The militant pro-Israel group Betar US is taking aim at the Anti-Defamation League after the Jewish civil rights group added Betar to its extremism database last week.
In response, Betar said it had added the ADL to its own “list of extremist, radical organizations,” and claimed without evidence that two-thirds of ADL staff “supports a Free Palestine!”
Those claims, part of an anti-ADL blitz across social media and far-right platforms including Infowars, came after Betar had attempted to confront a gathering of establishment Jewish groups. Last week in Tel Aviv, Betar’s founder Ronn Torossian barged into a meeting of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, an umbrella group that includes the ADL, and was removed by security.
Torossian said in an interview that he would repeat his interruption “again and again.” Referring to the local Jewish federations that underwrite much of American Jewish life, he said, “We urge Jews in America to disrupt federation events and rage.”
William Daroff, the Conference of Presidents’ CEO, recounted that “an individual suddenly burst into the hotel meeting room, shouting loudly and incoherently about the Betar Movement” while the father of a soldier killed on Oct. 7 was addressing the group.
Daroff said the speaker, Rabbi Doron Perez, “seized the opportunity to address how some have lost sight of the importance of conducting disputes with dignity and respect for differing opinions, resorting instead to inappropriate behavior and disruptive outbursts against fellow Jews.”
The incident reflects a deepening clash between two approaches to fighting antisemitism among American Jews.
The ADL, like other large Jewish advocacy groups, has focused on monitoring, education, coalition-building and condemnations to fight anti-Jewish bigotry and support Israel — frequently drawing criticism from activists on the left and right.
A handful of newer groups, by contrast, have embraced methods like online doxxing, incendiary rhetoric and confronting antisemitic and anti-Israel activists on the street. Betar US has been at the forefront of this approach — and has increasingly taken aim even at more restrained Jewish groups it views as inadequately assertive.
In a statement, the group said it had been thrown out of the Conference of Presidents event after asking the ADL’s chair about Betar. “She wouldn’t comment and explain on what grounds ADL has labeled Betar a ‘radical hateful’ organization,” the group said. “They have never even spoken to us.”
CEO 5W Public Relations Ronn Torossian speaks during 5WPR 15th Anniversary Event at Catch Rooftop on June 14, 2017 in New York City. In 2024 Torossian relaunched the Zionist group Betar in the United States. (Eugene Gologursky/Getty Images for DuJour)
Torossian condemned the ADL in an interview, retorting that it was “a radical extremist organization.” He added that the ADL’s decision to add Betar to its extremism glossary “means the ADL has become anti-Zionists. The ADL is a radical woke organization.”
The ADL’s “Glossary of Extremism and Hate” includes hundreds of entries, ranging from large Middle East terror groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah to an array of domestic white supremacist groups to an entry last updated in 2017 on Rabbi Meir Kahane’s Jewish Defense League, a tactical forebearer of Betar. Betar has in recent days approvingly shared video of Jewish celebrities, including comedian Michael Rapaport and influencer Lizzy Savetsky, praising Kahane.
An ADL spokesperson would not say why Betar was added to the glossary now, two weeks after the group declined to comment about Betar to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. But the glossary entry details an array of extremist practices.
“Betar USA encourages Jewish people to ‘fight back’ in the streets against antisemitism with ‘aggressive in-person protests,’” the ADL’s entry reads. “It has posted footage of these actions online alongside inciting images of baseball bats.”
The ADL entry also condemned Betar for what it said was a willingness to associate with the Proud Boys, a far-right group. Earlier this month Betar shared the phrase “Stand back stand by,” an instruction President Donald Trump gave the Proud Boys during a 2020 presidential debate that the group then adopted as a slogan. Betar added, “Tag some proud boys who oppose jihad and Sharia law!” In another post Betar invited Proud Boys to work with them “to counter Islamic jihadis.”
The ADL also dinged Betar for repeating phrases popularized by Kahane; for recently posting video of someone “shouting Islamophobic slurs outside of a mosque with the caption, ‘We protest mosques’”; for handing out “beepers” to “anti-Israel individuals”; and for aggressively confronting and threatening to deport Muslim and Arab protesters. The ADL also cited Betar’s “vandalism,” burning and tearing down of Palestinian flags, and encouraging their supporters to wear masks.
Betar US was launched last fall by Torossian, a public relations executive, as a reboot of the Betar movement he grew up in, founded by Revisionist Zionist thinker Ze’ev Jabotinsky. In a few short months the group has prompted blowback from several universities for intimidating campus tactics including the “beeper” stunts highlighted by the ADL, as well as from pro-Israel activists like Shai Davidai, a Columbia professor whose feud with the group has sharply escalated in recent weeks.
A scene from a pro-Israel counterprotest to a pro-Palestinian demonstration outside a synagogue in Borough Park, Brooklyn, that was endorsed by Betar US and includes a Jewish Defense League flag. (Screenshot via X)It has also attracted attention for claiming to have built a database of foreign-born students who have expressed support for terror groups like Hamas, for the purpose of reporting them to the Trump administration for deportation.
The ADL spokesperson emphasized that the glossary is of limited scope, saying, “It is important to note that inclusion in the Glossary is not a ‘classification as an extremist group’ and ADL does not maintain a formal list of hate groups.”
Still, it is clear that Betar is taking its inclusion in the ADL’s glossary as a provocation.
“This is a condemnation of Zionism,” the group said about its inclusion in the database. “Adl is threatened by the fact that Betar speaks truth and has thousands of people on the streets in cities worldwide from Paris to NYC, Berlin to Los Angeles and we are Jews who fight back.”
The ADL’s addition of Betar to its extremism glossary came as the group played a role in brawls in the heavily Jewish Brooklyn neighborhood of Borough Park last week. There, pro-Palestinian demonstrators gathered to condemn Israel — and Jewish counter-protesters gathered to oppose them. Betar celebrated its role in the pro-Israel counterprotest, tweeting, “By any means necessary we told you.”
Like several other Jewish leaders, ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt condemned the pro-Palestinian demonstration in Borough Park. But he also expressed umbrage at counter-protesters who affiliated themselves with Kahane and the Jewish Defense League.
“It is also odious that some counter-protestors, unaffiliated with the Boro Park community, showed up with Kahanist flags and reciprocated the violent chants of the pro-Hamas protestors with their own calls for violence,” Greenblatt tweeted. “When agitators encourage violence and bigotry, nobody wins.”
Betar joins a growing list of people and groups to have declared war on the ADL, including Elon Musk, who battled the group over its criticism of hate speech on his social media platform X and, more recently, progressive groups angry over the group’s support for Israel and its decision not to condemn a Nazi-like salute delivered by Musk. During Trump’s first term, the ADL likewise drew criticism from left and right.
This weekend, Betar shared a video of Steve Bannon, the Trump ally who delivered his own version of what appeared to be a Nazi salute at a conservative conference last week. Alongside a video in which Bannon says the biggest enemy to the Jewish people are “progressive Jewish billionaires,” the group tweeted, “Steve Bannon tells the truth. These are the adl types. Enemies to our people.”
