After 2 years of pro-Hamas riots, NY AG announces shutdown of pro-Israel group

The only actual violence that AG James describes by Betar took place when Hamas supporters came to hold a hate rally at a synagogue.

By Daniel Greenfield, Frontpage Magazine

After two years of pro-Hamas riots that included multiple assaults on Jewish New Yorkers, streets being blocked off and synagogues terrorized, including a mob chanting “We support Hamas” outside a synagogue last week, New York’s Attorney General Letitia James finally acted by… forcing the shutdown of Betar, a pro-Israel activist group, accusing it of “widespread persecution of Muslim, Arab, Palestinian(s).”

Attorney General Letitia James, an ally of Mamdani, claimed that Betar’s activism is “driven by broad hostility and animus toward several protected groups, in violation of New York civil rights laws.”

Her evidence of this was that “members repeatedly referred to keffiyehs—traditional Palestinian scarves—as ‘rape rags’ and claimed that Muslims ‘hate America.’”

Betar publicly circulated content celebrating violence against Palestinians, including social media posts mocking civilian deaths, declaring hatred toward Gazans, and calling for further bloodshed.”

Whatever one thinks of these remarks by ‘members’ (which is not the same thing as the position of an organization), they’re constitutionally protected, unlike the support for illegal terrorist organizations and the assaults on individuals and police officers by members of pro-Hamas groups.

Not to mention Antifa.

AG James has refused to take action against any of the Muslim and leftist groups behind the violence and the riots but has shut down a Jewish group whose tone may have been confrontational that advocated fighting back against those groups.

Here’s the specific text of James’ ‘legal’ document. “For example, Betar members repeatedly referred to keffiyehs as “rape rags” in public and private.

Keffiyehs are a traditional Middle Eastern headscarf that has become identified with Palestinian identity.

One member stated on an internal Betar WhatsApp chat that all devout Muslims “hate America.” Echoing these sentiments, Betar’s chairman wrote that they harass “Muslim terrorists.”

AG James obviously has a real problem with that last part.

The James press release claimed that “Betar threatened to place Jewish activists on lists to be shared with foreign authorities in an effort to bar them from travel and intimidate them into silence.”

By that she means that the names of terrorist supporters were passed on to Israeli law enforcement authorities. There’s nothing illegal about that.

The only actual violence that AG James describes by Betar took place when Hamas supporters came to hold a hate rally at a synagogue.

Not that the James statement mentions that point. It’s the equivalent of accusing a Black group of encouraging violence against a KKK rally at a Black church.

AG James does not address the fact that Hamas supporters routinely come with weapons and assault Jews outside synagogues and Jewish events. Nor has she gone after any of the Muslim groups behind it.

Instead, she’s targeting Jews who have defended their community against assaults by the hate groups that James supports.

Their rhetoric and tactics may not have been nice or politically correct, but they did not do a fraction of the things that the allies of Mamdani and James have routinely done.

But this is nothing new for AG James, who had illegally gone after the NRA for political reasons. Now the Mamdani ally is targeting Jewish groups.

This is how New York turns into London.

Mamdani celebrated the move, which protects his Hamas allies from encountering Jewish self-defense during their attacks on synagogues in New York City. And this way he outsources the dirty work to others.