Parkland Sheriff Scott Israel At Center Of Alt-Right Hoax After Shooting

Sheriff Scott Israel Image by Getty

By Ari Feldman March 23, 2018

Sheriff Scott Israel, of Parkland, Florida, has found himself at the center of a hoax perpetuated by the far right, POLITICO reported. Israel came into the national spotlight after the shooting, which left 17 people dead. Israel’s police department has been accused of ignoring the warning signs that the shooter, Nikolas Cruz, was a threat.

The hoax centers around three videos from 2012. In the videos, a woman accuses Israel of impregnating her when she was 17 and then forcing her to get an abortion. In the wake of the shooting, the videos quickly made the rounds on far right social media sites, racking up more than 13,000 views. The videos were also shared by the conspiracy theory blog the Gateway Pundit.

But the videos are fake — they were made during a particularly bruising 2012 sheriff campaign, in which Israel defeated the Republican incumbent Al Lamberti. The woman, reached by POLITICO, said she had been paid $25 for each video through the freelancing site Fiverr, where she made thousands of video testimonials for all kinds of products. It’s not clear who paid the woman to make the videos.

“Oh my God,” said the woman, who asked to remain anonymous. “How do I get this off YouTube?”

Google, the parent company of YouTube, declined to take the videos down, despite the fact that they were completely false. Israel’s campaign staff tried and failed in 2012 and again in 2016 to have the videos removed.

Contact Ari Feldman at [email protected] or on Twitter @aefeldman

Ari Feldman is a staff writer at the Forward. He covers Jewish religious organizations, synagogue life, anti-Semitism and the Orthodox world. If you have any tips, you can email him at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @aefeldman.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

The coming year promises to be filled with more complex and historic developments. We are entering an era where independent, fact-based Jewish journalism will be more important than ever. We need to be ready for whatever 2025 will bring, and with your help, we can be.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO