A city official in Miami Beach is being sued for allegedly hiring billboard trucks to attack local Jewish anti-Zionist activists.
According to the lawsuit, Miami Beach Commissioner David Suarez employed the trucks to drive past a Jewish Voice for Peace protest last winter. The trucks, which targeted JVP member Donna Nevel and her husband Alan Levine, were emblazoned with the phrase “Jew Hater.”
Receipts show that Suarez paid $4,000 for the trucks.
The filing calls on Suarez, Miami Beach Mayor Steven Meiner, and others officials to produce internal documents related to a broader court case over a city ordinance that was implemented to quash pro-Palestine protest.
“Let me make very clear that Commissioner Suarez will not keep us from speaking out and taking action against Israel’s genocide and long history of violence against the Palestinian people,” said Nevel at a press conference on May 13 in front of Miami Beach City Hall. “Commissioner Suarez will not keep us from speaking out and taking action against Miami Beach’s complicity in genocide. And he will not keep us from seeking and pursuing justice.”
“David Suarez’s actions are an extreme example of the City Commission’s repressive behavior against those speaking out in support of Palestinian liberation and against ethnic cleansing and genocide,” said Katherine Giannamore, one of JVP’s attorneys. The case against the City of Miami Beach, Mayor Steven Meiner and Commissioner David Suarez, brought by JVP, involves a continuing pattern of trying to silence the voices of local community members who simply want to speak in opposition to the ongoing genocide in Palestine, something that did not end with the so-called ceasefire, but where Palestinians are dying by the dozens daily, in both Gaza and the West Bank, including at food aid sites, and which local community members seek to discuss at city events, public meetings and online.”
At the press conference, Miami-Dade county resident and academic, Martha Schoolman, specifically addressed the fact that Jewish protesters were being accused of antisemitism.
“Commissioner Suarez not only appears to support apartheid and genocide, but uses–we could say abuses–his position to insist, falsely, that apartheid and genocide in Palestine are what all Jews want,” said Schoolman. “He seems to believe that anyone who disagrees is not only for some reason not Jewish, or perhaps no longer Jewish, but anti-Jewish–a “Jew Hater”–as he called Donna here. A Jew who disagrees with him surrenders not only their Jewishness, but their civil rights as an American, and deserves to be publicly shamed.”
In a statement to The Intercept, Suarez did not deny hiring the trucks and reiterated his attacks on the activists. “You can use this response, only in its entirety,” Suarez wrote, “as a jew, I can spot a jew hater a mile away.”
“As a Jew myself, I also find the outrage from Jewish Voice for Peace incredibly hypocritical,” he told the New Times. “The only thing more politically incoherent than JVP may be Queers for Palestine, the clueless activists enthusiastically cheering for ideologies and regimes that would persecute them the second they lost the protection of Western democracy.”
The action that Suarez targeted was a demonstration outside the annual Art Basel festival. Activists have protested the event over the sponsorship of UBS, which has direct connections to Israeli weapons manufacturer Elbit.
Mahmoud Khalil
The legal team of Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil is calling on the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) to re-open his immigration case and terminate proceedings.
The motion includes new evidence allegedly showing how the Trump administration “secretly engineered the outcome of his immigration case to make an example of him.”
In April, the BIA issued a final order of removal for Khalil.
According to the ACLU, which has lawyers on Khalil’s legal team, the filing shows that the BIA “influenced the lower immigration court’s decision, fast-tracked his proceedings, bypassed the normal channels through which immigration appeals are docketed and adjudicated, and ultimately reached a decision in an unheard-of nine days.”
“The administration wants to arrest, detain, and deport me to intimidate everyone speaking out for Palestine across this country, and they are willing to violate longstanding U.S. rules and procedures to do it,” said Khalil in a statement. “This is the performance of due process the administration is offering me: putting me through a sham immigration process while guaranteeing the outcome in advance. But no lies, corruption, or ideological persecution will stop me from advocating for Palestine and for everyone’s right to free speech.”
“It’s clear that the revelations of DOJ misconduct corroborate what we have known since Mahmoud was arrested–that the administration has reverse-engineered its desired outcome by weaponizing a farcical proceeding littered with abnormalities,” said Johnny Sinodis, partner at Van Der Hout LLP. “The administration has to be held to account, and the government’s case against Mahmoud must be thrown out. Transparency also dictates that the government produce any records regarding the handling and adjudication of Mahmoud’s case. The apparent interference with the Immigration Judge’s decision making is not only unconstitutional but also violates the government’s own rules and procedures.”
Further Reading
- Synagogues that sell stolen Palestinian land should, of course, be protested
- The Guardian: Sally Rooney on a new Hebrew translation of Intermezzo: ‘The Israeli culture sector is complicit in apartheid’
- The Jerusalem Post: Missouri adopts IHRA’s antisemitism definition, boosts student protections
- Informed Comment: Protesting NYU Investigation of Students for an Anti-Zionist Passover Seder
- New York Times: Cornell Criticizes Students After Its President Bumps Them With His Car
