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How Jewish leaders tried — and failed — to keep a Farrakhan follower off a Florida city council
(JTA) – When Brother John Muhammad emerged this fall as the leading candidate for a vacant city council seat in St. Petersburg, Florida, local Jews were distressed.
Muhammad is well known in the city as the president of a local neighborhood association and as a frequent advocate for minority groups. But Jewish leaders learned that he was also a follower of Louis Farrakhan, the Nation of Islam leader who has a long history of antisemitism, and that he had made comments dismissing concerns about Farrakhan’s record.
Jewish leaders tried to stave off Muhammad’s appointment, pushing for more extensive vetting of the seven candidates and, in the case of the local Holocaust museum, actively lobbying against him. But the council confirmed him in a 4-3 vote, leaving local Jews frustrated — before they considered ways to make the situation a learning experience for their city.
“When I see a situation like this, it screams ‘opportunity’ to me,” Michael Igel, chair of the Florida Holocaust Museum, located in St. Petersburg, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
The saga playing out in St. Petersburg, Florida’s fifth-largest city, unfolded during the same period that a handful of Black celebrities, including Kanye West and Kyrie Irving, first became enmeshed in controversy over their own antisemitic comments and social media posts. The coincidence meant a dicey environment for broaching a conversation about the antisemitism of the Nation of Islam, whose rhetoric disparaging Jews overlaps with that of Hebrew Israelites, the ideology that Irving promoted by sharing a link to an antisemitic film.
It also turned St. Petersburg into a window for understanding how ties forged between Jewish groups and others can be tested.
Local Jewish leaders initially sought to stop Muhammad from gaining the city council seat, which was vacated after its previous holder resigned following redistricting and accusations she no longer lived in her district. They learned about Muhammad’s city council application only a week before the council’s vote, leaving them with little time to mobilize. The information came from a political rival of Muhammad, former mayoral candidate Vince Nowicki, who shared information about Muhammad’s Nation of Islam affiliation with local Jewish groups.
Nowicki also shared a comment Muhammad had made about Jews in a 2016 video in which Muhammad interviewed local Black LGBTQ activists. In the video titled “A Conversation About Growing Up Black And LGBT,” which JTA viewed, Muhammad said, “Minister Farrakhan got accused of being antisemitic for a long time because he pointed out and made some corrections about the activity of Jews. And anybody who says anything critical of the Jewish community is labeled as being antisemitic. Good, bad, right or wrong, it doesn’t matter what you say. If you criticize them that’s what you are.”
He continued, saying, “And I’m finding that it happens when you are critical of the gay community, when you say anything critical or anything that doesn’t align with that ideology, now all of a sudden you’re homophobic.” Muhammad’s comments about gay people received some light but friendly pushback from his interview guests.
Muhammad did not reply to multiple requests for comment by JTA, including to questions emailed to him at his request. He said during a public meeting ahead of the council vote that he thought scrutiny of him by Jewish groups had been unfair.
To Jewish leaders, the comments in the video coupled with Muhammad’s Nation of Islam affiliation were clear signs that he should not be appointed to the city council.
“I would sure hope that being antisemitic would be a red line, that you could not be a candidate,” said Rabbi Philip Weintraub of Congregation B’nai Israel, a Conservative synagogue in the city.
Jewish leaders began to take action, issuing statements and launching a letter-writing campaign to the council. They felt so much urgency that some even conducted business on Simchat Torah, a Jewish holiday when Jewish organizations typically pause their activities in accordance with Jewish law.
As a nonprofit, the local federation was constrained in how it could weigh in. Since it could not endorse or oppose specific candidates, it instead pushed for every candidate to be “properly vetted” and informed council members about Muhammad’s affiliations and past comments, according to Maxine Kaufman, executive director of the Jewish Federation of Florida’s Gulf Coast. She said the efforts did not have their intended effect.
“I don’t think anybody said, ‘Well, who is this Farrakhan, what does he stand for?’” Kaufman said. “I don’t think enough was done, personally.”
The entrance to the Florida Holocaust Museum in St. Petersburg, Nov. 27, 2016. (Jeffrey Greenberg/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
The Florida Holocaust Museum took another approach, circulating information about Muhammad to the wider community, along with a statement opposing the candidacy of anyone who would support Farrakhan’s antisemitism. Their goal, Igel said, was to educate the community about the severity of these views.
“There’s nothing else to talk about when somebody is supporting Louis Farrakhan,” Igel told JTA. “Particularly when you are seeking a position representative of a city, particularly one like St. Petersburg that is so known for its inclusivity and its openness.”
Igel praised some members of the city council who asked Muhammad pointed questions about his views at the vote, giving him the opportunity to refute Farrakhan’s comments about Jews. One council member who voted against Muhammad, Lisset Hanewicz, said her stepfather is Jewish and read Farrakhan’s past antisemitic statements into the record, saying, “I think people need to understand why a certain part of this community is upset.”
Igel acknowledged that getting involved in a city council appointment was an unusual move for a Holocaust museum. He said museum leaders had held a meeting beforehand to determine how to proceed but made a decision fairly quickly to weigh in.
“In this case, we don’t consider this to be a matter of politics,” Igel said. “This is a matter of morality. And this is what we teach.” If the candidate had been a white supremacist, Igel said, “that person would have been disqualified out of the gate.”
The Anti-Defamation League and Southern Poverty Law Center, two hate watchdogs, define the Nation of Islam as a group that propagates antisemitism and other forms of bigotry, not a religion. Founded in 1930 by Wallace Fard Muhammad, the Black nationalist group is not the same as traditional Islam and is rejected by most Muslim clerics; it entered mainstream prominence in the 1960s after civil rights leader Malcolm X and boxer Muhammad Ali publicly joined the movement. (Both later left the group, with Malcolm X publicly denouncing its leadership; he was assassinated shortly after, and two Nation of Islam members who were wrongfully convicted of his murder recently received a large settlement from New York City.)
The Nation of Islam entered its current era after Farrakhan took over the group in 1977. Now 89, he has used his platform to issue a steady stream of antisemitism, including calling Jews “wicked” and the “synagogue of Satan,” saying they have “wrapped your tentacles around the U.S. government,” and calling Hitler “a very great man.” Only a few years ago, the Women’s March progressive activist collective was nearly derailed over some of its founders’ associations with Farrakhan.
It is rare, but not unheard of, for public officials to have current or former associations with the Nation of Islam. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, a practicing Muslim, was dogged by accusations that he had formerly been a member of the group when he first ran for Congress in 2006; he apologized for his past associations with the group. Trayon White, a Washington, D.C. council member and onetime mayoral candidate who has spread antisemitic conspiracy theories, has donated to the group in the past. Former President George W. Bush once praised the group, and a photograph showing Barack Obama in the same room as Farrakhan was fodder for Obama’s critics during his presidential run.
Muhammad, who is referred to on the city council website as John Muhammad and whose legal name is John C. Malone, declined to condemn Farrakhan at the city council meeting.
“I am not willing to denounce the leader of my faith no more than a Catholic would be willing to denounce their pope,” he said.
Muhammad’s reaction to questions about Farrakhan particularly concerned the federation and other local Jewish groups. Kaufman told JTA she didn’t know whether Muhammad himself is antisemitic, but she said his refusal to disavow Farrakhan was alarming.
“I do have issue with his reverence of someone who is blatantly antisemitic, and he won’t disavow him, he won’t reject him,” she said, echoing the the federation’s official statement on the vote.
At the meeting, Muhammad did say that he had reached out to the Florida Holocaust Museum but had not heard back — and that he thought the museum’s criticism of him was unfair.
“What I found when we reached out to have dialogue with the Holocaust Museum director, they did not want to talk to me,” he said. “They wanted to evaluate and disqualify me based on the association that I have as an individual. I don’t think that that’s just.”
Muhammad also defended his record with Jews by claiming that they were among the “diversity of those who support me.” He added, “And if you look at those who oppose me, they’re coming from one particular group.”
Since the vote, a local Black newspaper condemned the scrutiny on Muhammad, calling it a “perusal into his faith practice.”
Igel said the museum had no record that Muhammad had reached out but encouraged him to come and learn more about the Holocaust and the nature of antisemitism. Stuart Berger, head of the local Jewish Community Relations Council, acknowledged at the city council meeting that Muhammad “has made himself available to us” at the federation, but that none of the federation staff “had been in direct contact with him.”
The federation’s involvement in Muhammad’s case became its own issue at the council vote, when the candidate referenced an email Berger had written to the county commissioner. In the email, Berger wrote that Muhammad’s vetting process had been “good enough for me!”
While Muhammad took the email as proof that the federation believed him to be fit for office, Berger and Kaufman maintain that it meant nothing of the sort. Berger had not been speaking on behalf of the federation, they say, and had not intended for his email to be shared publicly.
Now that Muhammad is on the council, attention has turned to building relationships with him. Kaufman has been meeting with individual city council members, and hopes to eventually meet with Muhammad himself. She also aims to have the federation make a presentation to the council about the dangers of antisemitism and push them to make a statement about it.
She doesn’t think it’s complicated. “I think hate’s hate,” she said. “Many different colors.”
Weintraub’s congregation is celebrating its 100th anniversary in March, and one of its congregants, Eric Lynn, is also involved in politics: he was the Democratic nominee for Florida’s 13th Congressional district in the midterms but lost his race to Republican Anna Paulina Luna, who said she was raised as a Messianic Jew and campaigned with far-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Weintraub himself is a member of an interfaith ministerial dialogue group with Black churches and says he’s “a professional optimist” when it comes to managing conflict between different communities. He sent JTA an episode of the public radio podcast “Hidden Brain” about how to keep conflict from spiraling, saying it “describes what I’ve tried to do.”
Since Muhammad was appointed, Weintraub has met with him; the pair had what Weintraub described as “a pleasant conversation.” The two talked about parenting and “shared traumas,” he said. They did not discuss Muhammad’s comments supporting Farrakhan, but the rabbi couldn’t help but think about him.
“I thought I was a termite, according to Farrakhan,” Weintraub said. In contrast, Muhammad “said I was a person, so that was nice.”
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Synagogue protests have shocked NYC and LA. This Michigan congregation has faced them for 22 years
Protests outside prominent synagogues in New York City and Los Angeles have roiled the Jewish community in recent weeks, prompting scrutiny of how authorities respond when demonstrators at a house of worship frame their actions as Israel-related political speech.
Rabbi Nadav Caine of Beth Israel Congregation in Ann Arbor, Michigan has some experience with that: Every Shabbat for the past 22 years, protesters have shown up to Beth Israel holding signs with slogans like “Jewish Power Corrupts” and “No More Holocaust Movies.”
After years of legal battles that consistently sided with the protesters, Caine has been forced to accept that the courts view their actions as protected speech. More than two decades on, he has come to terms with the protesters’ enduring presence.
“There are long time members who come as little as possible, or who left the congregation, but for the most part, people have learned to ignore it,” Caine said.
‘Unseemly and distasteful’
The man behind the protests, Henry Herskovitz, was raised Jewish, had a bar mitzvah, and even attended Beth Israel for years. But he later adopted conspiracy theories blaming Israel for 9/11, became a Holocaust denier, and openly expressed hatred for Jews.
Starting in 2003, Herskovitz and a small group began protesting at the synagogue weekly during Shabbat, brandishing signs like “Antisemitism is earned, never given.”
In 2019, fed up with passing the demonstrators, a congregant and local Holocaust survivor sued the protesters and the city, arguing that their First Amendment rights to safely practice their religion were being violated. The American Civil Liberties Union represented the protesters, acknowledging the speech was “unseemly and distasteful,” but legally protected nonetheless.
Ultimately, the courts sided with the ACLU: A lower court dismissed the case, the Supreme Court declined to hear it on appeal, and a district judge ordered the congregants to pay nearly $159,000 in legal fees to the protesters — prompting the congregants’ lawyer, Marc Susselman, to accuse the judge of antisemitism.
Now, while the number of protesters has dwindled — it’s typically two people nowadays, Caine said — they still show up, week after week.
Caine said the sustained protests have affected membership, particularly as newcomers weigh which synagogue to attend. Some longtime members avoid in-person events, and others have left entirely. The display can also shock unsuspecting visitors attending bar or bat mitzvahs.
“Before you get used to it, it’s a little traumatizing and triggering,” he said.
‘A community issue’
Caine said he isn’t surprised by recent protests outside Park East Synagogue in Manhattan and Wilshire Boulevard Temple in Los Angeles. At Park East, demonstrators were protesting a synagogue event promoting immigration to Israel, chanting “death to the IDF” and “globalize the intifada.” At Wilshire Boulevard Temple, protesters took issue with the synagogue hosting speakers from the Israeli defense firm Elbit Systems.
Protesting at a synagogue is “not meant to raise consciousness about a human rights issue,” Caine said. “It’s about harassing a group.”
His advice for synagogues facing persistent protests: don’t engage. Beth Israel does not organize counterprotests, and Caine avoids posting about the protests on social media.
“These kinds of activists, they thrive on publicity. It’s their oxygen,” he said.
Still, Caine said he understands the desire to respond. One idea he finds promising: In New York City, two Jewish lawmakers introduced a bill that would ban protests within 25 feet of houses of worship. Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani has reportedly been receptive to the legislation.
Caine also cautioned against turning the protests outside synagogues into a political debate.
“I wouldn’t make it about the Israel issue,” he said. “I would make it about the fact that it’s a community issue.”
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Israel has a crucial lesson to learn from apartheid South Africa. It isn’t what you think
Some years ago, I traveled to South Africa with a group of Israelis to study the anti-apartheid movement. On our first morning, our guide posed a question: Why did apartheid end?
We offered the standard answers: because internal resistance grew stronger, because international pressure mounted, because the regime lost legitimacy. The guide listened and then said: Apartheid didn’t end for any of those reasons. It ended when the Berlin Wall came down.
His point was not that South Africans were passive. It was that political change does not happen on timetables set by internal movements alone. Power shifts systemically and globally, and when it does, the outcome depends on whether societies are prepared to move when the moment comes. Movements cannot control when history accelerates, but they can determine whether they have built the moral clarity, political vision and organizational capacity to act when it does.
A few years later, I traveled with the same group to Serbia and met former student leaders of Otpor, the movement that helped unseat the dictator Slobodan Milošević. They described how they began as a marginal, improvisational group, driven more by urgency than structure.
What eventually changed their trajectory, they told us, was recognizing that mobilization only works if people can see not just what they are resisting, but what they are building toward. They developed a concrete vision of a democratic Serbia that people could recognize as an alternative—not just to the regime, but to permanent instability. When the political opening arrived, there was something ready to replace what had collapsed.
Political change begins with imagination — but that imagination must be taken seriously.
This past weekend in Israel, something shifted quietly, and if you blinked, you may have missed it.
At a meeting for its 10th anniversary Standing Together — the largest Jewish–Arab grassroots movement in Israel — formally adopted a framework for ending the Israeli–Palestinian conflict that proposes two states not as sealed national projects but as overlapping political realities.
That vision, put forward by the group A Land for All, would see Israelis and Palestinians both have freedom of movement and equal rights in the land between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea, and shared sovereignty in Jerusalem. It establishes mutual recognition of autonomy between the two peoples as a premise for peace, rather than as a final-status issue to address, as it was in previous peace efforts like the Oslo Accords.
This was not an organizational merger or a policy announcement. It was the articulation of a political horizon.
For most of its history, Standing Together has focused on equality within Israel itself: advocating for labor rights and a reasonable cost of living, combatting racism, and promoting shared civic life. Since the Hamas attack of Oct. 7, 2023, it has been one of the only Israeli movements willing to organize sustained opposition to the war in Gaza, engage in civil disobedience, and try to deliver humanitarian aid in the face of increasing hostility.
Through this vote, the movement sought to expand its domain of responsibility — from Israel’s internal democracy, to the scope of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a whole.
It’s just one group; just one vote. But it’s also a reframing of what the future is allowed to look like, and a landmark moment of Israelis and Palestinians engaging in a joint political process. Its importance lies less in its technical details than in its structural ambition: replacing separation as the organizing principle, and establishing equality as the baseline.
In a context where imagination itself has been steadily eroded, this matters.
Israeli life has been governed for years by a doctrine of management — managing conflict, managing unrest, managing despair. The public has been trained to treat war as permanent; inequality as unavoidable; and a punishing power hierarchy as necessary for survival. This is not an accident. It is a governing logic that eliminates alternatives by framing them as incoherent, naïve or dangerous.
The most lasting damage done by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Israel may turn out not be the ways in which he’s degraded the country’s electoral system and democratic institutions. It may be psychological.
On his watch, Israel’s political culture has been systematically emptied of credible futures. What remains is a society fluent in fear, and increasingly unable to articulate what it is trying to become.
Comprehensive political visions change the conditions of organizing. When people can describe a wished-for future in concrete, realizable terms, political engagement stops being purely reactive and starts becoming constructive. It reshapes alliances, alters the language of debate, and changes the kinds of risks individuals and movements are willing to take.
South Africa understood this. Serbia understood it. Even New York City saw a version of this dynamic recently, when Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani went from polling at around 1% in the early days of the primary to winning the general election on a platform of affordability and thriving that did not dilute its goals in exchange for political safety.
Israel’s ruling order will not last forever. Regimes built on a premise of permanent emergency aren’t sustainable. What matters is whether there will be anything ready to replace it when it cracks.
Standing Together did not change reality with its vote in favor of a different kind of future — but it clarified what that future could practically look like, and in a country trained to believe that no future exists. And that, on its own, is a political marvel.
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Lithuanian government party leader convicted of inciting hatred towards Jews
(JTA) — The leader of a Lithuanian party in the ruling coalition government was convicted on Thursday for inciting hatred towards Jews and grossly minimizing the Holocaust in a series of public statements and social media posts in 2023.
Remigijus Žemaitaitis, the head of the populist Nemuno Aušra party, was fined 5,000 euros, or $5,835, by the Vilnius Regional Court.
In her decision, Judge Nida Vigelienė said that Žemaitaitis had “publicly mocked, demeaned and encouraged hatred” toward Jews as well as “grossly minimised the Holocaust carried out by Nazi Germany on Lithuania’s territory in an offensive and insulting manner,” according to the Lithuanian public service broadcaster LRT.
Žemaitaitis’ conviction was related to statements he had issued in May and June of 2023, including social media posts, a speech delivered in Parliament and an exchange with a journalist, in which he falsely accused Jews of killing Lithuanians.
“How long will our politicians continue to kneel to the Jews who killed our countrymen, contributed to the persecution, torture and destruction of Lithuanians,” wrote Žemaitaitis in all-caps, according to the country’s constitutional court. “There was a Holocaust of the Jews, but an even greater Holocaust of Lithuanians was in Lithuania!”
In other posts, Žemaitaitis also baselessly blamed Jews for the 1944 Nazi massacres in the Lithuanian villages of Pirčiupiai and Kaniukai.
The ruling Thursday was not the first time that a Lithuanian lawmaker has come under fire for Holocaust distortion. In 2021, Valdas Rakutis, a member of Lithuania’s parliament, was criticized by the U.S. ambassador to Lithuania for claiming in a speech that there was “no shortage of Holocaust perpetrators among the Jews themselves.”
In another post about the demolition of a school building in the West Bank, Žemaitaitis quoted an antisemitic nursery rhyme that encourages children to kill a wounded Jew.
“I want to give you a chance, dear Jews of Israel, to apologize to Palestine and the EU for your disgusting actions in a foreign country,” he wrote. “And I will repeat, ‘After such events, it is no wonder why such sayings are born: A Jew climbed a ladder and fell by accident. Take a stick, children, and kill that Jew.’”
The lawmaker, who frequently posts about the war in Gaza on social media, resigned from Lithuania’s parliament in April 2024 after the country’s constitutional court found his rhetoric had violated his oath and its constitution.
But he was reelected in October 2024 and his party joined the country’s new coalition government led by the Social Democrats.
Žemaitaitis and his lawyer were not present during the ruling Thursday in Vilnius and are expected to seek an appeal. He told reporters after the ruling that “everybody understands that this is a politicized decision,” according to the Associated Press.
“Any form of antisemitism, hate speech, or Holocaust belittling is unacceptable to us and incompatible with our values,” wrote the Social Democrats party in a post on Facebook following the ruling. “We respect the decision of the court. Together we point out that this decision is not yet final.”
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