Betar USA Collecting Pro-Hamas Students’ Names for Trump to Deport

Photo Credit: Can Pac Swire / Flickr

Pro-Hamas on-campus encampment, University of Toronto, May 2, 2024.

Betar USA is compiling names of foreign students on visas in the US who spewed anti-Israel bile at campus protests — and is hoping President-elect Trump will give the haters a one-way ticket back home, The NY Post reported recently.

The group, whose name is both a reference to an ancient Jewish city by this name that was the last fortress and stronghold of the leader of the last rebellion, Bar Kochba; and a Hebrew acronym for Brit Yosef Trumpeldor, after the legendary Jewish-Russian soldier who died defending the Galilea against Arab marauders, was founded in Poland in 1923 and led by Ze’ev Jabotinsky.

Now, Jabotinsky’s secretary was the late historian Benzion Netanyahu, whose son is Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

We strongly advise #jewish tourists to avoid #nyc. Major pro Hamas riots planned for this weekend. @nypd permits lawlessness and will not intervene if attacked. Recent hearings of @cuny a city school revealed brutal anti Semitism. pic.twitter.com/TwnleEJat4

— Betar US (@Betar_USA) November 27, 2024

Betar has compiled a list of approximately 30 students from countries including Jordan, Syria, Egypt, Canada, and the United Kingdom. These students are currently enrolled in some of the nation’s most prestigious universities, such as Columbia, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Michigan, Syracuse University, UCLA, The New School for Social Research, Carnegie Mellon University, and George Washington University.

Betar USA Director Ross Glick told the Post: “We have started lists of Jew-hating foreign nationals on visas who support Hamas,” utilizing facial recognition software and advanced “relationship database technology” to identify individuals who participated in antisemitic campus protests over the past year.

Among those identified on the list is Momodou Taal, a British national and Ph.D. candidate in Africana Studies at Cornell University. Taal has been suspended twice for participating in campus protests supporting Hamas, most recently in September.

According to Newsweek, university officials informed Taal that his involvement in the latest protest could result in the revocation of his F-1 visa. However, Cornell, an Ivy League institution, ultimately reversed its stance.

On October 28, 2023, only three weeks after the Hamas atrocities, then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump promised in a speech to the Republican Jewish Coalition in Las Vegas, to deport pro-Hamas demonstrators holding US visas if he were elected president in 2024.

“All of the resident aliens who joined in the pro-jihadist protests this month—nobody’s ever seen anything like it,” Mr. Trump said. “Come 2025, we will find you and we will deport you.”

Last week, Ross Glick visited Capitol Hill, where he met with Senator John Fetterman (D-PA), a vocal supporter of Israel, as well as aides to Republican Senators Ted Cruz and James Lankford.

“They all gave me the thumbs up and told me how to follow up,” Glick said, describing the meetings as productive and encouraging.