Just weeks before authorities arrested a Jewish extremist for plotting to firebomb her New York City home, Palestinian activist and Within Our Lifetime co-founder Nerdeen Kiswani sued a Zionist organization alleging an ongoing campaign of targeted harassment.
The lawsuit, which was filed by Kiswani on February 26 under the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, accuses Betar U.S., the American branch of the far-right Betar Zionist Organization of “stalking, harassment, intimidation, and civil rights violations directed at me and other activists.”
The legal action highlights just one aspect of the campaign targeting Kiswani, but also the wide network of Zionist organizations and elected officials that have promoted violence against Palestinians for decades.
“This assassination plot against me did not happen in a vacuum,” Kiswani told Mondoweiss. “It is a product of decades of organized violence, harassment, and dehumanization by a Zionist network, from the Jewish Defense League firebombing of Alex Odeh’s office in 1985, whose killers still roam free, to settler firebombings in the West Bank like the murder of Ali Dawabsheh, and the intimidation, bounties, and attacks by Betar and other extremist groups here in the United States.”
Betar USA
Alexander Heifler, the 26-year-old Hokoben, New Jersey man who is accused of planning an attack on Kiswani, belonged to a Jewish Defense League-inspired group called the JDL 613 Brotherhood.
The JDL 613 Brotherhood draws its inspiration, and its name from the Jewish Defense League. Founded in in 1968 by the racist, far-right Rabbi Meir Kahane, the JDL has been connected to dozens of violent acts and is classified as a terrorist organization by the FBI.
The Brooklyn-born Kahane was elected to the Israeli Knesset in 1984 on a platform of expelling the Arabs, but barred from running for reelection as a result of an anti-racism law. In 1990, he was assassinated by Egyptian-Amercan El Sayyid Nosair in New York City.
The JDL 613 Brotherhood’s website praises Kahane as a martyr.
“Rabbi Meir Kahane was more than a leader—he was a modern-day Maccabee, a rabbi who wielded both Torah and action to safeguard Am Yisrael,” it states. “In a world still plagued by antisemitism and existential threats, his message rings truer than ever: Jewish strength is our salvation. For Kahanists and all true lovers of Israel, Rabbi Kahane remains our guiding light. Never forget, never again!”
According to the group’s website, its nationwide network collaborates with organizations like Betar USA, the group that Kiswani is suing, “to amplify our impact.”
“These organizations, backed and tolerated by political figures and institutions, create an ecosystem where targeting Palestinian activists is normalized.”
Nerdeen Kiswani
Among the allegations in Kiswani’s complaint is Betar’s cash offer to anyone who will hand her a “beeper,” an obvious reference to Israel’s September 2024 attack on Lebanon, in which exploding electronic devices killed at least 12 to 14 people, and injured 3,000.
The lawsuit also alleges that the group repeatedly confronted her at pro-Palestine demonstrations and tracked her whereabouts, making it nearly impossible for her to freely travel throughout the city.
At a press conference Monday on the ongoing threats against the activist, Kiswani’s lawyers stressed that foiled assassination plot was just one part of a wider campaign and highlighted the Trump administration’s draconian crackdown on Palestine protest.
“[The] attack on Ms. Kiswani is no accident,” said attorney Eric Lee. “It’s not the product of bad apples. It’s the deliberate and intended product of a political strategy by the Trump administration to cultivate extra-legal parliamentary militia forces to murder its opponents and suppress dissent in the aim of establishing a dictatorship in this country.”
“While we are relieved that this attempt was foiled, it cannot be considered without its context,” Christopher Godshall-Bennett, another member of Kiswani’s legal team told Mondoweiss. “The threats against Nerdeen have not stopped. Betar and its collaborators, including those in public office, continue to encourage acts of violence against Nerdeen.”
Betar USA effectively rebooted its organization after October 7, adopting increasingly combative tactics against anti-genocide protestors. Prior to a February 2025 Brooklyn protest over an illegal Israeli land sale, the group encouraged counter-protestors to “wear masks and bring pitbulls.”
In early 2025, just weeks after Betar USA declared that it had sent the Trump administration a list of pro-Palestine students that it wanted deported, ICE arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian activist who had served as a mediator during the Gaza Solidarity Encampment at Columbia University. He was detained at an Texas immigration facility for months before his release on bail last June.
In November 2025, Khalil filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration demanding that it release all its communications with anti-Palestinian groups such as Betar USA.
“For months, shady organizations and individuals carried out a smear and harassment campaign designed to intimidate and silence me,” declared Khalil. “The public deserves full accountability for every bad actor who helped make that possible.”
In January, New York Attorney General Letitia James announced that an extensive investigation found that Betar had engaged in a campaign of intimidation and violence against individuals based on their religion and national origin. The settlement requires the organization to stop threatening protesters, or face a $50,000 penalty.
“These organizations, backed and tolerated by political figures and institutions, create an ecosystem where targeting Palestinian activists is normalized,” says Kiswani.
Lawmakers fan flames
In addition to groups like Betar and the JDL-inspired faction that Heifler belonged to, Kiswani has also been targeted by U.S. lawmakers, most notably Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL), who has a long history of Islamophobic and anti-Palestinian rhetoric.
In Feburary, after Kiswani made a light joke about dogs on Twitter, Fine tweeted, “The choice between dogs and Muslims is not a difficult one.” After news of the assassination plot broke, he posted a meme mocking her.
Locally, she has been consistently targeted by NYC Councilwoman Inna Vernikov, who initiated a smear campaign against Kiswani while she was a student organizer at Hunter College, where she helped push for a pro-BDS resolution that calls on CUNY to divest from Israel.
Kiswani gave a speech at the May 2022 CUNY Law commencement and said she almost didn’t make it through her three years at the school due to pro-Israel attacks.
“I’ve been facing a campaign of Zionist harassment by well-funded organizations with ties to the Israeli government and military on the basis of my Palestinian identity and organizing,” she told the crowd.
Vernikov, who went on to pull $50,000 from CUNY Law School over the BDS resolution, said that Kiswani’s commencement speech was “similar to displays of Nazi propaganda that can be found in Yad Vashem, Israel’s major Holocaust musuem.”
Vernikov began her political career as an aide to former state assemblymember Dov Hikind, a former member of the JDL who she’s repeatedly collaborated with on pro-Israel issues. In 2023, she was arrested for bringing a gun to a pro-Palestine rally.
Betar USA has continually praised Vernikov, who it calls “perhaps the only sane voice” in New York City.
“Inna Vernikov is a strong Zionist, the only one we know of in NYC politics,” tweeted the group in 2025. “She does this from conviction and [we’ve known] her many years. Nerdeen Kiswani hates her.”
The first hearing for Kiswani’s civil case against Betar is scheduled for April 14.
“This conspiracy is larger than the individual arrested and must be fully investigated and all those involve held to account,” said Godshall-Bennet.
