Far-right pro-Israel group Betar US to end activity in New York: NY AG says 

New York Attorney General Letitia James says that her office has reached a settlement with the pro-Israel group Betar US over the alleged harassment of pro-Palestinian activists that will see the far-right Zionist group gradually shutter its operations in the state.

James said in a statement on Tuesday that an investigation found that the group engaged in “widespread persecution” of Muslim, Arab, Palestinian, and Jewish New Yorkers.

“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.

“My office’s investigation uncovered an alarming and illegal pattern of bias-motivated harassment and violence designed to terrorize communities and shut down lawful protest.”

Betar US gained a reputation among pro-Palestinian activists as an especially aggressive example of groups that use surveillance and harassment to stifle critics of Israel.

The far-right group also gained attention on social media, where it relished attacks on its enemies and embraced the language of vengeance and retribution.

“Not enough,” the group said in a deleted social media post responding to a list of Palestinian children killed in Gaza.

“We demand blood in Gaza!”

The statement from James’s office says that the group is seeking to dissolve its not-for-profit corporation, has indicated it is “winding down” operations in New York state, and will cease harassing individuals exercising their constitutional rights.

James said the group will be forced to pay a suspended $50,000 penalty if it violates the settlement.

Several hours after the announcement, and in response to a statement by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani that the group had “sowed a campaign of hatred across New York”, Betar referred to the city’s first Muslim mayor as “Jihad Mamdani” and linked to a website calling him “an enemy to the West and Zionism”.

“Pro-Israel groups have become so blatant in their actions that governments can’t turn a blind eye,” Raed Jarrar, the advocacy director at the pro-human rights group DAWN, told Al Jazeera by phone.

“What we need to see next is for other states and federal authorities to follow through on actions like this.”

Betar previously stated that it had handed lists of pro-Palestine foreign students over to the Trump administration for possible deportation, adding that it had used facial recognition and “sophisticated databases” to compile lists of those involved in campus activism against Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

An official from the Department of Homeland Security later testified that the information provided by the group had been used, along with lists from the pro-Israel doxxing group Canary Mission, to target activists.

The Trump administration has arrested, detained, and sought to deport scores of foreign students for their involvement in pro-Palestine activism, including a Turkish graduate student named Rumeysa Ozturk at Tufts University who was imprisoned for co-signing an essay calling for the university to divest from companies involved in Palestinian rights abuses.

“They were one of many different organisations that act as attack dogs against people who speak up for Palestine,” Yousef Munayyer, a senior fellow at the Arab Center Washington DC, told Al Jazeera, listing other groups such as Canary Mission and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).

“They distinguished themselves by being very brash and combative. They’ve been willing to use the most extreme language, the most extreme actions, and to take part in direct confrontations on the streets,” he said.

Munayyer drew a parallel to earlier extremist groups, such as the Jewish Defense League (JDL), founded in New York City during the late 1960s by the Jewish anti-Arab hardliner Meir Kahane.

The JDL embraced violent street action and would go on to carry out numerous armed attacks on opponents, earning it a designation as a right-wing terrorist organisation by the US government in the early 2000s.

Betar also draws inspiration from the Zionist hardliner Ze’ev Jabotinsky, who called for an unapologetically militant version of Zionism and advocated the violent expulsion of Palestinians from lands sought for a Jewish state.

“Prime Minister Netanyahu’s late father, Benzion was longtime secretary to Ze’ev Jabotinsky, and Netanyahu is one of Jabotinsky’s greatest students,” Betar said in a social media post on Tuesday, stating that it denied “all allegations of wrongdoing”.

“Betar is mainstream Zionism,” it added.