Betar: Who is the far-right Jewish-American group calling for 'blood in Gaza?'

Over the past several weeks, an ultra right-wing Zionist group called "Betar USA" has been creating a stir across the US with its brazen calls for the murder of Palestinians. 

The group - which describes itself as "loud, proud, aggressive and unapologetically Zionist" - has drawn the ire of both pro-Palestine activists as well as the mainstream Jewish-American establishment for its hostile approach.

"We aren’t the nice, polite Jews, we are the loud, proud Zionists. We are online and offline and we are direct, clear and proud Betarim," the website reads.

Betar USA has trolled pro-Palestine activists and advocates, including Jewish Americans, vandalised property, and has openly called for vigilante-type action against student protesters as well as for the destruction of Gaza.

Whereas the brazenness of the US-based group - a year and a half into what has been called genocide in Gaza - has left some stunned, others say Betar is only a reflection of Zionism in its most naked, visceral form that has taken root in Palestine.

Betar USA may have been in the news of late, but the group is part of a larger organisation that began more than 100 years ago and is partially responsible for shaping the far-right movement in Israel.

Middle East Eye examines the history of the group, its recent so-called reboot in the United States, and why they are fanning the flames of violence against anyone who advocates for Palestine.

What is Betar?

The group was formed by the right-wing Zionist ideologue Ze'ev Jabotinsky during a visit to Latvia in 1923.

Though it's commonly referred to as Betar, the group's formal name is Brit Yosef Trumpeldor, after a Jewish settler who was killed in a firefight with Palestinians in 1920 at a Jewish settlement called Tel Hai in northern Palestine.

The word "Betar" means "fortress" in Hebrew but is more significantly an amalgamation of the letters of the group's formal name. 

Trumpeldor's "defence" of the settlement entered him into folklore as a Zionist hero, even as details around the battle itself are disputed.

Nonetheless, Jabotinsky used the tale of Trumpeldore to create a youth paramilitary organisation that sought to engineer an unapologetic, muscular Jewish identity in the pursuit towards building a Jewish home in Palestine.

Before long, the group would take root in Eastern Europe, particularly in his native Poland, where it would become a hub of right-wing Zionism.

Betar leaned into rich benefactors, opposed socialism, and relied on militarism and authoritarianism as its modus operandi. 

In his book, Jabotinsky's Children: Polish Jews and the Rise of Right-Wing Zionism, David Heller writes that despite the antisemitism of the right-wing movements in Europe, many Polish Jews admired the right wing and looked to replicate fascist techniques in building its own movement in Palestine.

Heller writes that Betar was instrumental in "shaping the attitudes of right-wing Zionists toward the roles that authoritarianism and violence could play in their quest to build a Jewish state".

"They deemed rifles, not ploughs or shovels, to be the most important tools to fulfill Zionism’s goals." 

In the period between the two world wars, Betar became one of the largest Zionist youth movements in the world, with a membership said to be around 70,000.

Jabotinsky was adamant that the new state in Palestine would need a "new Jew" - one who would be willing to fight for the Jewish state. Every member had to receive military training, with those making their way to Palestine to enlist for two years with Betar brigades there. 

Jabotinsky also asked members to take the Ha-Neder, "the oath".

"I devote my life to the rebirth of the Jewish State, with a Jewish majority, on both sides of the Jordan," one part of the oath reads.

In Palestine, Betar was involved in facilitating the immigration of Jews from Europe.

'The American Jewish infrastructure has spent many years building a facade that date back to the civil rights movement'

- an independent Jewish organiser

When Britain placed a limit on Jewish migration to Palestine in 1939, Betar continued to bring Jews into the territory illegally.

On its website, Betar USA says the group "were active instigators of disturbances and violence, frequently bombing Arab civilian areas in response to attacks and waging guerilla warfare against the British".

Betar later integrated into the Zionist militia group, the Irgun, which became part of the Israeli army when the state of Israel was formed in 1948.

Whereas so-called left-wing Zionists officially opposed Betar, often referring to the group as "fascist", Israel has had several heads of state who emerged out of Betar, including Menachem Begin.

What is Betar USA?

Betar USA was formed originally in 1929.

Though there are reports the group maintained some activity in New York City and Cleveland, Ohio, it is unclear to what extent the group was active, given it was off the radar for several decades.

According to several reports, the US chapter of Betar was revived in June 2023 by Israeli-American entrepreneur Ronn Torossian, a donor to the Trump campaign, and pro-Israel Congressman Ritchie Torres.

It became a US tax-exempt nonprofit in July 2024. According to its website, it currently has chapters in New Orleans, Dallas, New York, and Washington, DC, but Betar's current membership numbers are unclear.

Outside of the GoFundMe link on their website, MEE has not been able to ascertain how the group finances itself. 

Betar says it is inspired by the ideals of Jabotinsky and claims to be driven by the ambition “to empower Jews to stand strong, speak out, and defend their heritage and Israel against all threats”.

These include "taking action where others won't", the group says on its website, adding that, "In a world where many Jewish organizations remain passive, Betar stands out as a movement of action. We don't wait for others to step up - we lead."

In practise, much of their work has revolved around targeting and issuing threats to pro-Palestine advocates or Jewish Americans who are seen as insufficiently aggressive against Palestinians.

The group grabbed headlines during the pro-Palestine student encampments in October 2024 at the University of California-Los Angeles, where pro-Palestine students were attacked by Jewish-Zionist students.

Betar was accused of encouraging violence against students holding a sukkot encampment - named after a Jewish holiday - for Palestine.

"We demand police remove these thugs now and if not, we will be forced to organize groups of Jews to do so,” the group had said.

In November, when Israeli football hooligans attacked Dutch nationals in Amsterdam, it was the World Betar Movement that helped to reframe the incident as one reminiscent of a "pogrom" against Jews.

Since then, Betar USA has been involved in a series of attacks on pro-Palestine protesters, both on the street and online.

While the group has looked to bait and agitate critics of Israel, it has made it a deliberate point of linking Muslim activists with "terrorism".

In late January, Betar said it would pay anyone who gave a beeper - in reference to the exploding pagers purportedly used by Israeli operatives in Lebanon in September 2024 - to prominent NYC-based Palestinian activist, Nerdeen Kiswani, chair of Within our Lifetime (WOL).

Betar said on X it would give "1800 dollars to anyone who hands that jihadi a beeper".

Earlier this month, Betar admitted to compiling and sending lists of international students participating in pro-Palestine protests to Trump for potential deportation.

It has also been accused of chanting hate speech outside a Bangladeshi mosque in Kensington, Brooklyn, and attacking pro-Palestine protesters who were demonstrating against the illegal sale of land in the occupied West Bank in a Jewish Orthodox neighbourhood in Brooklyn.

According to organisers of the protest, Pal-Awda, pro-Palestine protesters were “spat on, kicked, harassed, maced, physically struck and punched by Zionists". 

And just as had happened after the incident in Amsterdam last November, Betar looked to depict scuffles as an example of a "pogrom" against Jews. New York lawmakers immediately followed Betar's lead by labelling the incident an act of hate against Jews.

The group has also targeted Jewish-American critics of Israel.

In January, it threatened to disrupt an event featuring Jewish-American scholar Norman Finkelstein at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. 

Days later, a member of the group slipped a pager into Finkelstein's pocket at a traffic light in NYC. 

Earlier in February, Betar threatened violence against Jewish-American author Peter Beinart over an essay he published in The New York Times that critiqued Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state.

Beinart said despite having faced hostility for his views in the past, "this felt like a magnitude beyond anything I've experienced before".

Betar USA has also gone after Shai Davidai, a Jewish professor at Columbia University and avowed supporter of Israel, because he reportedly expressed discomfort with the group's tactics. Betar said they had targeted him because he supported the Boycott Divestment Sanction (BDS) campaign against Israel.

Davidai himself has been at the forefront of a campaign to target pro-Palestinian protesters at Columbia.

"It's fair to say that Betar shares a hard-headed, militaristic perspective that is in sync with the push for maximalist Israeli military action in Gaza - for example, at the expense of entering into a ceasefire that includes the return of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners," David Myers, distinguished professor & Sady and Ludwig Kahn chair in Jewish history at the University of California, Los Angeles, told MEE.

How have Jewish Americans responded?

Betar claims to be the home of Jews who wish to fight back against antisemitism, but it's unclear how much support the group enjoys among the Jewish-American community.

Over the past few weeks, the group has been condemned by several Jewish-American groups across the political spectrum, from the pro-Israel Anti-Defamation League (ADL) to the anti-Zionist Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP). 

The ADL, which itself has faced mountains of criticism for being part of an anti-Palestinian and Islamophobic ecosystem, included Betar in its database of groups that subscribe to extremist or hateful ideologies.

"The US chapter of Betar, which was revived in June 2023, adopts the far-right Kahanist slogan calling for Jewish armament, 'Every Jew, a .22', openly embraces Islamophobia and harasses Muslims online and in person," the ADL said.

"The group has indicated that they would like to work with the Proud Boys, a far-right extremist group with a history of antisemitism and Islamophobia, to 'counter Islamic jihadis'," it added.

Likewise, a spokesperson for JVP described Betar USA as "a fringe far-right extremist group that openly advocates for violence and targets all people committed to Palestinian freedom and social justice".

Betar "wants to seem bigger and more powerful than they are, but they are an extremist fringe group that the majority of the Jewish community actively opposes," a spokesperson for JVP told MEE.

Betar did not reply to several requests from MEE for comment.

However, others in the Jewish community told MEE that Betar's positions were representative of many of the policy positions of the Zionist-Jewish community in the US.

The repulsion towards Betar, they say, is over style and not substance, and appears to be a manifestation of the original dispute between the labour-Zionist movement in Palestine and far-right Zionist supporters or followers of Jabotinsky who preferred to take a harder line when it came to colonising Palestine.

"Our peace-mongers are trying to persuade us that the Arabs are either fools, whom we can deceive by masking our real aims, or that they are corrupt and can be bribed to abandon to us their claim to priority in Palestine, in return for cultural and economic advantages," Jabotinsky explained in his book, The Iron Wall in 1923.

An independent Jewish organiser, who asked to remain anonymous over fear of reprisals, told MEE that Betar appeared to be receiving pushback from mainstream Jewish groups because it had dared to express itself in a way that "isn't as covert as these larger organisations would like it to be".

"The American Jewish infrastructure has spent many years building a facade that dates back to the civil rights movement," the organiser said.

The organiser said that with discourse over the rights of the colonised and oppressed becoming more "mainstream", many American-Zionist Jews understood they had to couch their colonial ambitions in Palestine in politically correct language.

"Betar undermines that [approach]. I don't think they [the groups] disagree with their messaging or the rhetoric," the organiser added.

Despite the sentiments of young American Jews - especially on campuses - to put an end to Israel's occupation as well as its war on Gaza, the polls show there are many American Jews who have been amenable to Israel's actions in Gaza.

A poll in April 2024 found that 77 percent of Jewish adults, including a majority in every age group, felt that Hamas’s reasons for fighting Israel were invalid.

Only one in ten American Jews, 35 years and older, found Hamas's reasons as valid.

In contrast, the same poll found that 89 percent of Jewish Americans felt that "Israel’s reasons for fighting Hamas were valid - far more than the 58 percent of all US adults who say this".

Only organisations disinterested in moderating their positions, like the Zionist Organisation of America (ZOA), have come out in support of Betar.

The ZOA has opposed a ceasefire and supported Trump's "ethnic cleansing plan" in Gaza and defended Betar against the criticisms from the ADL and others. Other groups like the American Jewish Committee (AJC) have neither opposed Trump's plan for Gaza nor Betar USA's approach.

"Betar and Kahanist groups aren’t deviations from Zionism, they are its most honest expressions," Kiswani, from WOL, wrote on X.

"The so-called “moderates” built the settlements, armed the militias, and laid the groundwork. The difference? Betar and Kahanists don’t bother with liberal pretense," Kiswani added.

Other observers said that the group has not seen adequate censure or action from authorities despite the threats of violence from their online accounts, nor have they faced any punitive action for their calls for violence. 

"The sad reality is that the racist fascists of Betar are deeply embedded in the politics of our city and state," Munir from the Palestinian Youth Movement in New York, told MEE.

"Ron Torossian is a donor to Ritchie Torres and an associate of Eric Adams, and also the president of Betar USA.

"They’re donors to the politicians who determine how the police violence is deployed, which groups are considered hate groups, and what acts of aggression are worthy of prosecution (which is always a political decision)," Munir said.