Former Palmetto Bay Councilman David Singer has likely gone too far in his war against the village council and mayor comparing them to Adolf Hitler in a Facebook post Thursday and likening the removal and euthanizing of about 20 “aggressive” Muscovy ducks from Coral Reef Park to the extermination of six million Jews in the Holocaust.
On the eve of Passover.
“I heard today that Mayor Karyn Cunningham, Vice Mayor Leanne Tellum and Village Manager Nick Marano were looking for a final solution to the ducks in the Village of Palmetto Bay,” Singer posted on one of his Facebook community pages, What’s Happening in Palmetto Bay, with a photo of Hitler, a swastika on his arm. “You know who else was looking for a final solution?”
Some people think his post was offensive.
“He’s a schmuck,” said Councilman Steve Cody, who beat Singer in 2020.
“It shows an incredible insensitivity,” Cody said, adding that it’s ironic because Singer is Jewish. “You would think he would know better. But he’s so determined to make his point and make it any way he has to that he doesn’t care.
“I find it disgusting,” Cody told Political Cortadito. He was so incensed, in fact, that he wrote an email with a screenshot of the post to Singer’s employers, developers Jeffrey and Michael Berkowitz. Subject line: “You need to have a sit down with David Singer.”
My late wife was a Cuban Jew. My 4 children are Jewish. My two (and soon to be three) grandchildren are Jewish. I was raised Irish Catholic, but my godfather, Dick Cunningham, was part of the Third Army that liberated the Buchenwald concentration camp in Weimar, Germany in April 1945. I am old enough to remember the parents of kids I grew up with who survived the Holocaust and who bore numbered tattoos on their forearms. I am offended for what Singer wrote and posted on all of their behalf’s.
This is all the reverence that Singer can muster for the millions who perished and the too few who survived the Nazi atrocities — to compare all of that incalculable suffering to the removal of 20 nuisance waterfowl from a public park.
You damage your brand and the legacy you are hoping to pass down to your children and grandchildren by continuing to associate with this man. David Singer is the dark and sick and twisted lens through which the leadership of this community are beginning to view your company.
And as you give him license to narrow cast his Facebook Live “Gloves Off With David Singer” from your offices (his guests freely talk of the “show” being performed from an interior space), you allow him to infect the body of your company like a heart worm.
How long can your company tolerate this parasite before the damage is irreversible? Not long, I fear. How long will you tolerate it? That is entirely up to you.
Good luck to you both, but I can promise you this isn’t going to end well for either of you or for Berkowitz Development Group.
— from Steve Cody’s email to Jeffrey and Michael Berkowitz
Even Singer knew he went too far because, not long after the post, he changed the photo to one of three chickens with their heads cut off.
His sister told him to change it, Singer said. But the Facebook post also has some critical comments.
“The village manager was talking about this being a final solution and since I lost my family, I lost my whole family to the Holocaust, when someone is talking about a final solution, that is what pops into my brain,” Singer told Ladra.
Many people in Palmetto Bay are upset with the fact that the city has hired a trapper to snatch the ducks from the park — where they reportedly chase children and knocked one over (which was called having fun in the park in my day) — and have them euthanized. There was a “candlelight vigil” for the ducks this week, covered by CBS4 Miami. The village is a bird sanctuary, pro-duck residents say.
Singer said he has asked for the reports about the injured child and has gotten nothing. “There is no backup to what they are saying,” he said, adding that the trapper is catching the ducks during the day and breaking their wings in front of children.
Of course, there’s no backup to that, either.
Read related: Eugene Flinn tries for Palmetto Bay mayor a third time with rematch
Cody says Muscovy ducks are exempt from sanctuary status and that the vigil was a political stunt. Singer, former Mayor Eugene Flinn — who lost against Cunningham in November — and others are “trying to boot strap it as an election issue for 2024,” he said.
The ducks can’t be relocated, Cody explained. “Federal law says they are a nuisance species. If you have an aggressive one, you have to euthanize,” he told Political Cortadito. He blames the people who feed the ducks for making them aggressive and said if people left them alone, they could stay.
He said there would be a workshop soon with the residents to see if they can find another way to address the issue.
“This is what should have happened before they started hunting the ducks,” said Michael Rosenberg, who founded the Pet’s Trust.
“I would encourage everyone attending that meeting to bring in well researched facts about the Muscovy ducks,” Rosenberg said, adding that there are studies that show that native species — runoff by the Muscovy ducks — are likely to return after they are gone.
Ladra would encourage a fence, maybe. To keep the people away from the ducks.
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As a Jewish person myself, I am well aware of the use by some animal activists of the idea of the Holocaust to describe animal killings.
It is a sensitive issue, to be sure, and perhaps this particular councilperson went a little too far in his comparison.
However, he – and other activists who use this as an analogy – are not entirely wrong. In fact, the first people to compare animal slaughter to the Holocaust were Holocaust survivors.
The Nazis are always described as treating their Jewish victims “like animals.” Herein lies the similarity: Whenever one group of people decides another group – whether people or animals – is not worthy of life and exterminates them on that basis, the attitude and the result is the same.
Isaac Bashevis Singer, the Nobel Laureate author (who was also an early animal rights supporter) often wrote of this theme in his Jewish writings. Other animal activists have built on his work, most notably Charles Patterson (whom I had the pleasure of meeting and spent an afternoon with) who wrote a book titled “Eternal Treblinka.” This book explores the similar attitudes and methods behind modern society’s treatment of animals and the way humans have often treated each other, most notably during the Holocaust.
The title itself is an hommage to Singer by Patterson (who was his friend and neighbor), from Singer’s own story “The Letter Writer” in which the character befriends a mouse and says to the mouse:
“What do they know-all these scholars, all these philosophers, all the leaders of the world – about such as you? They have convinced themselves that man, the worst transgressor of all the species, is the crown of creation. All other creatures were created merely to provide him with food, pelts, to be tormented, exterminated. In relation to them, all people are Nazis; for the animals it is an eternal Treblinka.”
Perhaps a reprimand of Councilman Singer would have been more in order, if anything.
I’m not sure it is a good idea to fire people who tell the truth.
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Steve Cody, you are single handed trying to destroy my brother’s life. As you stated, he took the post down. My siblings and I are children of a Holocaust survivor and in no way did David mean to dismiss or diminish the importance of the Holocaust. His post was on a small Facebook group, yet you have spread it all over social media and escalated an admittedly moment of poor judgement into an opportunity for 15 minutes of fame for yourself. Please leave my family alone.
If I had to decide who is worse, Singer or Cody. I’d probably go with Cody. Sure, Singer has a big mouth and tends to be dramatic. But he hasn’t actually passed bad checks to clients and been suspended from the Bar for the past 10 years. He pays his property taxes too unlike Cody, who acts like people shouldn’t care that he’s raising their taxes when, meanwhile, his house is in forclosure, and the bank was awarded a judgment for over $79,000 in escrow advances, at least part of which is many years of his property taxes.
There’s backup for all of that. This man shouldn’t be representing us.