attorney’s office, and the Joint Terrorism Task Force, as well as his wife and three children.

“I told [my family] that they weren’t leaving the house unless someone comes with them and that if they see flashlights around the neighborhood, it is people who are protecting us, just as a precaution,” he said to VINnews, which noted that the threat was issued just days after a confrontation with Surfside town commissioner Nelly Velasquez, who is Latino.

Danzinger, 43, and a former businessman from Brooklyn, NY was elected mayor in 2022 after beating two other candidates. Since coming to office, he has undertaken an ambitious agenda, including, according to The Miami Herald, the construction of a memorial to commemorate the victims who died in the collapse of Champlain Towers in 2021.

The Algemeiner has asked the FBI, Florida State Attorney’s Office, and the Surfside Police Department for updates on their respective investigations. This story will be updated accordingly.

Antisemitism in Florida, a state home to the United States’ third-largest Jewish community, has reached concerning levels, the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism (COE) said in a report published in September. According to COE’s data, antisemitic incidents in the state have increased 300% since 2012 and that since 2020, 80% of all hate crimes based on religion have targeted Jews.

Conspiracy mongering and vast networks of white nationalist extremist groups are driving the trend, the ADL found.

The report also identified new white supremacist groups, including “White Lives Matter” and “NatSoc Florida,” and revealed strategies that already established groups like Oath Keepers and Proud Boys are using to propagate their message. Some of these groups, the report continued, are “disrupting school board meetings and even running for political office.

Others, like the Black Hebrew Israelites, the Nation of Islam, and the New Black Panther Party for Self Defense, also have chapters in Florida. Differences in ideology distinguish them, but all promote conspiracy theories and antisemitism. The Black Hebrew Israelites and Nation of Islam, for example, regularly describe Jews as the “Synagogue of Satan.”

Nazis living in or visiting Florida are unwelcome, State Representative Randy Fine (R) told The Algemeiner in March while discussing the state lawmakers’ efforts to pass “the strongest antisemitism bill in the United States,” which was later signed by Governor Ron DeSantis during a trip to Israel. The legislation aimed to address “public nuisances” presented by neo-Nazis’ littering private properties with antisemitic leaflets and other activities, including projecting antisemitic messages on buildings, and hanging banners on highway overpasses.

As The Algemeiner has previously reported, federal law enforcement authorities have been opening and resolving several cases involving neo-Nazis and white-supremacists in recent months.

In July, the Justice Department announced that a drug-dealing neo-Nazi from Anchorage, Alaska, will serve 18 months in prison for being convicted of property crimes motivated by antisemitism and white supremacy. Earlier this month, a New Jersey teenager pleaded guilty to communicating a threat to attack synagogues, and in June, a federal grand jury indicted 19-year-old Seann Pietila from Pickford, Michigan for allegedly threatening to commit a mass shooting and live stream it on social media.

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

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