'Antisemitism 101': Miami Beach mayor defends sending Facebook post to police

Aaron Leibowitz, Miami Herald on Feb 5, 2026

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MIAMI – 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.

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.”