At South Florida summit, hostages’ families share their fears as leaders wrestle with meaning of antisemitism

More than 30 mayors from across the country converged in Fort Lauderdale to discuss the rise in antisemitism at a summit this week, an event organized months before the war between Israel and Hamas and soaring hate crimes against Jewish people across the world.

In the fluorescent light of a Fort Lauderdale hotel meeting room, two grieving families of dead and kidnapped Israelis sat across mayors from South Florida and across the United States, pictures of their loved ones clutched in their hands.

They had just arrived from Israel, where Natalia Casarotti’s 21-year-old son, Keshet, was killed at the music festival, and where Diego Engelbert’s sister, husband and their young children had disappeared, he believes, kidnapped into Gaza.

“I can’t sleep,” Engelbert told the mayors, two “missing” posters held in his hands. “Every day, I cry. I need your help.”

More than 30 mayors from across the country converged in Fort Lauderdale to discuss antisemitism at a summit this week, an event organized months before the war between Israel and Hamas and soaring hate crimes against Jewish people across the world.

The event, known as the Mayors Summit Against Antisemitism, took place at the W Hotel in Fort Lauderdale from Wednesday through Friday. The first summit was held virtually in 2021, then, last year, in Athens, Greece, after which Fort Lauderdale Mayor Dean Trantalis decided he wanted to host the next one.

“The irony is this was all planned months and months and months in advance of the barbaric acts that happened on October 7,” Fort Lauderdale Commissioner Steve Glassman told the Sun Sentinel on Wednesday night. “But I think now, in light of current events, it makes it really vital and more timely than ever.”

Though the Hamas attack on that date served as a “wake-up call,” Trantalis told the Sun Sentinel that he wanted the summit to center around antisemitism as a whole, not “Middle East politics.”

“I would prefer it to not be the focus, because antisemitism existed in America long before October 7,” he said Wednesday. “And long before 1973. And then before 1967. I mean, the events in the Middle East certainly trigger antisemitic acts around the world. But we don’t need events like that for antisemitism to find a place here in America.”

Yet the events in the Middle East and their aftermath loomed in the minds of those at the summit as they sought to understand the meaning of antisemitism in their own cities.

Sacha Roytman, the CEO of the Combat Antisemitism Movement, which organized the summit, said one of the main things he wanted local communities to work on is “defining antisemitism,” which he sees as the first step in combatting it.

“When we have folks in the street, calling on the destruction of Israel, it’s antisemitism,” he said. “… and Jews have been affected, and the fact that we don’t have a way to define what it is and what it’s not, we’re missing something.”

At panel discussions and dinners, the mayors met with the families of hostages, survivors of the music festival attack, Jewish advocates and other local leaders. In cities as close as Aventura and as far as Beverly Hills, their stories were often the same: swastikas graffitied outside synagogues, leaflets left outside homes, and, increasingly, hate crimes targeting Jewish people, torn down posters of hostages and protests against Israel that many believed either constitute antisemitism or devolved into it.

The IHRA definition

The definition of antisemitism is contentious. The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition, what Roytman wants more cities to adopt, has received backlash from progressive groups and Palestinians because it includes Israel in its examples of antisemitism, such as blaming Jews for the actions of Israel, comparing Israeli policy to that of the Nazis or claiming that Israel’s existence is racist.

Stephanie Hausner, COO of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, has sought to have the definition adopted by cities across the U.S. But at a panel Thursday called “Define It To Fight It: Adoption & Implementation of the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism,” she warned that, in some areas, trying to use the definition could do more harm than good.

“If you’re in Seattle, for example, introducing IHRA ordinance may actually cause more antisemitism,” she cautioned.

An exact definition of antisemitism matters. Among law enforcement, for example, it could become the basis for deciding whether to charge someone with a hate crime. In South Florida, new laws have targeted antisemitic speech by adding increased penalties for existing crimes, like littering, if they also target minority groups.

But those laws came into effect when local law enforcement were looking for ways to prosecute right-wing groups such as the Goyim Defense League, behind antisemitic incidents like littering pamphlets or projecting swastikas onto a buildings.

“The war between Israel and Hamas opened up a whole other lane of antisemitism,” Glassman said. “What we’re seeing now on college campuses, and what we’re seeing in the streets, not just in the United States but all over the world, it’s a very, very interesting strain of what I would call antisemitism … that anti-Israel sentiment sort of spells into an anti-Jewish sentiment, and the two get conflated.”

Support for Israel among Americans has waned as the war rages on, polls show, while antisemitism has risen. The bombing campaign and ground invasion in Gaza has displaced over 1 million people and taken over 10,000 lives, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry. The Biden administration has also come under fire from the left for continuing to support Israel. At the same time it has condemned Hamas, the U.S. has also urged Israel’s leaders to respect civilian lives.

Local attendees included Hollywood Mayor Josh Levy, Weston Mayor Peggy Brown, Miami Mayor Francis Suarez and North Miami Vice Mayor Mary Estimé-Irvin, as well as leadership from the Jewish Federations of Broward and Palm Beach County.

Leaders discussed incidents where Jewish students were harassed by protesters, shared videos of a group at Cornell chanting “intifada,” and talked about their own children’s experiences at universities. In South Florida, a “March for Palestine” at Florida Atlantic University days after the Hamas attacks became violent after protesters clashed with counter-protesters.

The Combat Antisemitism Movement has long criticized antisemitism on the left, according to The Forward, a progressive Jewish publication. Earlier this year, multiple Jewish groups, some of whom also appeared at the summit this week, temporarily left the organization because of a video it put out blaming the rise of antisemitism on “woke ideology.”

The organization removed the video, though a senior adviser for the organization, David Bernstein, told The Forward that some mainstream Jewish organizations were unwilling to address “the issue of ideological antisemitism on the left.”

Shift in ideology

The recent attacks on Israel have also led some American Jews to shift away from the left while conservatives such as Gov. Ron DeSantis have rallied behind Israel. Last month, DeSantis sought to ban Students for Justice in Palestine groups from college campuses, an effort cited by some attendees at the summit.

During a question-and-answer session Thursday, a Tarpon Springs commissioner confronted Steve Benjamin, a senior advisor to President Joe Biden and a former mayor of Columbia, S.C., questioning the president’s support for Israel after state department employees signed an internal memo criticizing Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.

“This to me this is more harmful than having a bunch of kids with Palestinian flags,” the commissioner said, describing Biden as having a “stand that originally was powerful and pro-Israel.”

Benjamin responded that he “fundamentally disagreed” with the critique. “The president has been forthright and direct and clear about support for our democratic ally in the Middle East,” he answered. “That we will do everything we can to bring hostages home. Israel has an obligation but also a duty to defend itself against Hamas.”

Later, in response to questions over whether Biden is concerned about losing support among Jewish people, he told the Sun Sentinel that he didn’t “do politics” but added that Biden’s “commitment to Israel and our ally in the Middle East has been unshakeable.”

‘Help us bring our family back’

For the families of the hostages, the summit wasn’t just about antisemitism, but an opportunity to remind America’s leaders that their lives remain upended and their families still need help.

Sigal-Koren worries for her mother’s partner, who is in his 70s, has diabetes and needs a breathing machine to sleep at night. The Red Cross has not been able to reach him, she said.

In a speech at Wednesday’s dinner, and later in a conversation with reporters, she asked everyone in the room to find three names in their phones and text them.

“Ask them for help, to help us bring our family back,” she said. “Do everything they can to bring our family back.”

Many of those who did survive, like Sigal-Koren’s father, are so afraid that they have still not gone home, now over a month after the attacks.

“He thinks that he can’t go back to his house,” she said of her father. “His house wasn’t burned, his house wasn’t destroyed in any way. The terrorists didn’t go inside his house. But he can’t go back. Because he feels afraid that in any minute it can happen again.”

Now that Engelbert’s sister and her family have disappeared, he is the sole guardian of their dog.

“The only family I have,” he said, showing a picture on his cellphone.

‘Work cut out for us’

After the summit concluded, Fort Lauderdale officials said it served as a reminder of how much work must be done, in particular when it comes to talking to and educating people about history.

“I think we have our work cut out for us,” Glassman told the Sun Sentinel on Friday.

Meeting with the families of the hostages “brought great immediacy to this moment and we’ve learned how significantly antisemitism has impacted the lives of so many,” Trantalis said.

“We have to look at ourselves and say to ourselves, what kind of people have we become and why is this continuing to get worse?” he added. “And that’s the come-to-Jesus moment we have to have in America, how are we going to do better as people?”