A Jewish man mistakenly shot two Israeli nationals on a busy Saturday night, thinking they were Palestinians, officials revealed.
Mordechai Brafman, 27, now faces two counts of attempted second-degree murder after shooting Yaron and Ari Rabi, a father and son vacationing in Miami Beach. Authorities describe the attack, which occurred around 9:30 PM, as “unprovoked”.
Arrest documents indicate surveillance video showed Brafman getting out of his truck and firing a semiautomatic handgun at a passing vehicle.
He allegedly fired 17 times, hitting one victim in the left shoulder and grazing the other’s left forearm. While in custody, Brafman told detectives he believed he saw two Palestinians and shot them, according to the arrest documents.
The Florida chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, has called for federal hate crime charges against Brafman.
They argue his alleged bias against Palestinians should warrant these charges, regardless of the victims’ ethnicity. In other recent incidents, a man in Illinois fatally stabbed 6-year-old Palestinian-American Wadea al Fayoume 26 times and injured his mother a dozen times.
