Leaked Chats Show Pro-Israel Extremist Group Betar Organizing Street Confrontations
The secret chat logs include plans to burn Qurans and attack pro-Palestine protesters with pepper spray.
Founded as a paramilitary Zionist organization in 1923, Betar Worldwide has a prominent far-right chapter in the US that has aided the Trump administration’s deportation efforts by doxxing and agitating against pro-Palestine organizers. Betar US largely operates out of New York City, and in a video published and then deleted by their official X account, Betar’s members recently advertised their attempts to instigate a confrontation with the volunteers for Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral campaign.
Today’s story is the first we’re publishing by independent, NYC-based reporter Talia Jane, who teamed up with Murtaza Hussain to probe the secret strategizing of a group of influential pro-Israel activists affiliated with Betar.
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—Ryan Grim
Far-right activists, including members of Betar—a pro-Israel extremist group known for racist violence—have been running a constellation of WhatsApp group chats to plan counterprotests against pro-Palestine demonstrations and commit potential hate crimes against Muslims in New York City. The chats, shared with Drop Site by an anonymous member added to the groups by an organizer, illustrate a network of pro-Israel agitators coordinating street confrontations and provocations in New York City.
The chat logs show its members, including individuals publicly affiliated with Betar US, discussing a range of plans and ideas: to protest at mosques, burn Qurans to provoke confrontations, and coordinate buying pepper spray, lasers, and other illicit devices to confront pro-Palestine protests in New York City. The covert conversations took place over the past year as the city of New York became a flashpoint for conflict between pro-Palestine and pro-Israel demonstrators.
Betar US also appears to have had some coordination with local government, with one member stating that they were forwarding information to a local state assemblyman. In that same chat, others shared that they are collecting information on pro-Palestine activists to forward to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) as well as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). At least one active member of the chat claims on her public LinkedIn page to have been an NYPD cadet.
Betar US claims to have a sizable membership. However, actual membership, leadership structure, and activities remain opaque, with much of their public activity centering on a small group of far-right provocateurs inciting violence and hate against pro-Palestine protests and Muslims in New York City.
The group wields considerable political influence nonetheless. In recent months, Betar US has aided the Trump administration’s deportation program targeting student protesters, and claims to be providing names to Israel’s parliament of Jewish Americans to ban them from entering Israel. The group has offered bounties on prominent Palestinian activists, and boasted about harassing mosques. The group’s incitement earned them an “extremism” label by the ADL, a fellow pro-Israel organization with a separate history of targeting pro-Palestine activists. Based on public records and social media activity, it appears Betar US is largely, if not solely, active in New York City, with much of their energy centered on countering local pro-Palestine demonstrations while stoking conflict and anti-Muslim sentiment online.
Group chat members operate under their real names and phone numbers, the latter of which Drop Site has verified and redacted. After members learned portions of their conversations had been made public, they urged each other to change their names and phone numbers to obscure their identities before purging the chats. Drop Site obtained the chat contents prior to that purge.
While the chat logs obtained by Drop Site are not explicitly referred to as Betar US chats, numerous individuals within the chats have publicly identified themselves as members of Betar US—including the founder of a prominent NYC public relations firm, Ronn Torossian—or have been tagged in media published exclusively and originally to Betar US accounts.
Stephanie Benshimol is listed as an administrator for a group chat including several Betar US members called “United Zionists,” which is both a group chat and one of the skeleton organizations that often appears on counterprotest flyers originating from these group chat members. Benshimol recently appeared in a since-deleted video on social media attempting to instigate a confrontation with volunteers for New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani. The video was published exclusively to Betar US’s X account.
Condemning Optics, not Violence
In the chats, the topic of protesting mosques was frequently discussed. “We are most definitely marching in front of a mosque,” one individual identified as Andrew Zeidman said last summer. “Certain very pro trump pro america groups. would enjoy engaging goatfukkers,” he added, using a slur to refer to Muslims. “Hit them when their (sic) not expecting,” replied far-right activist D’Anna Andrea Morgan, who identifies herself as an NYPD cadet. Morgan is credited with creating and distributing a flyer for a protest against a mosque in Brooklyn.
The protest sought to harass a Muslim house of worship in retaliation for a protest against an illegal land sale event that took place at a synagogue earlier that month. It was widely condemned by local politicians, including mayor Eric Adams, who counts Betar founder Ronn Torossian as an associate. Self-proclaimed Betar US founder Ronn Torossian chimed in, noting that Betar would not endorse the protest, citing security reasons. “We are against mosque marches at this time. Unless we have more people its unsafe.” Betar US later claimed the flyer was fake and that no one “in our community” knows about it. After the flyer was made public, internal communications between Torossian and other chat members questioned how it got out. According to anonymous sources who spoke with Drop Site, the flyer was posted in a large Facebook group as well as shared with the NYPD by D’Anna Andrea Morgan, the flyer’s creator.
In addition to planning protests, the chats show members creating fake social media accounts to impersonate pro-Palestinian activists online, monitoring the locations of pro-Palestinian demonstrations, and researching the home addresses of activists.
In their internal chats, members and supporters of the group discuss ways of provoking street confrontations, including burning flags and Qurans at counterprotests against pro-Palestinian groups who had organized a rally after the killing of Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah. While discussing a demonstration to be held in Manhattan, after the idea of burning a Quran was raised, one member said “I’ll smoke a joint off a burning Quran! 🤣 👏”. Though the issue was met with interest by some, other members objected to the idea of burning Qurans, with one member saying “Since when do Jews burn books. I don’t think it does anything good.”
Members also shared advice on where to acquire pepper spray, as well as laser devices that could be used to blind individually. “Whatever color your like,” one member of the group advised about the lasers, “But you need to be careful they are border line illegal. You cant point in the sky.” To which another member of the chat replied, “But we can burn their eyes out? 🤣🤣🤣”.
Drop Site reached out to members of the “Lions” and “United Zionists” group chats for comment but did not receive a reply as of publication.
Ban Lists
Betar was originally founded in 1923 as a fascist paramilitary group in Europe, supporting the far-right wing of the Zionist movement during the early 20th century and aiding in the mass displacement of Palestinians prior to the establishment of the State of Israel.
Following the October 7th attacks, Betar US relaunched under the leadership of public relations agent Ronn Torossian, an associate of New York City mayor Eric Adams. Torossian was arrested in May 2024 after being “especially aggressive” toward a student carrying a sign in support of Palestinian liberation at Syracuse University. Torossian also harassed and attempted to blackmail Shai Davidai, a fellow pro-Israel activist and assistant professor at Columbia University who led in harassing and doxxing pro-Palestine student activists. The spat resulted in Torossian being banned from the World Zionist Congress and Betar being listed as an extremist group by the ADL.
In addition to its reported cooperation with the U.S. government finding names of pro-Palestine students for the government’s deportation program, Betar has claimed to have submitted separate lists of Jewish critics of Israel to the Israeli government in order to ban them from entry into the country. In a post on X this April, the group stated “We have submitted a list of names of Diaspora Jews who we recommend be banned from Israel to numerous Israeli government leaders.”
Betar claims numerous Israeli politicians and security officials are “friends” of the extremist group, insinuating they are facilitating these ban lists, including Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs Gideon Sa’ar, Minister of Diaspora Affairs Amichai Chikli and “many people in various goverment (sic) offices including the prime ministers office, shin bet and other intelligence agencies in the state of Israel.” Betar activists have also met with U.S. lawmakers to promote anti-BDS legislation
While it builds connections with lawmakers, Betar has engaged in street-level confrontations with Palestinian activists like those discussed in their internal group chats. The group has gained notoriety for stunts like handing out pagers to pro-Palestinian activists in New York, invoking the deadly Israeli pager attacks that targeted Hezbollah members in Lebanon last year. Betar has generally taken a combative and confrontational approach towards student protesters and anyone else seen as expressing a sympathetic approach towards the Palestinian cause in the U.S. This has been mirrored in its position on the war on Gaza. On social media, Betar has cheered civilian deaths of Palestinians, calling for “more blood in Gaza.”
Now, FINALLY, a group I could really get behind ICE deporting.
Evil people doing evil things. Comes to them naturally.