Surfside Mayor Shlomo Danziger pushed back at the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement, signing a sister-city agreement with the Samaria Regional Council.
“The people of Surfside support Israel,” said Danziger as he visited the council’s office in the West Bank’s Barkan Industrial Park on Thursday to sign the document.
The politician, who wore a black skullcap just above his small ponytail, is the city’s first Orthodox mayor. He was elected in March, eight months after a 12-story condominium collapsed in the Florida beachfront town, killing 98 people.
Danziger recalled the gratitude he and the residents of Surfside felt toward Israel, which sent an IDF search and rescue team to help sift through the rubble for survivors.
“As soon as we saw the green uniforms walking through the town... there was a sigh of relief. There was a lot of hope that went through our town,” Danziger said. “When they left… everyone in town came down to walk them down the street.”
“As soon as we saw the green uniforms walking through the town... there was a sigh of relief. There was a lot of hope that went through our town. When they left… everyone in town came down to walk them down the street.”
Surfside Mayor Shlomo Danziger
In the aftermath of that tragedy, he and members of the town searched for a way to express their gratitude and decided to take a step to support the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria, he said.
These are the people, he said, “who are fighting on the frontlines to make sure that Israel is safe.”
Pushback against BDS pushback
Samaria Regional Council head Yossi Dagan, who signed the sister-city agreement with Danziger, said that his region was the biblical heartland of Israel, where Abraham and Joshua once walked. “It is also the future of the State of Israel... and the future of the Jewish people.”
“We stand together against the terror attacks and against the BDS campaign and the war of lies,” he said, adding that he knew there had been pushback against the agreement.
Joe Zevuloni, CEO of Zevuloni & Associates, who helped initiate the agreement, said that “many haters did not want this to happen. We stood against strong opposition.”
He emphasized that “today is a huge defeat for the BDS movement... you do not know how proud we are as US citizens... to have this great opportunity to continue this relationship between Judea and Samaria and the US.”