Nerdeen Kiswani plot: Has anti-Arab lynching arrived in the US?

New York City police arrested a member of a Jewish Defense League group known as JDL 613, for plotting to assassinate a Palestinian-American leader. The suspect is Alexander Heifler, whose Linkedin account lists his employment as a machine learning engineer at CVS Health, a major healthcare company. He joined a chat group and told of his plan to murder Nerdeen Kiswani, the founder of the Palestine solidarity group, Within Our Lifetime (WOL).

An undercover New York Police Department agent infiltrated the group and contacted Heifler. He offered to help him execute the attack on Kiswani’s home using multiple Molotov cocktails.  Just before the weapons were ready, law enforcement raided his home and arrested him.

JDL 613, whose motto is ‘JDL 613 Brotherhood: The revival of JDL,’ features social media content replete with Islamophobic incitement to violence. The influence of JDL founder, Meir Kahane (“Kahane was right”) features prominently throughout. The rhetoric echoes that of Kahanist ministers in the current Israeli government. They include far-right police minister, Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, the settlement minister.

Last January, JDL 613 posted this scurrilous attack on Kiswani via their X account, which was later taken down: ‘you and your baby are disgusting and vile scum neither of you should exist in the usa’.

The group’s visual iconography reflected on its Instagram account, mirrors Nazi imagery which featured prominently muscular Aryan youths in heroic poses.

A few months ago, Kiswani also filed a lawsuit against another Kahanist group, Betar USA, which was accused of intimidation, stalking, and racially motivated threats that lasted weeks.

The two groups form a network of Kahanist conspirators driven to commit acts of violence against pro-Palestine figures. This is also inspired by a genocidal hatred of Palestinians that has been widespread in Israeli society since October 7.

Jewish communal groups have been largely silent about the planned attack. One exception was the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, that issued a statement unsurprisingly condemning both the victim, Kiswani and the attack against her: ‘While we adamantly disagree with Nerdeen Kiswani’s inflammatory rhetoric and her organization’s tactics, we condemn in the strongest possible terms the reported plot against her.’

Neither the Anti-Defamation League nor the American Jewish Committee responded to my request for comment. Their silence is deafening. It suggests the ambivalence of communal leaders regarding anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian violence. In fact, a number of right-wing US Jewish groups fundraise to provide legal representation to Israeli Jewish terror suspects.

Communal leadership is further compromised by its unshakable allegiance to Israel, despite its  crimes of genocide, apartheid and ethnic cleansing. For the vast majority of Jews, these acts are desecrations of Jewish values. Nevertheless, a leadership which cannot condemn such unspeakable acts makes every Jew a potential target for counter-violence.

US Islamophobia

The US has a decades-long history of Islamophobia. A Georgetown “Super Survey” digest of multiple polls found that four in ten Americans had an unfavourable view of Islam.  Another poll found that US media coverage of Muslims has grown increasingly negative since 9/11. By 2014, 75% of media reports were unfavourable. Half viewed Islam as “more violent” than other religions.

Muslim-Americans have been subjected to repeated acts of violence (including murder) from Islamophobic hate groups. The Council on Arab-Islamic Relations (CAIR) documented 600 anti-Muslim hate crimes in 2023, including the killing of a six-year-old Palestinian boy stabbed to death in Illinois.

In 2017, two men intervened in an attack on two Muslim women in Portland. They were stabbed to death. Additionally, there have been scores of arson attacks against mosques throughout the country.

The director of the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), Alex Odeh, was assassinated in 1985 by a bomb planted by JDL members. They escaped the US and fled to Israel, which has refused to extradite them. Similarly, Heifler’s plan after the bombing was to flee to Israel.

More recently, Trump’s presidency has elicited a tidal wave of anti-Muslim hate. The ICE deportation campaign has swept up thousands of Muslim immigrants. Trump has prohibited entry to the country for travellers from several Muslim countries. Cries against Islam ring out in the halls of Congress. MAGA portrays Muslims as terrorists, rather than hard-working Americans.

US Representative Randy Fine posted on X that: ‘If they force us to choose, the choice between dogs and Muslims is not a difficult one,’. He also referenced Kiswani.

It's the height of hypocrisy to paint Muslims as terrorists, while ignoring the plain fact that they are incredibly vulnerable to violence and hate.

Aside from Heifler’s plot, there have been few such domestic terror attacks by American Jews since the 1970-1990 era of JDL founder, Meir Kahane. But many of his US disciples have emigrated to Israel. There, they have founded extremist settlements, become Judeo-terrorists, and carried out mass attacks on Palestinians.

The “613” in JDL 613 refers to the number of commandments in Jewish law.  It indicates the group’s members are Orthodox Jews. The latter tend to be far more extremist and right-wing than the American Jewish mainstream. Many of Kahane’s followers were Orthodox and they formed the backbone of the settler movement and later, its most extreme element, the Hilltop Youth.

President Biden removed the JDL from the US terror watch list in 2022, presuming that it no longer existed. However, it never went away as shown by the existence of Betar USA and JDL 613. In 2017, JDL Canadian thugs travelled to an AIPAC national conference in Washington, D.C. and severely beat an elderly Arab-American man. Only after witnesses demanded that they pursue the perpetrators did the police arrest them. The Justice Department later prosecuted them.

Media bias in reporting

American media also participate in the othering of Muslim-Americans. The New York Times report on the plot against Kiswani wrote on Within Our Lifetime that, ‘[t]he organization has become known in New York for its at times inflammatory rhetoric and disruptive tactics, including a demonstration that led the Police Department to shut down Grand Central Terminal.’

Considering that the founder of WOL is the victim of an assassination attempt, the phrases in the Times story are pejorative and indicate clear bias.

The civil rights, LGBT rights, and environmental movements have used virtually the same tactics. Despite their approach being labelled historically as “disruptive,”  today they are acknowledged as brave and courageous. Leaders like Martin Luther King and Harvey Milk are heroic pioneers who gave their lives for the cause.

One of the claims against WOL is that it supported the 7 October Hamas attacks on Israel, and that it supports violent resistance against Israeli Occupation. Certainly, the same charges were levelled by the white majority against the African National Congress. As were also directed at the Jewish terror group, Lehi, by the British. Not to mention the American rebels who fought for independence against Great Britain. Today, all of them are recognised heroes and founders of their countries.

Israel is permitted to commit genocide in Gaza, invade and occupy Lebanon and Syria, and attack Iran, while their victims, defending their homelands, are terrorists. Who is the real terrorist? Nerdeen Kiswani or the IDF?

Yet, for some reason, Palestinians, faced with a genocide in Gaza, have no such right to defend themselves from occupiers and invaders. Presumably, they are expected to protest peacefully as their homes are destroyed and children are murdered by F-35s, drone strikes and artillery shells. The hypocrisy should shock us, but unfortunately, it doesn’t.

Richard Silverstein writes the Tikun Olam blog and is a freelance journalist specialising in exposing secrets of the Israeli national security state. He campaigns against opacity and the negative impact of Israeli military censorship.

Follow Richard on X: @richards1052

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Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab, its editorial board or staff.