{"id":89309,"date":"2025-08-22T17:15:00","date_gmt":"2025-08-22T22:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/?p=89309"},"modified":"2025-08-27T03:28:05","modified_gmt":"2025-08-27T08:28:05","slug":"world-zionist-congress-lifts-ban-on-betar-usa-head-permitting-him-to-serve-as-a-delegate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/world-zionist-congress-lifts-ban-on-betar-usa-head-permitting-him-to-serve-as-a-delegate\/","title":{"rendered":"World Zionist Congress lifts ban on Betar USA head, permitting him to serve as a delegate"},"content":{"rendered":"

By ANDREW LAPIN<\/p>\n

(JTA) \u2014 The head of the militant pro-Israel group Betar USA will be permitted to attend this fall\u2019s World Zionist Congress as a delegate, months after the congress had barred him from the position over his \u201caggressive, hateful tone and vulgarity.\u201d<\/p>\n

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CEO 5W Public Relations Ronn Torossian speaks  on June 14, 2017 in New York City.  (Eugene Gologursky\/Getty Images for DuJour)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

An appeals tribunal within the congress ruled Thursday in favor of Ronn Torossian, the combative public-relations executive who encourages Betar\u2019s followers to engage in street actions \u2014 against not only anti-Zionists, but also other Zionists who disagree with the group\u2019s tactics and approach to advocacy. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe AZM Tribunal reverses \u2026 the preclusion of Mr. Torossian from serving as a delegate on the ZOA Coalition slate,\u201d the unanimous decision reads, according to a copy provided to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency by Torossian. <\/p>\n

The document\u2019s authenticity was confirmed to JTA by a member of the ruling tribunal, who declined to comment further. Two tribunal members recused themselves.<\/p>\n

The case hinged on Torossian\u2019s conduct during a months-long feud between himself and Shai Davidai, a Columbia University professor and pro-Israel activist who had campaigned on behalf of a rival slate. In its ruling the tribunal said that Torossian\u2019s private correspondence with Davidai, while \u201cinappropriate,\u201d should not count against his ability to attend the congress. <\/p>\n

Public statements that Torossian and Betar USA had made against Kol Israel, the opposing slate, were also not grounds for removal because, the tribunal said, they had focused on the issues.<\/p>\n

The ruling means Torossian can attend the 39th World Zionist Congress meeting in late October and speak on behalf of his slate, the right-wing ZOA Coalition, as the congress debates how to allocate $5 billion in Israeli government funds. <\/p>\n

The ruling also tamps down on what had been growing pushback to Betar USA\u2019s rhetoric and tactics from within the pro-Israel movement, where stridently Zionist voices have joined more liberal ones, alongside the Anti-Defamation League, in calling the operation extreme and unhelpful to Jews. Earlier this year the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, an umbrella group, had security remove Torossian from one of their meetings after attendees said he barged in uninvited as a means of challenging the ADL.<\/p>\n

Betar presents itself as a new incarnation of the early Revisionist Zionist militia of the same name led by Ze\u2019ev Jabotinsky, and claims to have sent the Trump administration lists of pro-Palestinian protesters to be deported.<\/p>\n

Torossian told JTA he was \u201cpleased with this decision\u201d and vowed to attend the congress \u2014 something he had previously said he would do even if the initial ban was upheld. <\/p>\n

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Actions and images from Betar US and its allies since its formation in 2024 include Betar member Jakob Schanzer spraying over a pro-Palestinian mural in New Orleans; and singer Matisyahu endorsing Betar (bottom left). (Collage by 70 Faces Media)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cWe will not be silenced. Betar and Jabotinsky\u2019s followers will arrive with the ZOA at the Congress organized and ready to defend revisionist traditional Zionism from those who seek to subvert it\u2014from radical activists to so-called \u2018Tikkun Olam\u2019 Reform voices who distort Zionism for progressive agendas,\u201d Torossian wrote in an email. \u201cThese same circles have empowered anti-Israel figures like Zohran Mamdani and normalized woke antisemitism across the West.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added that he would continue to pursue charges against his opponents in a different venue: a local beit din, or rabbinical court.<\/p>\n

Davidai did not immediately respond to a JTA request for comment on the ruling. In a statement to JTA, Kol Israel said it was \u201cdisappointed by the Tribunal\u2019s decision, which fails to reflect the spirit of the election rules.\u201d<\/p>\n

Accusing Torossian of targeting candidates \u201cwith bullying and blackmail,\u201d the statement continues, \u201cThere is no excuse for the shameful smears and threats directed at us. Such harmful behavior should carry serious consequences, but has now been given a free pass by the Tribunal.\u201d<\/p>\n

The slate adds, \u201cAt a time when Jews in Israel and the Diaspora are facing horrific antisemitic attacks, those who sow division within our community damage their own credibility and empower our enemies.\u201d<\/p>\n

The ZOA Coalition that includes Betar received 3.6% of votes cast in the United States during this spring\u2019s elections, according to the American Zionist Movement\u2019s latest \u201cpreliminary\u201d results, and will have a proportionate number of delegates at the congress. The election was marred by several allegations of voter fraud among other parties; some, mostly Orthodox-aligned slates have been found guilty of fraud and have been banned from the congress.<\/p>\n

In its new ruling, the tribunal acknowledged that Torossian had engaged in \u201cinappropriate or even threatening\u201d spats with Davidai. But, the judges ruled, private communications should not be held to the same standards as campaigning or public commentary. (JTA has viewed many private WhatsApp exchanges between the two men, in which they slung frequent personal attacks at each other.)<\/p>\n

The tribunal also found nothing wrong with a selection of four public comments made by Torossian or Betar USA that it reviewed, because it said those statements were attacking Davidai as an individual, rather than Kol Israel. Davidai voluntarily stepped down as a Kol Israel delegate in February.<\/p>\n

\u201cMoreover, although the tone and substance of some of the comments were vulgar and not civil, many of these tended to focus on issues and not on a particular slate,\u201d the verdict reads.<\/p>\n

Betar USA is active on social media, where it frequently posts incendiary pro-Israel comments and memes. In the past these have included remarks like \u201cWe demand blood in Gaza,\u201d video of men hurling abusive language at mosques, and demands for the Israeli government to bar left-wing Jews from entering the country. <\/p>\n

Its posts seem to be gaining influence: In May, a federal judge overseeing a campus protester\u2019s deportation case ruled that the case \u201cseems to have been almost exclusively triggered by Betar Worldwide.\u201d<\/p>\n

While a growing number of Jewish voices \u2014 including Davidai \u2014 have criticized Israel\u2019s conduct in Gaza, Betar has instead egged them on. On Wednesday the group\u2019s X account posted, in Hebrew, \u201cIf you will it there is no Gaza!\u201d \u2014 a meme riffing on the famous remark by Zionism\u2019s founder Theodor Herzl, accompanied by an apparently AI-generated image of Herzl in an IDF uniform overseeing destruction in Gaza. (In a reply, Betar said the post was intended \u201cto share the normal Israeli perspective.\u201d)<\/p>\n

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Israeli professor Shai Davidai outside of Columbia University, April 22, 2024. (Luke Tress)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Betar USA has not been shy about publicly going after the Kol Israel slate, either, calling its members \u201clying hypocrites\u201d in a May post. In a July post the group urged all its rival\u2019s delegates to resign while Torossian fought the congress ruling.<\/p>\n

The World Zionist Congress tribunal stated that it \u201cshould not be viewed as condoning any of the communications, or Mr. Torossian\u2019s choice of language or any of Mr. Torossian\u2019s conduct.\u201d It also urged the organization to find new ways to discourage conduct similar to Torossian\u2019s in the future.<\/p>\n

The Zionist Organization of America, a right-wing group whose namesake coalition includes Betar USA, also celebrated the ruling in a statement to JTA. In their remarks, both ZOA and Torossian said their central issue with Davidai was not personal but policy-related: namely, an essay Davidai penned last year in which he said he would \u201crefrain from buying products manufactured beyond the 1967 armistice line,\u201d a stance ZOA disagrees with.<\/p>\n

\u201cCriticizing the positions of a member of another slate is allowed under the election rules,\u201d ZOA director Mort Klein wrote in a statement.<\/p>\n

Torossian has long maintained that his group\u2019s full-throated encouragement of bloodshed in Gaza, and backing of far-right Israeli ministers, is more in line with mainstream Zionism than other American Jewish groups. Even as he gloated over the tribunal\u2019s ruling, he framed the intra-Jewish debate over Israel in a way that many others would likely agree with.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a major disconnect between the American Jewish community\u2014particularly its liberal, Ashkenazi segments\u2014and the political realities in Israel,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n

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