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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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Vance, Netanyahu Blast Israeli Bill Applying Sovereignty to West Bank as Trump Warns of Risk to US Support
US President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance arrive for a ceremony with the 2025 College Football Playoff National Champions Ohio State Buckeyes on the South Lawn of the White House on Monday, April 14, 2025. Photo: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
US Vice President JD Vance on Thursday sharply criticized the Israeli parliament’s preliminary vote to extend its laws to parts of the West Bank, calling the move an ill-advised “political stunt” that undermines US diplomatic efforts and risks inflaming regional tensions.
The remarks came as Vance concluded a two-day trip to Israel aimed at reaffirming Washington’s support for the country and bolstering the ceasefire deal between the Jewish state and the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas to halt fighting in Gaza.
Israel’s 120-member parliament, the Knesset, on Wednesday narrowly approved, by a vote of 25–24, a bill that would apply Israeli civil law to settlements in the West Bank, a move widely described as an initial step toward “annexation.” However, experts have noted that annexation in international law means taking the territory of a foreign sovereign country, explaining that since the territory in question does not belong to another country, the bill would instead apply Israeli sovereignty to the area.
Lawmakers also passed a similar bill specifically for the Maale Adumim settlement by a vote of 31-9.
Though the measures still face several rounds of approval before becoming law, the votes immediately sparked a political storm both inside Israel and abroad.
“If it was a political stunt, it is a very stupid one, and I personally take some insult to it,” Vance told reporters.
“The West Bank is not going to be annexed by Israel,” he continued, saying that’s the policy of US President Donald Trump. “That will continue to be our policy, and if people want to take symbolic votes, they can do that, but we certainly weren’t happy about it.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office moved quickly to rebuke the vote in a statement, calling it “a deliberate provocation” by members of the far-right opposition and stressing that the government had not sponsored or supported the bill.
Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition is expected to block the legislation in future readings, but the incident highlighted widening divisions within Israel’s parliament and the difficulties in both navigating Israeli domestic politics and managing Jerusalem’s relationship with Washington simultaneously.
Some observers have expressed concern that talk of extending Israeli sovereignty in the West Bank, where the Palestinian Authority exercises limited self-governance, could derail the fragile ceasefire with Hamas and complicate renewed US-backed efforts to stabilize Gaza. Such activity in the West Bank could also pose a roadblock to potential expansion of the Abraham Accords which normalized relations between Israel and several Arab states.
Vance, who visited the region as part of a broader Middle East tour, said annexation “would only serve to embolden extremists on both sides” and “undermine the trust we’ve been trying to rebuild.”
Meanwhile, Trump also warned Israel against moving toward applying sovereignty to the West Bank, saying he promised Arab countries that the Jewish state would not formally do so and warning Jerusalem such a move would harm the US-Israel alliance.
“It won’t happen,” Trump said in a newly released interview with Time magazine. “It won’t happen because I gave my word to the Arab countries. And you can’t do that now. We’ve had great Arab support. It won’t happen because I gave my word to the Arab countries. It will not happen. Israel would lose all of its support from the United States if that happened.”
US Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) also chimed in, claiming on social media that after speaking with Israeli Ambassador to the US Yechiel Leiter he can confirm that the vote was non-binding and not intended to offend the United States.
“He vigorously stressed no offense was meant and reinforced that no major decisions will be made by Israel without cooperation and coordination with the US,” Graham wrote.
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Bernie Sanders downplays Graham Platner’s Nazi tattoo: ‘There might be one or two more important issues’
(JTA) — After Graham Platner, the progressive Senate hopeful running in Maine’s Democratic primary, revealed this week that he had had a Nazi-inspired tattoo on his chest for nearly two decades, several of his allies on the left cut him loose.
One who hasn’t: Vermont’s Jewish senator, Bernie Sanders.
“I’m not overly impressed by a squad of media running around saying, ‘What do you think about the tattoo on Graham Platner’s chest?’” the elder statesman of the progressive movement told Axios this week. “Between you and me, there might be one or two more important issues.”
Sanders also said he “absolutely” stood by his endorsement of Platner. Axios plans to air its full interview with Sanders on Friday but released snippets of the conversation on social media.
Sanders has backed Platner, a Marine veteran and oyster farmer, since soon after the latter announced his Senate bid this August. Platner’s anti-establishment platform, which includes embracing many progressive policies Sanders helped popularize, had made him a rising star despite his lack of any political experience. Platner has also taken a hard line against Israel.
That popularity was shaken following the recent revelation of Platner’s old Reddit posts, in which he made comments disparaging various groups. In an effort to get ahead of the opposition, Platner then himself revealed that he sported a skull-and-crossbones chest tattoo resembling an S.S. Totenkopf. He said he paid for it in 2007 while “inebriated” with fellow Marines in Croatia, and claimed he hadn’t known it was affiliated with Nazis (though subsequent reporting has suggested he knew it was a Totenkopf).
“I’m not a secret Nazi,” Platner said on Monday. He initially did not apologize for or suggest he would remove the tattoo.
After the revelations, Sanders told Axios he was still “impressed by the guy.”
“He went through some very difficult experiences in the military as a machine gunner, seeing his friends killed, came out of the military, he will acknowledge, I’m not telling you what he doesn’t say, he had PTSD,” the senator said. “He went into a dark period in his life. I suspect that Graham Platner is not the only American to have gone through a dark period.”
Sanders then sought to draw a line between condemnation of Platner and the election of President Donald Trump. “I think as a nation, especially given the fact that we have a president who was convicted on 14 felonies, maybe we have to do a little bit of forgiveness,” he said.
He wasn’t the only prominent progressive Jew who has remained in Platner’s corner since the tattoo revelation. Jon Lovett, the co-founder of influential left-wing podcast “Pod Save America” and media company Crooked Media and a former Obama official, has accused Platner’s progressive critics of demanding “only perfect candidates off the Harvard Law conveyor belt.” (Platner revealed his Nazi tattoo on a “Pod Save America” episode.)
“Of course he SHOULD answer for that tattoo,” Lovett wrote in a follow-up post on X Wednesday. “He’s explained the story, how it wasn’t flagged as a hate symbol when he entered the army or when he received a security clearance. He’s apologized and covered it up. Maybe it’s not enough. Maybe you don’t believe him.”
Following pushback, Platner did cover up the tattoo with a different design he referred to as a “Celtic knot with some imagery around dogs.”
In a post and video he posted to social media Wednesday, the candidate lifted his shirt to reveal his new tattoo and expressed regret that the old one might have invited comparisons to Nazis.
“It’s come to my attention that it has a stark resemblance to a symbol that is used by neo-Nazis, and I want to say, that was not my intent at all. And the idea that I was going around with something like that utterly horrifies me,” Platner said. “I know that symbols like this can be incredibly damaging to people, and the idea that I had it all these years and it could have been read like that is incredibly troubling.”
He added, “I have lived a life dedicated to antifascism, antiracism and anti-Nazism. I think that racism and antisemitism are a long scourge on our society and a long scourge on our politics, and I think it has no place in our world.”
Platner quickly pivoted, accusing “the establishment” of trying to destroy his movement with distractions.
“Every second we spend talking about a tattoo I got in the Marine Corps is a second that we don’t talk about Medicare for All, it’s a second we don’t talk about raising taxes on the wealthy,” he said.
Another prominent Jewish senator, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, responded to the revelations about Platner’s tattoo by making an endorsement in the race, which he had until this week avoided. He is backing Janet Mills, Maine’s former governor, saying she “is the best candidate to retire Susan Collins.”
A recent poll, conducted just before the tattoo revelations, found that Platner holds a wide lead over Mills among Democratic voters.
Platner’s opponents have started to riff on the controversy, as well: Jordan Wood, a former congressional aide also running in the primary, posted on social media to “fess up” that he, too, has a tattoo — of the symbol of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. “I got this tattoo a few years ago as a reminder of what hope and a positive vision can do in our politics,” he said on Instagram. Adding a dig at Platner, he concluded, “And yes, I knew what it was when I got it.”
A defiant Platner has pledged to remain in the race. At a rally Wednesday evening in Ogunquit, he again said he hadn’t known the meaning behind his tattoo.
He added, “If they thought this was going to scare me off, if they thought that ripping my life to pieces, trying to destroy me, was going to make me think that I shouldn’t have undertaken this project, they clearly have not spent a lot of time around Marines.”
The post Bernie Sanders downplays Graham Platner’s Nazi tattoo: ‘There might be one or two more important issues’ appeared first on The Forward.
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An Israeli restaurant chain said it closed due to boycotts. Protesters are celebrating.
The owner of a vegan kosher food chain in Washington, D.C., said boycotts that targeted his business for its ties to Israel led to the permanent closure this month of his last two restaurants.
This development is the latest chapter in an ongoing wave of vandalism and boycotts aimed at Israeli and kosher restaurants, which have become frequent targets since the start of the Israel-Hamas war.
Shouk, which opened its first location in 2016, was listed on D.C. for Palestine’s “Apartheid? I Don’t Buy It” boycott initiative in March, categorized under “restaurants that culturally appropriate or sell Israeli settlement products.”
While it was unclear what effect the boycott had on the restaurant’s bottom line, organizers of the boycott happily took credit for the closure.
“LOCAL BDS WIN IN DC!!” D.C. for Palestine posted to Instagram in reference to Shouk’s closure. “In times like these, it is still important to uplift small wins, as they are glimmers of the world we want to see!”
Jinan Deena, a Palestinian chef who helped organize the boycott against Shouk, told the Forward she took issue with Shouk’s Israeli branding, viewing its omission of the cuisine’s Palestinian roots as part of a larger pattern of cultural erasure.
“This food ties us to our land,” Deena said. “As long as we continue to serve our food [and] we properly label our food as Palestinian, then we will always continue to exist.”
Shouk had tried to be sensitive to concerns like Deena’s. The restaurant once described its menu as “Tel Aviv street food,” but in recent years had shifted to marketing it as Mediterranean fare, co-founder Dennis Friedman said in an interview. The restaurants displayed the word “Shouk” in both Hebrew and Arabic — “Souk” — to signal that it was “a place for all to come,” Friedman said.
“I think more of the issue was that I’m an American Jew, and my business partner was from Israel,” he said.
Deena rejected that characterization, arguing her criticism was not about Jewish identity but cultural appropriation. “There’s a difference between Jewish and Israeli cuisine,” she said. “I’m not attacking anyone for matzo ball soup or schnitzel.”
‘Food is not owned’
Friedman and Ran Nussbacher co-founded Shouk to bring healthy, plant-based food to the Washington, D.C., area as part of a fast-casual concept.
They named the restaurant after the Hebrew word for an open-air market, and the plant-based menu was inspired by the food Nussbacher ate while growing up in Israel.
Shouk’s veggie burger earned early acclaim. The Washington Post called it their favorite in the area during the restaurant’s first year, and in 2018, the Food Network highlighted it on its series “The Best Thing I Ever Ate.”
At its peak, Shouk operated five locations across Maryland and D.C. Two of its locations closed in 2023 for unrelated reasons.
But the restaurant soon got caught up in discourse over who lays claim to foods like falafel and hummus, long the subject of contentious debate among Israeli and Palestinian chefs.
Starting in 2022, Deena, who spent her teenage years living in Ramallah in the West Bank, used her personal Instagram account to help organize a boycott of Shouk, along with other Israeli restaurants in the area. She critiqued Shouk’s description of the menu as inspired by “the open-air markets in Tel Aviv.”
“Profiting off of the occupation and oppression of my ancestors is a hard line for me, and should be for you too,” Deena wrote. “Erasure of Palestinian food is a part of the occupation strategy.”
At the time, Nussbacher dismissed such disputes as missing the larger purpose of food.
“I’m disappointed when we don’t use food as a bridge,” Nussbacher told Moment Magazine in 2022. “Is pizza an appropriation of Italian culture? Is pasta Italian or Chinese? Food is not owned. Food is dynamic. And it’s created and recreated time and again. The question of ownership is irrelevant.”
The boycott gains traction
Shouk was “on track toward profitability” at the start of this year, the restaurant said in an email to customers about its closure.
Sales declined dramatically this summer, Shouk said in the email, more than the typical seasonal decline.
Friedman, who did not share specifics about the business’ financials, attributed the downturn to protesters chanting “Free Palestine” outside the restaurant, gluing posters to the restaurant’s windows and outdoor seating, and coming inside to intimidate customers and staff.
At Shouk’s Georgetown location, which closed in 2024, protesters were “steady and frequent, and they just didn’t let up,” Friedman said.
“We heard from customers that there was some concern. It was either concern for safety or just not wanting to deal with that negativity in that type of environment,” Friedman said. “And I couldn’t blame them. I wouldn’t want to, either.”
Friedman said he was in touch with authorities about the incidents, and a plainclothes officer began monitoring the situation from a car across the street. But he said the extra security ultimately didn’t make a difference.
On Oct. 3, Shouk emailed customers explaining why the remaining two restaurants in Rockville, Maryland, and Washington, D.C. had closed.
“One factor was that we found ourselves caught in the crosscurrents of a toxic political climate surrounding the Israel/Gaza war,” Shouk wrote. “More and more, customers have chosen to avoid businesses connected to Israel. We heard from long-time regulars who stopped visiting us for these reasons.”
“The restaurant business is a hard business to begin with, with razor thin margins,” Friedman told the Forward. “And so if you have something like this, and it’s prolonged, it’s kind of inevitable what’s going to happen.”
Friedman emphasized that Shouk was “not a political place.” To the extent that the restaurant did engage in advocacy, Friedman said, it was focused on environmental issues, from promoting plant-based eating to using biodegradable cutlery.
“We wanted to truly do something that could be a game changer. And for quite a while it was — so that’s why it makes it a little heartbreaking that we had to stop,” he said. “Even though I’m sad of how it ended, man, I’m grateful for the last 12 years.”
The post An Israeli restaurant chain said it closed due to boycotts. Protesters are celebrating. appeared first on The Forward.