New York AG settles with Jewish group she accused of intimidating pro-Palestinian activists

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NEW YORK (AP) — New York Attorney General Letitia James announced a settlement Tuesday with a right-wing Jewish group that she accused of trying to intimidate pro-Palestinian activists.

The group, Betar US, gained attention last year after claiming it had compiled the names of campus protesters against the war in Gaza and submitted them to Trump administration officials, urging deportation. It boasted of using facial recognition software to identify masked activists.

The agreement with New York authorities requires Betar to cease activities that threaten or intimidate Muslim, Jewish and Palestinian activists at protests and its frequent social media posts or face a $50,000 penalty.

In one incident noted by James’ office, a member of Betar last year repeatedly urged pro-Palestinian protesters at a New York campus to take beepers — a reference to Israel’s detonation of thousands of electronic pagers to kill and wound members of Lebanon’s Hezbollah militia.

“New York will not tolerate organizations that use fear, violence and intimidation to silence free expression or target people because of who they are,” James said in a written statement.

The chairman of Betar, Ronn Torossian, disputed allegations that his group had done anything illegal, including intimidation.

“You have people walking the streets vowing to murder Jews,” he said Tuesday. “So somebody can’t hand them a beeper that they buy on eBay, OK? We make no admission of guilt in this document.”

James accused Betar of carrying out “an alarming and illegal pattern of bias-motivated harassment,” against activists in the New York City area. The group has indicated plans to wind down its operations, her office said. Torossian said the New York entity was no longer active and that its successor was based elsewhere.

Betar identifies itself as part of a militant Zionist group founded a century ago in Eastern Europe and based in Israel. But the group chartered in New York, officially known as Betar Zionist Organization Inc. centered its activities on the metropolitan area, where members sometimes confronted pro-Palestinian activists at protests and it maintained an outspoken presence on social media.

The group’s claims that it had reported protesters to the Trump administration at first drew little attention. But they took on greater significance after U.S. immigration agents arrested several campus activists last March. A Homeland Security official later testified that the government targeted protesters using lists assembled by a doxing group, Canary Mission, as well as by Betar.

James said her office began looking into the group, chartered in a New York suburb, after receiving complaints that it had been threatening protesters. In Tuesday’s announcement, her office noted social media posts by Betar that it said were intended to incite hostility.

“We urge everyone to bring dogs, borrow a pit bull,” the group posted before a February 2025 protest in New York against the sale of land in the West Bank. “Feel free to mask up and wear a helmet. Jihadis are coming to attack synagogues.”

In another post last January, the group called for protesters to take off their head coverings, calling them “rape rags.”