A man who has been charged with plotting to firebomb a pro-Palestine activist’s home is tied to a group whose leaders support violence against Palestinians and have platformed a convicted terrorist who fundraises for a violent settler movement in the occupied West Bank.
Video recordings by the group, called JDL 613 Brotherhood, also reveal its leaders possess an obsessive antipathy to New York’s mayor, Zohran Mamdani. They feature the organization’s founder, Yisrael Yaacob Ben Avraham, describing Mamdani as a “Muslim terrorist”, a “cancer”, and his election a “harbinger” of “a creeping Islamic takeover of America”.
Alexander Heifler, who law enforcement officials say is a JDL 613 member, was arrested last month after FBI and New York police department agents foiled an alleged plot to attack the home of the activist Nerdeen Kiswani with molotov cocktails.
The Guardian emailed JDL 631 a detailed request for comment including questions for Yisrael Yaacob Ben Avraham and another member known publicly as Eliezer Ben Avraham. (According to the group’s podcasts, videos and archived pages from the their website, both men are Americans who converted to Judaism as adults. They are not related, and the Guardian is using first names throughout this article to distinguish between them.)
Only Yisrael Yaacob replied, saying that Heifler “was a member for a short period of time” but added that “the JDL 613 does not condone any forms of ILLEGAL VIOLENCE. All of our members sign an anti terrorism statement in [their] application.”
A February filing incorporating JDL 613 LLC named Michael J Murphy as the sole member, but when the Guardian asked Yisrael Yaacob in an email if that was his legal name, he replied: “No that is not the legal name of Yisrael yaacob Ben Avraham. This person isn’t a member of our organization.”
Since Heifler’s arrest, Yisrael Yaacob has struck a defiant tone in videos and public statements, reiterating the group’s lionisation of Meir Kahane, the founder of the extremist Jewish Defense League, which inspired JDL 613 and was called a “rightwing terrorist group” by the FBI. The number 613 refers to the number of commandments in Judaism.
Yisrael Yaacob has also used the attention surrounding Heifler to sell T-shirts bearing slogans like “Jewish Power” and graphics of a skull with a Star of David and crossed baseball bats.
JDL 613 – and JDL before it – espouses a violent form of Jewish ultra-nationalism. Arie Perliger, professor and director of security studies at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, who has written about Jewish extremism, said: “The original JDL established by Kahane always focused on the idea that any hostility toward the Jews must face retaliation. Kahane basically built his entire political agenda around the idea of Jewish vengeance and the need for a militant approach towards the enemies of Judaism.”
He emphasized that “JDL was always a very small minority within the Jewish community” and that even as many American Jews experience hostility in the current climate, “I think you won’t find any support for something like this.”
‘There’s no innocent civilians in Gaza’
In the wake of Heifler’s arrest for plotting to attack Kiswani, the head of the pro-Palestinian group Within Our Lifetime, Yisrael Yaacob issued a 29 March video statement.
While he said the group did not condone “illegal violence” or “terrorism of any kind”, he called on New Yorkers to “support the right of Jews to train in self-defense and exercise their second amendment rights”. He also attacked Mamdani for “dangerous double standards that endanger Jewish New Yorkers”.
Without naming Heifler, Yisrael Yaacob condemned his alleged target, Kiswani, claiming that “we have witnessed organizations like Within Our Lifetime headed by Nardine Kilwani orchestrate takeovers of public spaces”. He claimed the group had “disrupted college campuses and harass[ed] Jews attending religious services at synagogues” and “called for the genocide of the Jewish people here in New York and around the world”.
Kiswani’s group has protested outside synagogues it has claimed are aligned with Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, and has defended the attacks of 7 October. Kiswani has denied charges of antisemitism, insisting her criticism is directed at Zionism and Israel, not Jews. The group’s protests have reportedly featured chants including “Judaism, yes, Zionism no! The state of Israel has got to go!”
In response to an emailed request for comment, Kiswani wrote: “There is a clear pattern of this group and its leadership publicly targeting me and my organization prior to the arrest, including repeated dehumanizing and hostile rhetoric.” She said she had “received threats from individuals associated with this group and related networks”.
She added: “The claim that I or Within Our Lifetime have called for harm against Jewish people is false and defamatory.”
She also said that JDL 613’s podcasts and videos, issued across two YouTube channels, have frequently featured eliminationist and genocidal rhetoric about Palestinians, Arabs and non-Jews.
In a 19 December podcast, Eliezer Ben Avraham, Yisrael Yaacob’s co-host and leader of the group’s Maryland chapter, said: “They’re all guilty. There’s no innocent civilians in Gaza. They’re all Amalek. Amalek must be wiped out plain and simple.” (“Amalek” refers to the biblical nation whose destruction was ordered in the Old Testament.)
Yisrael Yaacob replied: “People who call themselves so-called Palestinian Americans, I put them in the same line. They are not to be trusted. They are vile. They are evil. They are out to kill and take over.”
Asked about the comments in this video, Yisrael Yaacob replied, “I can’t comment for Eliezer Ben Avraham,” but added: “I stand by my statements fully. They are vile and evil and I’ll say it again and again.”
In a 23 December video, Eliezer Ben Avraham said: “God, please help us annex the territories and drive out all of the Arabs from the land of Israel. From the Nile to the Euphrates.”
Asked if these comments accurately represented the group’s political position, Yisrael Yaacob answered: “Yes.”
‘Rise up early and kill him first’
JDL 613 presents itself as a continuation of the Jewish Defense League (JDL), which was designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center and described as a “violent extremist Jewish organization” by the FBI in 2000.
The JDL was founded in 1968 by Kahane, a Brooklyn-born rabbi who advocated Jewish armed self-defence and the forced expulsion of Palestinians from Israel and the territories it occupies. Under his leadership, the JDL carried out bombings, shootings and arson in the US, targeting Soviet, Arab and other interests.
Kahane emigrated to Israel in 1971 and founded the Kach party, which won a Knesset seat in 1984 before being banned in 1988 for inciting racism. He was assassinated in New York in 1990, but the violence continued. In 1994, Baruch Goldstein, a Brooklyn-born JDL activist who had emigrated to Israel, massacred 29 Palestinian worshippers at a mosque in Hebron. In 2005, a JDL member was convicted of a plot to bomb a Los Angeles mosque and the office of a US congressman. In 1985, Alex Odeh, a Palestinian American civil rights leader, was killed by a pipe bomb at his California office; the suspects, JDL members, decamped for Israel and were never prosecuted.
While Kahane and his Kach party were once outlawed in Israel, his adherents are now in prominent positions of power. “Kahane and his party were at one time outlawed and considered terrorists. Even the right wing in Israel condemned them. That has completely changed,” said Mairav Zonszein, senior Israel analyst at the International Crisis Group.
Today, Israel’s far-right security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, leads a party called Jewish Power that is explicitly Kahanist. “Kahanism has taken over mainstream politics in Israel, or has at least grown,” Zonszein said.
The Kach party, which later changed its name to Kahane Chai, was designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the US state department in 1997, but was delisted by the Biden administration in 2022 on the grounds that it was inactive. At that time critics said that while the group itself was moribund, its ideology was being carried forward in Israel and the United States.
JDL 613 was founded in late 2024, according to a 1 April video, “to revive Rabbi Kahane’s vision for a new generation”. Filings with New Jersey’s secretary of state show JDL 613 LLC was registered on 27 February 2026, weeks before the arrest. In a September 2025 podcast, Yisrael Yaacob said “we’re shooting for 501c3” – tax-exempt status – but no application appears in IRS records.
The group’s success in recruiting members is unclear, and its claims about numbers in podcasts are uniformly vague. Videos show small groups of members at public events, especially in New York City, where the group was present at anti-Mamdani rallies in late 2025. On an archived website page, the group claimed chapters in New York, New Jersey, Washington DC and Pennsylvania. In a November podcast, it claimed to have additional chapters in Georgia and Colorado, and international outgrowths in Portugal and Israel.
The group’s genesis was entangled with Yisrael Yaacob Ben Avraham’s own conversion. According to his own accounts, he grew up in “central Jersey” and “was raised Catholic”.
“I spent years using drugs and trying to fill this hole in my heart,” he said in an August 2025 podcast. This changed when he “met a Jewish girl” and attended her family holidays. He said he converted in 2023, two weeks before 7 October. After the attacks of that day, he said he “started looking for the JDL”.
“I was never really involved with politics or anything like that until I became Jewish,” he said.
According to a biography archived from the group’s now-defunct website, Yisrael Yaacob initially worked with a separate group, JDL USA, before they “parted ways amicably” due to “differing visions”.
Now he is the JDL 613’s president and chief publicist, hosting podcasts, filming solo videos and issuing public statements. He has also issued direct calls for pre-emptive violence.
In an August 2025 video entitled Jewish Violence in Defense of Jewish Interests is Never Wrong, he said: “The Talmud’s wisdom is not abstract. It is a battle plan. Rise up early and kill him first.”
He continued: “When our enemies plot against us, we will not wait for their knives to reach our throats. When they gather in our neighborhoods, shouting for our blood, we will meet them with Jewish strength, fists, minds and resolve.”
In the same video, Yisrael Yaacob also said: “The JDL 613 Brotherhood is building a network of proud, trained and fearless Jews who will make our enemies think twice. Let the Arabs and their allies, the real Nazis of our time, know this.”
‘You’ve got to annihilate these people’
Eliezer Ben Avraham is also a convert. Any previous or legal name has not been confirmed, and Yisrael Yaacob refused to provide information about him.
In an August 2025 podcast, Eliezer described growing up non-Jewish in Illinois, and moving between Connecticut, Michigan and northern Virginia. His parents divorced when he was 12 or 13. He went on “a crazy violent crime spree” as a young man, he has said, was “sentenced to 25 years” in Virginia, and served 11 years in state prison.
It was in prison, around 2007-2008, that Eliezer Ben Avraham says he began practising Judaism, after a friend in a Jewish prison group encouraged him to attend services. He taught himself Hebrew and began reading Kahane’s works, which were banned in the facility. “As soon as I came home,” he said of his release around 2011, “first thing I did was buy all of his books.”
He quoted Kahane approvingly: “Somebody calls you a kike, you kick their fucking ass. You beat the shit out of them.”
Eliezer now lives in western Maryland, where he has been a member of a Reform synagogue, for 15 years, according to a March podcast.
In a January podcast, he said of Palestinians: “You’ve got to annihilate these people … with no mercy, no compassion, no empathy, no sympathy. They’re the enemy. You’re supposed to hate them and destroy them.” He added: “We should annex all the territories of Eretz Israel and expel all the Arab invaders.”
A September 2025 video shows a person identified as a member of the Maryland/DC chapter, which Eliezer leads, confronting someone on the street accused of putting up pro-Palestine stickers. “I’m gonna kick your ass,” the member says. “Now I know what you look like. I’m going to tell the whole neighbourhood they’re going to be keeping an eye out for you, motherfucker.”
Asked if the group condoned the behavior in that video, Yisrael Yaacob Ben Avraham wrote: “Yes we do.”
‘That’s where we did the bombings’
The group’s podcasts also feature a first-generation JDL activist convicted of political violence.
A 22 March episode celebrated the group’s first anniversary with Chaim Ben Pesach, born Victor Vancier, as guest. Ben Pesach, himself a prolific YouTuber, is the former national chairman of the JDL. In 1987, he was convicted of federal weapons charges over a series of bombings targeting Soviet and Egyptian diplomatic interests in the US, serving more than five years in federal prison. After completing probation in 1996, he flew to Israel seeking to obtain citizenship but was banned from entering because, he said on the podcast, Israel’s Shin Bet security agency called him “a Jewish terrorist”.
Ben Pesach founded the Jewish Task Force (JTF), a Kahanist organisation which he says directs 100% of its funds to the Hilltop Youth, an Israeli settler movement designated as a violent extremist group by the US treasury department in October 2024. Those sanctions were lifted by Donald Trump on his first day back in office. In 2024, Ben Pesach was reportedly involved in raising funds for an illegal settler outpost in the occupied West Bank.
On the podcast, he claimed he was personally under Treasury criminal investigation for funding the Hilltop Youth and that “if Trump hadn’t been elected, I probably would have been indicted”.
Asked about Ben Pesach’s relationship with the group, Yisrael Yaacob replied: “He is a mentor of Yisrael Yaacob Ben Avraham and a average member of the organization.”
The Guardian also emailed Ben Pesach for comment, but received no reply.
Perliger described the Hilltop Youth as “a faction within the settler movement who fused a lot of Kahane’s ideas with even more primordial ideas about going back and restoring the traditional ways in which the Hebrews lived in the land of Israel during biblical times”.
In a September 2025 podcast, he denied the existence of Palestinians – “there is no such thing as a Palestinian people or Palestine never was, never will be” – and advocated mass expulsion: “Either throw them out or encourage mass Arab emigration. They can’t stay in Israel.”
On the March anniversary episode, Ben Pesach called Mamdani “a Muslim terrorist”, saying: “They elected somebody who agrees with 9/11, who agrees with the Muslim terrorists. He’s a Muslim terrorist. Mamdami himself is a Muslim terrorist.”
Yisrael Yaacob responded: “30%, 33% of Jews in New York City voted for him. That’s scary numbers right there.”
Asked about the group’s repeated characterizations of Mamdani as a Muslim terrorist, Yisrael Yaacob Ben Avraham wrote: “He supports terrorism against the people of NYC it’s that simple. You can’t be against the one Jewish state and not be a terrorist.”
In an 8 January video, Rabbi Moshe Parry, a regular contributor to the group’s channels, provided a theological justification for expelling all non-Jews from an Israel whose scriptural borders, he claims, extend “from the Nile River in the south all the way to the Euphrates River in the north and the east”.
“Whatever people are on the land, they have to go,” Parry said. “All of the Arabs for sure have to leave. The whole Arab nation is forbidden to live on the land.”
