Man shoots father and son in Miami, saying he thought they were Palestinians

A man who shot and wounded a father and son on a beach in the US city of Miami on Saturday told the police he shot them because he thought they were Palestinians.

The arrest form for the man, identified as Mordechai Brafman, said he “spontaneously stated that while he was driving his truck, he saw two Palestinians and shot and killed both,” the Miami Herald reports.

The assailant shot at the victims’ vehicle “17 times, unprovoked, striking both victims” as they passed him, the arrest documents said.

One of the victims was shot in the shoulder, while the other’s arm was grazed by a bullet.

Police did not say whether the two victims, who were hospitalized with their injuries, were Palestinian but said they were visiting from Israel.

According to the arrest documents, neither the victims nor Brafman knew each other at the time of the shooting.

Meanwhile, the Instagram account @South_Florida_Simchas posted a picture of the injuries and said the two people who were shot were an Israeli father and son visiting Miami.

Several violent attacks on Palestinians have been reported in the US since Israel’s war on Gaza, including one in which a 41-year-old woman allegedly attempted to drown a three-year-old Palestinian-American girl in Texas.

The Florida chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-Florida), the state’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, called for federal hate crime charges following the arrest of Brafman.

“We urge state and federal law enforcement authorities to bring hate crime charges in this case based on the alleged perpetrator’s statements to police that reportedly indicate an anti-Palestinian motive. It is the alleged shooter’s reportedly bias-motivated actions, not the actual ethnicity of the victims, that should be the determining factor for charges in this disturbing case,” said CAIR-Florida Communications Director Wilfredo Amr Ruiz.