JTA — The founder of radical pro-Palestinian group Within Our Lifetime has sued the right-wing militant Zionist group Betar USA, alleging that it violated her civil rights by putting out social media “bounties” on her and harassing her with beepers.

Anti-Israel activist Nerdeen Kiswani announced she had filed the lawsuit on Wednesday evening. She accused the revamped historic Revisionist Zionist group of violating the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, which makes conspiring against an ethnic minority a federal crime.

The lawsuit comes more than a month after Betar USA agreed to cease its operations in New York following a settlement with the state’s attorney general, which Kiswani’s lawsuit notes. The office of Attorney General Letitia James found that Betar USA had engaged in a “campaign of violence, harassment, and intimidation against Arab, Muslim and Jewish New Yorkers.”

“For years, Betar USA stalked & harassed me even offering $1,800 for someone to hand me a beeper while I was pregnant,” Kiswani wrote on X. “Last month, the NY AG found they engaged in bias-motivated harassment and threats. Still, they faced no real consequences. So I’m filing a lawsuit.” She included a crowdfunding link for the suit, which has raised $4,000 in the first 16 hours.

In a statement, Betar USA called Kiswani a “terror supporter” and called the suit “an attack on Zionism itself” that “represents a serious danger to American and diaspora Jewry.” In a follow-up post on X, the group also said it welcomed a deposition against Kiswani and Within Our Lifetime, adding, “Let’s see where the money is coming from and how much you’ve cost NYC.”

Kiswani, an ethnic Palestinian born in Jordan who came to the United States as a refugee at 1 year old, has sparked outrage and accusations of antisemitism in New York and beyond with her........

© The Times of Israel