I was viciously attacked at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach while simply working on my laptop, wearing a yarmulke. The attack was extremely dangerous, devastatingly unsettling, terrifying, and entirely unprovoked. It happened solely because I am proudly and unmistakably Jewish.
The alleged attacker, Faiz Akbar from Lorton, Virginia - later identified by facial recognition by outstanding online Jewish organizations – confronted me in the hotel lobby, repeatedly threatening me with graphic violence. What was most shocking was the hotel's security response.
One staff member actually and sickeningly fist-bumped and hugged the man who was calling me a baby killer and threatening me with his savagery. The video, posted to social media, has now gone viral around the world and has been watched by millions of people, with hundreds of thousands posting comments of disbelief that something like this can happen, not just in the United States, but especially in South Florida where Jews felt so much more safe and at one of the world’s premier hotels.
The incident has been reported both to local law enforcement and the FBI. My goal is to ensure the arrest and prosecution of my assailant and, given their shocking behavior since the attack, hold the Fontainebleau Hotel accountable for its failure to protect me and Jewish visitors.
Trend of rising antisemitism
This attack is part of a disturbing trend of rising antisemitism that I've personally experienced. As a public Jewish figure, I am often targeted, but I want to be clear: I will never hide my Jewish identity. I am proud to be Jewish and will continue to stand up against hate, even in the face of violent or near-lethal incidents.
I grew up in Miami Beach, a city I love deeply. My mother lived and died here. I attended the Hebrew Academy of Greater Miami. One class below me was Ron Dermer who would later become my student president at Oxford University and is today Israel’s Minister of Strategic Affairs and Prime Minister Netanyahu’s closest aid.
Antisemitism was something almost unknown to us as part of daily experience. Indeed, since the COVID epidemic, a dramatic surge of Jews in general and orthodox Jews in particular have made South Florida their home, seeking safer havens than New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania have proven to be.
But such safety is an illusion, as anyone who watches the horrific attack against me will conclude. Indeed, this week, my friends Sara and Yair Netanyahu (I have known Prime Minister Netanyahu since I was 22 years old and hosted him for lectures at Oxford University when he was Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister) visited Mar-a-Lago as guests of President Donald Trump and the Israeli media was commenting on how South Florida has become the ultimate safe haven for American Jewry, amid a national spike of murder, intimidation, harassment, and violent attack. Well, watch this and other videos – remember the Nazis outside the Chabad House in Orlando? - of what’s happening in Florida and think again.
This is not the first time I was accosted in the lobby of the Fontainebleau. It happened about a year and a half ago when a well-dressed Arab man screamed “Free Palestine” right in my face as I was working and threatened violence. The response of hotel security was pathetic.
They came over to me and threatened me as an instigator for simply being a Jewish victim of hate. That video too was watched by millions of people. I contacted the President of the Fontainebleau, Philip Goldfarb, whose daughter, ironically, I had led on a Birthright Trip to Israel about a decade earlier.
Birthright is uniquely capable of instilling a deep and proud Jewish identity and attachment to Israel in American youth and for that reason I volunteer to lead groups. Philip pleaded with me not to name the Fontainebleau in any of my posts. He promised me that the hotel would take the incident seriously, retrain all their security personnel, provide sensitivity training as to the unique challenges faced by yarmulke and Magen David-wearing Jews, and protect their Jewish guests.
I believed him. I left the matter alone. I never mentioned the Fontainebleau.
Big mistake. I will not repeat this mistake again.
In trying to be the bigger man and forgiving such a famous hotel for their cavalier response to a vicious antisemitic assault, all they learned is that antisemitism rarely has consequences.
Since then I have pledged never to allow any attack against innocent people to proceed with a defense.
I am grateful to @jewhatedb and @stopantisemitism on Instagram, both of whom identified the Islamist assailant who assaulted me as Faiz Akbar of Lorton, Virginia, who describes himself as a self-made millionaire, decked out in Gucci. I am in regular contact with the FBI about threats against me and my family and we have provided them with all the evidence, as well as to the Miami Beach Police Department, who reached out the very next day.
We seek the assailant’s arrest and prosecution. The Fontainebleau has thusfar refused to cooperate with the MBPD and release the surveillance tapes. No matter. They will be subpoenaed. Antisemitism will be granted no quarter, no matter how prestigious, mighty, and wealthy the institution is in trying to cover it up.
As this venomous, brutal, and sadistic maniac attacked me as a baby killer, as someone who loves to put bullets in the heads of children, and screamed how lucky I am to be in America or he would destroy me, security, not to mention all the people watching, did nothing to help. All were innocent bystanders.
I felt like I was in Berlin in 1936, a feeling reinforced when security finally came over and treated me, the victim, as if I were equally responsible for the situation and ended up actually hugging the “Free Palestine MotherF—ker” screaming Islamist attacker, even as he continued to openly threaten me with violence.
We must always distinguish between Muslims, who are our brothers and sisters, and Islamists, who are political radicals who seek a second holocaust. As a Jew and as the father of three IDF soldiers, I could not be more proud that Israel has approximately 1.5 million Arab Muslim citizens, whom the Jewish IDF soldiers fight and even God forbid die for every single day.
Just over the past two weeks alone, I worked closely with my friend Robert Kennedy, Jr., President Trump’s nominee for American Health Czar, to help rescue 100 Palestinian children from Gaza who are afflicted with cancer. Every Arab and Palestinian child who has died in Gaza, due to the Hamas monsters using them as bullet-proof vests and human shields, is mourned by the Jewish people and God.
Each and every one of these children, treated as cannon fodder by Hamas in their genocidal war against Israel, is the equal of every Jewish child. The Torah, in its very first chapter is clear. God created every human being – Arab, Jew, Christian, Hindu, atheist, agnostic – alike and equal in his image.
It is for this reason that Hamas, who are alleged to have stolen approximately half of the 820 metric tons, or 1.2 million pounds, of humanitarian aid that the United States military alone provided as of last May, and half of the more than 1000 trucks of aid that Israel also sent in as of the same date, must be destroyed and replaced with proper, democratic governance.
The Fontainebleau has scores of Jewish guests, many with yarmulkes, staying there constantly. From this video, it does not appear that they are safe. Will the hotel, which I grew up just a few blocks from, finally take action to protect Jewish guests? These attacks are becoming more frequent and from the rage of the man who assaulted me, you can see the degree of the danger.
It has to stop. That will not happen if the hotel does not cooperate with the police investigation and if its attorneys continue, as they have are alleged to have done, blaming me as an inciter for sitting quietly with a yarmulke and working on a laptop. Being Jewish is not a provocation.
Attacked on different occasions
So here we are. I grew up in Miami Beach, now live in New Jersey, and I’ve been attacked in the Fontainebleau on at least three occasions and each time I have complained to their management. I have been gracious and forgiving of the previous incidents, even as people pleaded with me before to hold them accountable and go public.
I stupidly accepted their apparently fraudulent promise that they would retrain their security and protect the Jewish community. The lesson: we have no choice but to fight antisemitism. Whether the establishment is Jewish-owned or not makes no difference, and some might even argue that Jewish-owned and managed properties that condone, or cease to protect, against antisemitism are even more culpable.
Already, Jewish tourists from all over the world are writing to me, and all over social media they are canceling their reservations at the Fontainebleau and rethinking Miami as a safe vacation destination. I don’t blame them. But then, all of America, indeed all of the world, is becoming infected with the Jew-hating disease.
Will Governor Ron DeSantis, whom I honored at our 2018 gala at New York’s Plaza Hotel and helped to elevate nationally when he was an unknown Congressman, take action? He has proved to be one of Israel’s greatest champions and, as of this writing, is being spoken of as a possible replacement for Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense. But the Governor cannot watch the video of the Fontainebleau and turn a blind eye.
The same is true of Miami Beach Mayor Steven Meiner, an Orthodox Jew whom I have met. He has yet to even reach out after this despicable incident in his city where an unhinged antisemite publicity threatened the life of a Rabbi known to him in his city’s most famous hotel. If these incidents, which are on the rise, don’t stop, Miami Beach, like Paris, Amsterdam, and London before it, will face a growing call for a boycott for a city that cannot protect its Jewish residents or tourists.
The Islamist terrorists first and foremost want to harass, intimidate, assault, and murder “the public Jew,” those of us who are on the front lines visibly defending Israel and fighting antisemitism every day on television, social media, public platforms, and public rallies (our next giant Times Square rally for Israel, which we hold every eight weeks, is this Tuesday, December 11th).
We are the ones who are particularly at risk because the terrorists want to shut us up and kill us. But of course, every Jew in America, including of course those who own and manage the Fontainebleau, are also at risk. But public Jews are the first targets, and we need law-enforcement to protect us or we will meet an early death, God forbid. It is a message I plan to bring God willing in a face-to-face meeting with Kash Patel, President Trump’s nominee to lead the FBI.
Law enforcement must arrest and prosecute alleged unhinged antisemite Faiz Akbar who attacked me and threatened my life simply for being a Jew.
This Sunday on the Jewish calendar, 7 Kislev, I will turn 58. In addition, we had a new grandson born to us the day after I was attacked, a beautiful occasion which was ruined utterly by having my life endangered at the Fontainebleau. My children ask me, Tatty, as you advance in years, what’s going through your mind? What’s your life’s work? What will your legacy be?
It is simply this. I have devoted my life to ensuring that the sacred holocaust declaration of “Never Again” is not just an empty slogan but a sacred promise. Jewish life must finally have value. I will fight every day to ensure that it does. Enough is enough.