‘Antisemitism 101’: Miami Beach mayor defends sending Facebook post to police
Miami Beach Mayor Steven Meiner on Wednesday defended his decision to flag a resident’s critical Facebook comment about him and denied directing police to knock on the resident’s door, his first public comments about the controversy since email records revealed that he had sent the comment to the city’s police chief.
Speaking to reporters after his State of the City address, Meiner said the Facebook comment, which claimed that he “consistently calls for the death of all Palestinians,” was “age-old antisemitism.”
“This type of post is literally antisemitism 101,” Meiner said. “You say that Jews are trying to commit violence, so basically what’s inferred is you need to commit violence against Jews.”
Meiner said someone forwarded him the comment by Raquel Pacheco, who was responding to a post in which Meiner touted Miami Beach as a “safe haven for everyone” and criticized policies in New York City.
Pacheco previously told the Herald that she was alluding to statements Meiner has made at public meetings expressing his support for Israel and its war in Gaza.
Pacheco’s comment, Meiner said Wednesday, “is absolutely false.”
“I never said anything like that. Quite the contrary, I’ve said that any innocent loss of life in a war is tragic,” Meiner said, adding that he blames Hamas, not Israel, for the situation in Gaza.
Meiner called Police Chief Wayne Jones to tell him about the Facebook comment, he said, telling the chief: “There’s a post out there that I think could be a dangerous escalation for not just my safety and my family’s safety, but for the Jewish community.”
The mayor, who is Jewish, said he was following Jones’ prior instructions to flag any concerning messages. He said he has previously sent text messages or emails to the chief but didn’t recall sending him any other social media posts.
“I see a lot of a lot of things on social media that are not accurate, a lot of information that’s not accurate. Some of it is really hurtful,” Meiner said. “This was the first time I think I saw something that I believe rose to the level of concern that could incite someone to violence.”
He called Pacheco’s comment “preposterous.”
“If someone reading that who doesn’t know me and doesn’t follow our meetings and doesn’t follow our social media could say, ‘Oh, my God, this Jewish mayor wants to kill me,’ God forbid,” Meiner said. “I did what I thought was appropriate.”
Meiner had previously issued a written statement in which he said: “I am a strong supporter of the State of Israel and its right to defend its citizens. Others might have a different view and that is their right. In this situation, our police department believed that inflammatory language that is false and without any factual basis was justification for follow-up to assess the level of threat and to protect the safety of all involved.”
The statement did not address the fact that Meiner had been the one to share the comment with police.
Jones has said he had directed detectives to speak with Pacheco because he “had serious concerns that her remarks could trigger physical action by others” and that “at no time did the Mayor or any other official direct me to take action.”
Emails released in response to a public records request by the Miami Herald showed Jones telling Meiner that while Pacheco “didn’t issue a direct threat, her allegations are undeniably provocative and have the potential to incite others to escalate to that level.”
Jones directed a sergeant to expand Meiner’s security detail but did not explicitly call for officers to visit Pacheco’s home. In a subsequent email, the sergeant instructed two detectives to speak with Pacheco.
A Miami Beach police spokesperson did not respond to questions about the emails. Police chose not to initiate a criminal investigation after briefly speaking with Pacheco.
At Miami Beach City Hall on Thursday, Jones did not directly respond to reporters’ questions about how he issued the directive to have officers visit Pacheco’s home. He said Meiner’s security detail has indeed been expanded but did not provide further details.
Asked if he regrets sending the comment to Jones, given the widespread backlash and free speech concerns in response to Pacheco’s video of police visiting her home, Meiner replied that he has “a high degree of respect for our police chief and our police department, and they have to do their investigative work.”
“I don’t dictate to them how they conduct their investigations. Actually, I would even say that’s probably inappropriate for me as the mayor, to start intermingling in how the police conduct investigations,” he said.
“I see something, I say something,” the mayor continued. “We tell that to residents all the time. I’m a human being. I’m a resident. I happen to be the mayor. I saw something that was concerning to me, that I thought could be a potential threat to the community at large, and I forwarded it to the police.”
Tension at commission meeting
At a Miami Beach City Commission meeting Thursday, Pacheco and several others spoke against the actions by Meiner and Jones during a public comment period.
Free-speech questions were front and center. Meiner limited the time for each speaker to one minute, rather than the usual two, and a police officer stood near the speakers and told them to wrap up when their minute expired.
Filmmaker Billy Corben had a tense exchange with the mayor, blaming him for “a new national embarrassment [and] another abuse of power.”
Corben, who is Jewish, concluded with a reference to the Jewish holiday of Purim, saying: “One day, people will say your name and children will spin groggers.” (Noisemakers known as groggers are traditionally used during Purim as a show of disdain for Haman, the villain of the Purim story who plotted to eradicate the Jewish people.)
Meiner replied by referring to Corben by his legal name, Billy Cohen, a tactic used in the past by city of Miami Commissioner Joe Carollo. He also responded to Corben’s claim that there was a sparse crowd at Meiner’s State of the City address the previous evening.
“I will just say, Mr. Cohen, there was not an available seat in the house last night,” Meiner said.
Officials support Meiner, Jones
The tenor of the meeting shifted after the public comment period concluded.
Commissioner David Suarez gave a presentation attempting to draw parallels between Pacheco’s comment and a recent incident at Vendôme nightclub in South Beach, where far-right influencers requested that a DJ play the song “Heil Hitler” by Kanye West.
Suarez displayed side-by-side social media posts by Pacheco and one of the influencers who was at Vendôme, avowed antisemite Nick Fuentes.
“You have a crazy person on the left, and you have a crazy person on the right,” Suarez said.
Next, Suarez called Jones to the podium and asked the chief whether he would do anything differently in his handling of Pacheco’s Facebook comment.
“The short answer is no,” Jones said.
The chief said it’s common for police to have the types of “knock and talk” conversations that detectives had with Pacheco, citing data from the U.S. Capitol Police, who are charged with protecting members of Congress.
“The investigators that responded to Ms. Pacheco’s home, this is what they do — risk assessment,” Jones said.
City commissioners — including four who were notably absent from Meiner’s State of the City speech, raising questions about their support for the mayor — subsequently spoke in support of Meiner and Jones.
Commissioner Alex Fernandez said he doesn’t like police “knocking on residents’ doors.” Still, he said that “portraying Jews as evil is an antisemitic practice” and that it is “important to protect our community.”
Commissioner Tanya Katzoff Bhatt, meanwhile, spoke about “the balance of living in a free democracy” between free speech and safety.
“When it rises to the possibility of a public safety issue, that’s a different conversation,” she said.
Meiner got choked up after listening to his colleagues’ remarks.
“To hear the comments and the coming together is very meaningful to me,” he said. “Today I see seven of us — this is leadership. That’s why Miami Beach is one of the greatest cities in the world.”
An attorney for Pacheco, Miriam Haskell, told the Herald it was “disappointing” that the conversation among elected officials only took place after public comment was closed.
“The Commissioners who are defending these police actions have still not addressed the Constitutional protections at issue here,” Haskell said. “What else justifies police interactions? What length could they have gone to here, that Commissioner Suarez would defend? Arresting Pacheco? Where does this stop?”
Haskell added that, while commissioners framed Pacheco’s comment as a public safety issue, “the police knocking at her door in response to a social media post does not make her safe.”
“There are many, many people in our community who feel threatened by this administration. Instead of addressing that, this Commission is doubling down to defend it,” Haskell said.
“We are all aware that there is a debate in this country over whether being critical of Israel is in and of itself antisemitism,” she added. “But when commissioners made that the issue here, they failed to answer the real question: What First Amendment rights of their residents are they willing to defend? After today’s meeting, the answer seems to be very few.”
This story has been updated to include details from Thursday’s commission meeting.
This story was originally published February 5, 2026 at 8:34 AM.
