MIAMI _ A wall of half a dozen men closed ranks around Rasha Mubarak. Leering at the young Palestinian-American woman who filmed them on her phone, they shoved Make America Great Again caps into her face, waved signs inscribed with anti-Muslim messages and spewed insults.
Animal. Anti-Semite. Woman-hater. Terrorist.
"My initial reaction was that the bigotry is real in South Florida," said Mubarak, who told the Miami Herald she was afraid the men would become physically violent. "It was a little overwhelming and scary."
Mubarak's antagonists were part of a group gathered outside Hallandale Beach City Hall on Jan. 23, in a rally that to some, was intended to be a defense of Israel against a growing boycott movement.
It became a platform for anti-Muslim hate. Setting that tone and mixed into the crowd were self-described Islamophobes, white nationalists, sympathizers of the Ku Klux Klan and members of alt-right factions who had come to support an unlikely new ally: Hallandale Beach Commissioner Anabelle Lima-Taub, known until recent weeks as an outspoken feminist and Democrat.
Not anymore. The day of the rally, Lima-Taub was facing official censure from colleagues on the city commission for a viral Facebook post in which she called Rashida Tlaib, a Muslim congresswoman from Michigan, a "Hamas-loving anti-Semite" who might "become a martyr and blow up Capitol Hill." The post was denounced as hate speech by numerous Muslim and Jewish human rights organizations, but Lima-Taub remained unapologetic.
Lima-Taub has repeatedly denied that she is Islamophobic or anti-Muslim, though she wrote that Islam was a religion hijacked by terrorists. She also maintains it's reasonable to believe a Muslim congresswoman who supports an Israel boycott might be a terrorist. And recently, she gave the Center on American-Islamic Relations two middle fingers on a Facebook Live video, calling the Muslim advocacy and human rights group a terrorist organization. It's not.
(The U.S. State Department has not designated the group a terrorist organization, nor is it a designated hate group.)
"Her actions speak loud and clear. Anabelle Taub is a bigot," said Commissioner Michele Lazarow, who sponsored the item to censor Lima-Taub for hate speech. "She says she's not anti-Muslim while promoting bigoted stereotypes about Muslims."
Taking a page from the playbook of the far right, the Israeli-born politician labeled her critics _ even the Jewish ones like Lazarow _ anti-Semitic, enemies of the First Amendment and terrorist sympathizers.
By digging in and defending her statements, Lima-Taub alienated many of her mainstream supporters nearly over night. But she also attracted a new group of allies who cheered her on from internet chat rooms and anti-Muslim blogs. Some of them attended the rally at City Hall on Jan. 23.
"We are not going to relinquish our country to terrorists," said Janet Komburg, who was one of the first Lima-Taub supporters to arrive to the rally. "There is no place in Congress for someone who takes an oath on the Quran."
Whether intentional or not, Lima-Taub's call for a solidarity rally to defend her words opened Hallandale Beach to an anti-Islam agenda that has been building momentum nationally.
"Are we really fighting hate?" Elan Savir asked Lima-Taub, who has maintained that she is the real victim of the controversy. "You created hate on a national level. ... You don't fight hate with more hate. "
