Jason Pizzo tells cities to get ‘on the right side of history’ about antisemitism or lose his support

TALLAHASSEE, FLA. 3/7/24-Sen. Jason Pizzo, D-North Miami Beach, questions the sponsor of the vacation rental bill about how it will be enforced, Thursday at the Capitol in Tallahassee. COLIN HACKLEY PHOTO

Hollywood Democratic Sen. Jason Pizzo is warning local governments in his district to present a unified front against antisemitism or lose his support for their legislative causes.

He told attendees at an Aventura meeting that he’s fed up with protests by people who are “completely frigging ignorant” about Israel and Jewish contributions to the Civil Rights movement.

He followed that up by attending a Miramar City Commission meeting to speak on a since-withdrawn item Mayor Wayne Messam filed to demand a cease-fire in the Israel-Gaza conflict.

Liv Caputo of The Floridian first reported about Pizzo’s comments in Aventura.

“It’s really time now to say you’re either with and on the right side of history or you’re not,” he told attendees at the Aventura meeting, which Miami Israeli Consul General Maor Elbaz-Starinsky hosted.

Pizzo added that if he didn’t see “an authentic, hearts-and-mind, one-group of Commissioners” opposing antisemitism by the Sunny Isles Beach Commission’s July 18 meeting, they’ll “suffer the consequences of not having (his) support at the state level.”

“That’s the way it’s got to work. You’re either on the right side of history or you’re not,” he said to a round of applause.

Pizzo told Florida Politics that his objection is to antisemitism, not criticism of Israel, but “many conflate the two simply as a proxy to mean Jews.”

In December, he flew to Israel to meet with local officials, survivors and to view the aftermath of the Oct. 7 terrorist attack in which Hamas militants murdered 1,200 people and kidnapped hundreds.

More recently, Sunny Isles Mayor Larisa Svechin visited Israel. So did several state lawmakers, including term-limited Sen. Lauren Book, whom Pizzo is succeeding as Senate Democratic Leader, and Democratic consultant Christina Ulvert.

Ulvert detailed the trip in a guest article Florida Politics published Sunday.

Anti-Israel protests erupted in the months following the Oct. 7 attack as Israel retaliated with a military campaign that has since led to the deaths of more than 38,000 Palestinians, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry, which does not differentiate between combatants and civilians.

Pizzo on Tuesday said that shortly before he left for Israel, he toured 18 colleges and universities, where he “heard from all different ideologies.” What many young people today don’t know, he said, is how passionately — and how many — Jewish people fought to help African Americans during the Civil Rights movement.

“I think it’s important to know, in concert, that more than half of the students in 1964 that went to Mississippi — two of which, you remember, were Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner (and) were murdered — were Jewish. In 1961, Paul Breines, a Jewish student, was (one of the first) Freedom Riders,” he said.

“So when you’re talking to an 18- or 19-year-old who’s completely frigging ignorant and gets their information and news from TikTok, it’s important to sort of put that into context.”

At the Wednesday meeting in Miramar, he criticized what he called a double standard for Israel.

“I’ve heard the same calls (for a cease-fire) and concerns and questions,” he said. “I don’t remember ever seeing an agenda item about 377,000 Muslims being killed in Yemen. I don’t recall ever having a moment of silence or hearing any resolution or agenda item for the 231,708 Muslims who have been killed in Syria and continue to be killed today. So, I want to be very careful that in consideration of these agendas at the municipal, county, state or national level that if it is what is, then call it what it is.

“It’s not Israel. What a lot of people are trying to say is, ‘It’s the Jews.’ But they get to say Israel. Forty-nine countries of the 208 sovereign nations in this world are majority Muslim. There’s one Jewish state.”

Pizzo’s comments came just over a week after a new law went into effect that adopts as Florida’s standard the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism. The law followed a 360% rise in antisemitic incidents across the U.S. over the past nine months, according to the Anti-Defamation League, and a torrent of anti-Israel protests and encampments at college campuses that by last month resulted in more than 3,100 arrests.

A poll Hillel International published in May found that 61% of Jewish students who witnessed pro-Palestinian protests said the events included language they considered “antisemitic, threatening, or derogatory toward Jewish people.”

Sixty-three percent said they felt less safe on campus, with 58% at schools with encampments attributing their distress to the makeshift tent cities. Forty percent said they felt the need to conceal their Judaism.

In November, just one month after Hamas’ attack on Israel, House lawmakers voted 104-2 against a resolution (HR 31C) by Jacksonville Democratic Rep. Angie Nixon “calling for an immediate de-escalation and cease-fire in Israel and occupied Palestine.” The measure included no mention of the more than 200 hostages Hamas militants and Palestinian civilians still held at the time in Gaza. As of July 1, 116 hostages remain unaccounted for.

In May, the city of Doral passed what it called the “first ceasefire resolution” from a South Florida municipality. The City Council rescinded it a week later after a wave of condemnation and replaced it with one calling for an end to “all hostilities” while acknowledging the suffering and deaths on both sides of the conflict.

Mayor Christi Fraga, who sponsored the first measure, said her initial legislation was “fundamentally flawed.”