by Ali Abunimah, reposted from The Electronic Intifada
A New York-based Zionist group that is taking credit for the Trump administration’s arrest of Columbia University student organizer Mahmoud Khalil may be raising funds without being registered as a charity, a violation of the law.
Betar USA is notorious for spreading hatred against Palestinians and has explicitly and directly incited the mass murder of Palestinian babies.
Until recently, this unsavory organization was led by Ross Glick, a man charged with crimes related to revenge porn, and convicted of harassment of the mother of his child.
Betar USA describes itself as “the North American arm of the international movement of Ze’ev Jabotinsky,” the Russian settler who inspired the violent anti-Palestinian ideology of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party.
In February, Palestinian journalist Laila al-Arian posted on Twitter/X a list of the names of hundreds of Palestinian babies killed in the Israeli genocide in Gaza before reaching their first birthday.
In a now-deleted tweet, Betar USA gave this blood-curdling response: “Not enough. We demand blood in Gaza.”
Betar is a 501(c)(3) non-profit that takes tax-deductible donations while openly flying the flag of Kahanism — a Jewish terrorist movement — and inciting violence outside mosques and protests.
— PVT (@propvstruth) March 11, 2025
The Kach party, labeled a terrorist group by the U.S. in 2004, was only delisted for… pic.twitter.com/T5xR0DhQie
The same month, Betar USA declared, “We do not want peace, we don’t seek peace with Palestinians. There’s no peace with Nazis.”
Betar USA openly supports the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their homeland.
Betar firmly supports the plan to remove Palestinians from Gaza. We urge these 350 esteemed Jewish “leaders” to welcome some local Palestinians into their home. Fake frauds. https://t.co/MZWtPPa8gl
— Betar Worldwide (@Betar_USA) February 14, 2025
The group is so explicit in its hatred of Palestinians that even the Anti-Defamation League, one of the leading anti-Palestinian lobby groups in the United States, has added Betar USA to its “extremism database.”
Yet Betar USA purports to be acting to make American campuses safer by targeting supporters of Palestinian rights.
“Dossiers”
“We have started commencing lists of Jew-hating foreign nationals on visas who support Hamas,” Ross Glick, the director of Betar USA, told The New York Post in November.
“We are strongly supportive of the Trump administration’s plan to deport jihadis who seek to destroy America. Our campuses and our streets are filled with violent people who hate Jews and cannot co-exist with Western society,” Glick added.
“In part by using artificial intelligence, the group has compiled dossiers on the most active protesters to submit to the Trump administration for deportation,” the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported in January.
Its list of “pro-Hamas” students targeted for deportation includes Khalil.
On 29 January, Betar USA posted a video of Khalil on Twitter/X and stated, “It’s 10 pm and ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] is aware of his home address and whereabouts.”
“We have provided all his information to multiple contacts. He’s on our deport list,” Betar USA added.
Since federal agents seized Khalil from his home on Saturday night, leaving his eight-month pregnant wife alone, Betar USA has taken credit for his arrest, calling it a “victory against terror.”
But it has been a victory for Betar USA’s terror against this student and his family. Khalil’s wife has said that even prior to his arrest, the harassment the family was experiencing had made their lives into a “nightmare.”
She described “an intense and targeted doxxing campaign” that involved “spreading false claims about my husband that were simply not based in reality.”
Amid the escalating harassment and threats, Khalil had also desperately sought protection from Columbia University, which failed to provide it and appears to be complicit in his arrest by the government.
The Trump administration’s public demonization of Khalil as supporting “terror” is only the start of a promised broad attack.
President Donald Trump has personally vowed that Khalil’s arrest is the first “of many to come.”
In fact, despite the government’s lurid accusations against Khalil, he has not been charged with any crime.
Rather, the Trump administration is claiming that Secretary of State Marco Rubio has the sole discretion to deport any non-citizen, including legal permanent residents, if he decides that their presence “would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.”
If successful, this would mark an unprecedented expansion of executive power, effectively canceling the First Amendment free speech rights of millions of green card holders and other non-citizens.
On Monday, a federal judge in New York, halted for the time being the government’s efforts to deport Khalil, but he remains in detention in Louisiana.
As thousands of Khalil’s supporters rallied outside the federal courthouse in Manhattan on Wednesday, US District Judge Jesse Furman ordered the government to allow Khalil’s lawyers to have more access to him.
But the judge did not rule on a request that Khalil be moved back to New York, closer to his family and legal team.
Thousands rallying in solidarity today in NYC outside Mahmoud Khalil’s court conference in Manhattan to demand his freedom from ICE detention and reaffirm everyone’s right to protest against the genocide of the Palestinian people 🇵🇸 pic.twitter.com/Ru8Q3eRoQt
— Gerard (@GerardDalbon) March 12, 2025
Unregistered fundraising
On its website, Betar USA asks for donations from the public “to combat the rising tide of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism sweeping across college campuses and communities in the United States.”
In 2024, Betar USA obtained tax-exempt charitable status from the US federal tax agency, the Internal Revenue Service.
Betar USA calls for donation checks to be mailed to a post office box in White Plains, New York.
As a New York-based charity, Betar USA is required to register with the state before it can solicit donations from the public.
But despite being based in New York, the organization cannot be found in the state’s charities database.
In a phone call with The Electronic Intifada on Wednesday, an employee at the New York State Charities Bureau confirmed that he could find no registration for Betar USA. The employee confirmed that if a New York-based charity is soliciting donations without being registered, it is violating the law.
Betar USA did not respond by a deadline to The Electronic Intifada’s request for comment.
The Electronic Intifada has also written to the office of New York Attorney General Letitia James asking for an investigation of why Betar USA appears to be soliciting donations even though it is not registered as required by law.
On Monday, James posted on Twitter/X that she is “extremely concerned about the arrest and detention of Mahmoud Khalil, an advocate and legal permanent resident of Palestinian descent.”
“My office is monitoring the situation, and we are in contact with his attorney,” James added.
Continue reading…I am extremely concerned about the arrest and detention of Mahmoud Khalil, an advocate and legal permanent resident of Palestinian descent.
— NY AG James (@NewYorkStateAG) March 10, 2025
My office is monitoring the situation, and we are in contact with his attorney.
Ali Abunimah is co-founder of The Electron Intifada and author of One Country: A Bold-Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse.
