Jewish man mistakes two Israeli tourists for Palestinians and opens fire on them in Miami

A Jewish man in Miami Beach is facing charges of attempted murder following accusations that he opened fire on two men he believed were Palestinians but reportedly turned out to be Israeli visitors.

According to arrest documents, at 9.30pm on Saturday surveillance video appeared to show Mordechai Brafman, 27, getting out of his truck and opening fire with a semiautomatic handgun at a vehicle as it passed. Brafman allegedly fired 17 times, striking one victim in the left shoulder and grazing the other’s left forearm.

While in custody, Brafman spontaneously told detectives that while he was driving his truck, “he saw two Palestinians and shot and killed both”, arrest documents said.

Law enforcement officials did not confirm if the victims were in fact Palestinians and the Miami Herald reported that they were actually two vacationing Israelis, naming them as Ari Rabey and his father.

Facebook posts after the shooting show Rabey at Miami’s Jackson memorial hospital and his Hyundai with several bullet holes and markings.

The outlet reported that as of Monday afternoon, Brafman, the alleged shooter, was being held at the Miami-Dade correctional center on two counts of attempted second-degree murder.

Further complicating the incident, one of the injured men reportedly posted “death to the Arabs” in a message on social media after the shooting. “My father and I went through a murder attempt against antisemitic background,” he wrote.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations’ Florida chapter has called for federal hate crime charges in the shooting.

“It is deeply ironic and telling that both the alleged pro-Israel perpetrator and the pro-Israel victim in the Miami Beach shooting reportedly hold racist anti-Palestinian views,” said Cair’s national executive director, Nihad Awad, on X.

“This just the latest example of the hate targeting the Palestinian-American community in this country and Palestinians in their homeland. Policymakers in our nation should stop fomenting the anti-Palestinian hate that led to the genocide in Gaza and to hate crimes in America.”