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A Florida sheriff is on the warpath against neo-Nazi ‘scumbags’ who want him dead
(JTA) – After hate groups in his county on Florida’s East coast projected antisemitic messages onto the Daytona International Speedway, the local sheriff delivered a press conference with one simple message: He’d had enough.
“We put up their photos, talked about their arrest records, and let everybody know what a bunch of reprehensible thugs were in our community, and what they were up to,” Sheriff Mike Chitwood told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency about the February press conference. Standing with local Jewish, interfaith and minority group representatives, the sheriff had announced he would be coming after the “scumbags” who did this.
“And after that,” he recalled, “all hell broke loose.”
The group that had made its presence known in Volusia County was the Goyim Defense League, one of the country’s most prominent antisemitic organizations, known for harassing worshippers at synagogues and papering neighborhoods with fliers hawking anti-Jewish conspiracies.
The movement’s leaders recently relocated to the area from California, and they had chosen the Daytona 500, a major NASCAR race that draws more than 100,000 people to the speedway, to make their antisemitic presence known. They didn’t like that the sheriff was now effectively declaring war on them.
Online after the press conference, several men started making death threats against Chitwood, even harassing his daughter and sending SWAT teams to his parents’ house. Antisemitic groups began planning to hold a public demonstration to oppose him specifically, which Chitwood’s intelligence determined was set for this past weekend in Ormond Beach.
So Chitwood fought back. Last week, thanks in part to his corralling, three men in three different states — California, Connecticut and New Jersey — were arrested and charged with making online death threats against him. Two of the three have already been extradited to Volusia County.
Volusia County Sheriff Michael Chitwood (right) thanks residents who turned up to counter-protest a canceled demonstration by a neo-Nazi group in Ormond Beach, Florida, April 22, 2023. (Nadia Zomorodian, courtesy of Volusia County Sheriff)
On Saturday the sheriff went to the airport to personally “welcome” one of the men. He hopes to send a message to hate groups more generally that he intends to “keep up the heat” so that they know they will face resistance from law enforcement if they attempt any public demonstrations: “I think that makes it a little bit harder to peddle your wares.”
Amid a national climate of rising antisemitism, one vexing question has been how to tackle antisemitic activity that is trollish but not violent. While European authorities have prosecuted Holocaust denial and other antisemitic sentiments expressed in social media posts, U.S. law is less expansive about what kind of online posts represent criminal activity. Meanwhile, the Goyim Defense League’s most frequent activities — flier drops, banner displays and public demonstrations — make up the fastest-growing type of antisemitic incidents in the United States, according to the Anti-Defamation League, but they do not always violate the law. A citation for littering in Wisconsin last year was the first known charge in the United States related to the Goyim Defense League’s distribution of antisemitic materials.
The issue is especially acute in Florida, where the populations of Jews and avowed antisemites are both growing. Chitwood suspects the state’s rising Jewish population is one of the reasons why white supremacists have also flocked to the area, along with Florida’s relaxed gun laws.
In this environment, Chitwood’s outspokenness and forceful commitment to eradicating antisemitism — in a county with a relatively small number of Jews — has set a new tone. Raised in a law-enforcement family in Philadelphia — his father was a prominent police officer whose biography chronicles his own battle against “scumbags” — Chitwood speaks in a tough clip peppered with colorful insults directed at his white supremacist opponents (“these clowns,” “little sissies,” “ugly faces”). His passion on the issue is evident when he talks about his desire to be “standing in for John Q. Citizen,” or “some poor son-of-a-gun that’s going to synagogue.” He’s still green enough on the issue that he frequently confuses the Anti-Defamation League with the “JDL,” or Jewish Defense League — a radical violent splinter group of Jewish extremists.
Chitwood has garnered national attention for his actions, as well as the respect of the Jewish community.
“This sheriff is not like all the others, in a sense,” said Oren Segal, vice president of the ADL’s Center on Extremism. “He’s taking different methods and putting himself out there and showing what one type of response can be.”
Rob Lennick, director of the Jewish Federation of Volusia and Flagler Counties, is one of Chitwood’s local allies. The federation is known locally for running several charitable programs, including food pantries, meant to reach people in need across the entire community, and Chitwood has a good relationship with them.
Lennick praised Chitwood for taking “a very strong forward position against these neo-Nazis, against these white supremacist groups coming to our community.” (Lennick arrived in Volusia County last year after leaving the Jewish Federation of New Mexico, which collapsed after employees accused him of misconduct.)
Counter-protesters at a planned neo-Nazi demonstration in Ormond Beach, Florida, thank Volusia County Sheriff Michael Chitwood “for standing against antisemitism,” April 22, 2023. Chitwood has had white supremacists who have threatened him online arrested and extradited to his county. (Nadia Zomorodian, courtesy of Volusia County Sheriff)
In the end, the planned neo-Nazi demonstration against Chitwood on Saturday never took place — though a large group of what the sheriff described as “professional counter-protesters” did show up, flying joint American and Israeli flags and thanking him for standing up to antisemitism. Walking among that interfaith crowd, many of whom had traveled from outside the county to be there, was profound for Chitwood. The experience “was very, very humbling,” he said. “I don’t think I’ve wrapped my brain around it yet.”
Segal declined to comment on the degree to which Chitwood’s office has liaised with the ADL. But he praised Chitwood’s outspokenness, and said he considered it a form of “allyship.”
“It’s easy to speak out against something that breaks the law. It’s not always easy to speak out against something that breaks the value of our communities because it’s hateful, because it scares people, because it makes people feel unsafe,” Segal said. He mused that the fact that so many neo-Nazis now have Chitwood in their crosshairs “creates an inadvertent bond between law enforcement and the Jewish community, that they’re both being harassed by antisemites.”
Lennick had advised local Jews not to attend the site of the protests, not even to participate in the counter-protests. “You’re walking a fine line,” he said. “You don’t want to fuel the bad guys.”
Chitwood, though, has made a point out of naming and shaming the antisemites in his midst, believing that the increased media attention will expose further misdeeds and make it harder for them to hold down employment.
“There is now a national spotlight on these GDL punks,” Chitwood said. “Sooner or later, they’re going to stub their toe. And you have all these entities looking at you.”
The sheriff wants to go further in his crusade. He has pushed for a bill in the Florida legislature that would allow him and other law enforcement in the state to charge people with felonies for distributing fliers and broadcasting messages of “ethnic intimidation” on private property.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis shows off after signing a bill making “ethnic intimidation” displays a felony in his state, during a ceremony at the Museum of Tolerance in Jerusalem, April 27, 2023. Randy Fine, a Jewish Republican lawmaker from Florida who authored the bill, stands at left. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
On Thursday, Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, signed the bill into law during a ceremony in Jerusalem after Randy Fine, the Jewish Republican state representative who authored it, delivered it to him there. (DeSantis last year called Nazis rallying in his state “jackasses” but drew criticism for not condemning them more forcefully.) The law was written specifically to address the kinds of activities the Goyim Defense League regularly engages in, including the Daytona message that spurred Chitwood to address the problem head-on, and enjoyed unanimous support from legislators of both parties.
“I guess we need to thank our scumbag Neo-Nazi invaders for uniting our community and the entire state of Florida against hate,” Chitwood tweeted after the signing.
“I see it as another tool in the toolbox,” Chitwood told JTA about his support of the bill. “You go onto private property and drop these leaflets on somebody’s doorstep or in their driveway, that’s now a felony trespass.”
Chitwood acknowledges that law enforcement can often be slow to respond to crimes of ethnic intimidation, and particularly online harassment, which hinders their ability to organize against a common threat. “We are very reactive,” he said. “No matter what it is, even a car break trend, sometimes you have to break into 20 or 30 cars before we detect a trend to go and do what needs to be done.”
He’s frank about the police’s shortcomings when it comes to dealing with such behavior. The fact that he is a sheriff, he said, meant that it was easier to bring the perpetrators of out-of-state online death threats to justice. And, he said, broad coordination across different law enforcement entities for the specific addressing of antisemitism in the state does not yet exist: Apart from communication with some neighboring county sheriffs and the FBI, efforts to collaborate with the broader law enforcement community have been slow.
But, he said, he remains committed to trying to fight antisemitism in his own backyard at the very least. “It is personal,” Chitwood said. “This is my community.”
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Jewish man attacked in Montana by self-proclaimed Nazi on Oct. 7
A Jewish man in Missoula, Montana, was assaulted on Oct. 7 by a self-proclaimed “Nazi,” according to the Missoula Police Department.
On Tuesday, the suspect, Michael Cain, 29, got into an argument with the victim who had a visible tattoo of the Star of David on his forearm. Cain asked the victim about his tattoo and allegedly identified himself as a believer in the teachings of the Nazi party.
When the victim, who told Cain he was Jewish, then asked Cain to show him any Nazi-related tattoos on his body, Cain allegedly kicked and punched the victim, who was seated on the ground.
Missoula police then responded to the Poverello Center, a local homeless shelter where the assault took place, and later apprehended Cain who had fled the scene.
While en route to the local detention center, Cain disclosed to the arresting officer that he was a member of the “4th Reich” and said that while he did not attack the victim because of his Jewish identity, he would have if he had been more adamant about his beliefs, according to court documents obtained by local news outlet KGVO.
Cain was charged with felony malicious intimidation or harassment relating to civil or human rights and his bond was set at $50,000. Missoula police did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Montana is home to just under 1,500 Jews out of a general population of over 1.1 million. In 2023, the Anti-Defamation League recorded just 21 antisemitic incidents in the state.
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US Jews who revile Trump’s domestic policies say he must be praised for Gaza deal
Walking and chewing gum. Nixon and China. Fighting against the British in Palestine while fighting with the British in Europe.
All are cliches signifying two seemingly contradictory actions that are possible — and potentially preferable — to do at the same time. And all were cited this week by Jewish critics of Donald Trump as apt metaphors for what they are doing this week in the wake of Trump’s successful brokering of a ceasefire in the Gaza war.
Jewish Americans are reeling as a president many blame for undermining democracy brokered a deal that appears poised to return the Israeli hostages held by Hamas in Gaza. Unlike many jubilant Israelis, some reliably liberal Jews here are having a hard time praising Trump and his team for the kind of diplomatic breakthrough that his Democratic predecessor couldn’t bring about. But they are largely figuring out how to do it.
“It’s important to recognize that the vast majority of American Jews, just as Israelis, want a return of the hostages, and they want this war to end, and if Donald Trump and his team can help to bring that about, they deserve credit for doing so,” said Halie Soifer, the CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, the leading Democratic group in the community.
Trump in his second term is deeply unpopular with American Jews. Prior to the announcement of a long-awaited ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, his backing for Israel did not dent the disapproval he draws from a demographic that votes overwhelmingly Democratic.
A poll in April found 72% of Jewish voters disapproved of Trump. A robust majority opposed his signature policies, including deportations and retaliating against political enemies. A majority even opposed his efforts to combat antisemitism.
At the same time, Trump also has not hidden his disdain for legacy Jewish groups: The FBI earlier this month cut off all ties with the Anti-Defamation League, and its director, Kash Patel, likened the group’s tracking of right-wing extremists to terrorism.
Abe Foxman, the former ADL CEO, was appalled by Patel’s actions against his former colleagues and campaigned in 2020 for Joe Biden, the Democrat who ousted Trump after his first term. But he said the community should praise Trump for the peace deal, and he was surprised the praise was not more robust.
“The American Jewish community needs to walk and chew gum at the same time. We should be able to differentiate and say, ‘Thank you, Mr. President’ and ‘No thank you, Mr. President,’” Foxman said in an interview. “He did something so many of us yearned for in the last two years, and he made it happen, and Biden didn’t make it happen.”
Rabbi Jonah Pesner, who leads the Reform movement’s advocacy arm, the Religious Action Center, said there was a Jewish ethical obligation to thank Trump, based on the Jewish imperative to publicly “recognize the good,” hakarat hatov, even if the administration does not reciprocate.
“We would look at it through the lens of Jewish learning and Jewish wisdom,” Pesner said. “We have a president who has done exactly what we asked, bring the hostages home, end the war and the suffering in Gaza, both for the sake of the innocent in Gaza, but also for [Israelis], and get back on a path to a sustainable, lasting peace so that both sides can live in peace.”
That does not mean opposition to Trump’s domestic policies should flag, Pesner said, noting the Reform movement’s activism in opposing the deportations and Trump policies targeting transgender people.
“Our people are in the streets in Los Angeles and Chicago, trying to be a human buffer between troops that are being deployed [to arrest undocumented migrants] and the people who will be impacted,” he said.
Pesner’s predecessor at the RAC, Rabbi David Saperstein, said Trump “deserves to be commended for an extraordinary achievement” – but the Trump administration’s strident hostility to groups that might disagree on some issues made it hard to express. (Earlier this month, Trump shared on social media a meme calling Democrats “THE PARTY OF HATE, EVIL, AND SATAN.”)
Saperstein lamented the passing of an era when Jewish organizations would be comfortable working with a president whose policies they mostly opposed. He recalled being present at the White House, as RAC CEO, when President George W. Bush signed RAC-backed bills on human trafficking, on Sudan and on prison rape.
“While we staunchly supported a number of the efforts of the [Bush] administration, both domestically and in terms of Iraq, one always knew that the White House would accept that dichotomy as a norm of how American politics functions, and wouldn’t stop that from working collegially in places we could find common ground,” Saperstein recalled. “This administration is woefully different.”
Joel Rubin, a deputy assistant secretary of state during the Obama administration, drew two historical analogies to explain why Democrats and Jews should more robustly praise Trump on his Mideast diplomacy: Richard Nixon, who brokered peaceful relations with China while under even as he faced investigation for spying on Democrats, and David Ben-Gurion, who in 1939 said Jews in Palestine should resist British oppression with the same dedication they showed in joining the British in fighting Nazis.
“I think it’s been a very, very difficult thing for Democrats to admit that, you know, Nixon went to China on this one,” said Rubin, who in 2020 was the Jewish community liaison for the presidential campaign of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, the de facto leader of progressives.
Trump, Rubin said, was able to do what Biden was not: pressure Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to defy his far-right coalition partners and make a deal by enticing him with unfettered military and diplomatic support.
“Biden didn’t have the leverage to pressure Bibi [Netanyahu], the way that Trump has the leverage to pressure Bibi.” Biden, he said, “failed to capitalize on the window that he had opened after Oct. 7,” when the Democratic president expressed unalloyed support for Israel. “He kind of sat passive, and he just didn’t know how to do it. And Trump didn’t take any of the recommendations from the ‘pressure Israel’ crowd. He didn’t cut off military aid. In fact, he accelerated it. And that built up huge equity inside the Israeli body politic.”
Jewish political conservatives have been beyond effusive in their praise. The Republican Jewish Coalition has not only called for Trump to win the Nobel Peace Prize, it said the prize should be renamed for Trump.
Jo-Ann Mort, a public relations consultant who has worked with liberal Jewish and non-Jewish groups, said Trump deserved thanks, but the deal was not the game changer that Trump and his acolytes were claiming. Its terms have been on the table since the Biden administration, she said, and keeping the peace in the Middle East has been part of the presidential brief since at least Israel’s inception.
“It was an agreement that was on the table a year ago that Bibi didn’t take,” she said. “This is what the president of the United States is supposed to do in a place where the U.S. has so many interests and is so deeply involved – it would have been contrary to his role as president if he hadn’t tried to solve it.”
Soifer, the Jewish Democrats’ CEO, said that even as the deal deserves praise, its elements needed further scrutiny, particularly the ensuing enhancements in security cooperation between the United States and Qatar, a country that has backed Hamas. She noted for instance a deal he brokered with Yemen’s Houthi militia earlier this year that stopped attacks on U.S.-flagged ships – but allowed them to continue on Israeli flagged ships. On Friday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that Qatar would establish a military installation within the United States, which has also offered Qatar security assurances designed to prevent Israel from striking Hamas leaders living there.
“Israel’s security has not been a part of every calculation in terms of foreign policy of this administration and the Houthis are one example,” Soifer said. “This deal with the Qataris may be another, and we do need to consider Israel’s security. His tunnel vision may serve his short-term interests” of securing a Nobel Peace Prize, “but it doesn’t necessarily serve our long term national security interests as well as that of Israel.”
Betsy Sheer, a leading Florida-based fundraiser for Jewish causes and for Democrats, said praise for Trump’s deal should be unstinting — as should be resistance to his domestic policies.
“Trump has figured out a way, unlike his predecessor, who I thought was extremely supportive of Israel – he’s figured out a way through knocking heads and embarrassing people and promising God knows what that got us to this moment, and I don’t think we can overlook that,” she said.
“His domestic policies are abhorrent, and you know, I’m not going to let up on that at all,” Sheer said. “You still have to look at the shutting down of civil liberties and voting rights and the authoritarian stance and the punitive way of suing everybody that’s ever been an enemy.”
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Opinion: Why Canada must keep pushing for peace in the Middle East
Oct. 7, 2023, was a day that changed Israel—and Jewish communities across the world—forever. The murder of more than 1,200 people and the kidnapping of hundreds more by Hamas terrorists marked not only the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, but the beginning of a tragedy that has since displaced over 1.5 million Palestinians, forced nearly 100,000 Israelis from their homes, and left tens of thousands grieving on both sides.
In the two years since, grief and anger have filled every corner of Jewish life. Yet out of this devastation, one truth has become painfully clear: there is no alternative to peace. The cost of abandoning a two-state solution is too high, and the moral and human consequences are intolerable.
Canada, for decades, has stood firm in its support for two states for two peoples—a policy rooted in diplomacy, compassion, and justice. Successive governments, of every political stripe, have recognized that Israel’s long-term security is inseparable from Palestinian self-determination. While the region and its politics have shifted, the vision must remain constant: a sovereign Israel living in security alongside a sovereign Palestine built on dignity and equality.
Disarming Hamas is not enough. The terror organization that launched the barbaric attack of October 7 can have no place in whatever comes next. Israelis must know they are safe and secure. Palestinians must have the agency to demand leadership that is committed to a collaborative path—one that builds governance for the people they serve, not vengeance or victory, but safety, stability, and normalized relations.
As fragile as it is, the most recent agreement between Israel and Hamas has once again placed both peoples in a tense waiting game. Hostages may soon come home. Violence may slow. Humanitarian aid may finally reach Gazans who have endured unimaginable suffering. Israelis and Palestinians alike are waiting to exhale—to imagine, perhaps for the first time in years, what “normal” might look like.
But peace requires courage. It demands leadership willing to risk political consequence for moral clarity. I know this from experience.
During the height of the war, I travelled to Ramallah—not because it was politically convenient, and certainly not because it was easy as a Canadian-Israeli and a cabinet minister—but because it was necessary. That meeting was one of the few quiet steps that helped build a foundation for the difficult conversation that continues today: what conditions must the Palestinian Authority meet to open a genuine path forward?
Those conditions are not new. They include transparent elections, an end to corruption, the dismantling of the welfare system that rewards terror, and the rebuilding of a generation through education for reconciliation and mutual recognition—not violence. These are the steps that make peace possible.
Hope, I have learned, is not naïve. It is strategic. It is an act of defiance in the face of adversity. Hope is how we persevere through despair, how we shape policy that serves people rather than politics. It is how we remind ourselves that courage does not come from certainty, but from conviction.
Leadership and agency must also come from within. Hamas has led the Palestinian people into ruin. Their unrelenting pursuit of violent resistance—at the cost of their own citizens’ lives—has turned Gaza into a place of devastation and despair. For Palestinians to have a future, their national movement must reject Hamas’s ideology of annihilation. The Palestinian people deserve leaders who understand that a viable, independent state can only exist alongside a safe and secure Israel.
This truth lies at the heart of the matter. If we are to rebuild trust and establish a lasting peace, Israelis and Palestinians alike must confront a simple, uncomfortable reality: our lives are intertwined. Our safety depends on one another.
For Jewish communities here in Canada, this truth carries a parallel responsibility. We have lived through two years of fear, mourning, and rising antisemitism. Many of us have felt isolated in our grief and anxious about our safety. But even in those moments, we cannot lose sight of our values—the belief that peace, security, and justice are not mutually exclusive but mutually dependent.
We are tired, yes—but we are not broken.
This moment, fragile as it is, offers an opening. It calls for moral courage—not only from leaders in the region but from allies like Canada who can help nurture reconciliation, rebuild institutions, and ensure accountability. Canada must be part of that work.
It is not enough to stand with Israel in solidarity; we must also stand with Israelis and Palestinians who are willing to build a different future. Peace is not inevitable, but it is possible—if we insist on it.
As our sages taught: “Lo alecha hamelacha ligmor, v’lo atah ben chorin l’hibatel mimena”—“It is not upon you to complete the work, but neither are you free to desist from it.”
That teaching has guided the Jewish people through millennia of hardship, and it must guide us now.
We cannot complete the work of peace—but we must never stop trying.
Ya’ara Saks is the former Member of Parliament for York Centre and the former Minister of Mental Health and Addictions, and Associate Minister of Health.
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