Jewish man in Florida shoots 2 Israeli tourists, assumed they were Palestinians

In what can only be described as a bizarre intersection of hate crimes, a Jewish man in the United States shot at two Israeli tourists simply because he assumed they were Palestinians.

To compound the confusion, he was later accused of being an Arab by one of the victims, who survived the shooting.

Shot at two men

The incident took place on Feb. 15, 2025 in Miami Beach, Florida in the United States, at around 9:30pm (local time).

The Guardian reported that 27-year-old Mordechai Brafman fired 17 shots from a semiautomatic handgun at a passing vehicle.

After he was arrested, Brafman admitted to police that he had seen “two Palestinians and shot and killed both”.

But his inability to correctly identify people by nationality was matched by his inability to correctly discern the condition of his victims.

This is because the two men that Brafman had shot at were not Palestinian, but were in fact two Israeli tourists.

And rather than killing both, the father and son duo survived and were taken to a local hospital.

Targeted

The younger man, Ari Rabey, told ABC 10 News that Brafman's truck pulled up next to his and his father's car, rolled down its window and "just blasted them".

Rabey was hit in the shoulder and eventually taken to hospital where he posted about his harrowing experience on social media.

He attributed the attack to anti-semitism, and that he and his father had been targeted due to his father wearing a religious head covering, a yarmulka.

He ended his post with a pro-Israeli statement, and then with “Death to Arabs” with a praying emoji.

This post appears to have been edited or removed, but some social media users were able to take screenshots.

Hate crime charges

The Miami Herald reported that the City of Miami Beach’s commissioner had urged the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office to pursue hate crime charges in the case, in addition to the two counts of attempted murder that Brafman was charged with.

The Florida Chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) called for federal hate crime charges, saying the incident was “deeply ironic” that both victim and perpetrator held “racist anti-Palestinian views”.

The CAIR’s national executive director Nihad Awad said that the incident was the latest example of Palestinian-Americans being targeted by hate crimes.

Reuters provided several examples, such as the attempted drowning of a three-year-old Palestinian American girl, and several stabbings, including a fatal one on a six-year-old boy.

Awad called on policymakers to “stop fomenting anti-Palestinian hate”.

Top image via ארי רביי /Facebook