Betar USA founder banned from World Zionist Congress over feud with Israeli firebrand Shai Davidai

(JTA) — The body governing the World Zionist Congress election in the United States took the unusual step this week of barring an individual from running, citing his behavior during the campaign period.

Ronn Torossian, a combative Jewish public-relations executive and founder of the upstart militant Zionist group Betar USA, can no longer run as a delegate on the ZOA Coalition slate, the body ruled earlier this week. The ruling, which has not yet been made public, was shared with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

Torossian violated rules that bar delegates from speaking negatively about other delegates, the chairs of the Area Election Committee, Abraham Gafni and David J. Butler, wrote in their decision.

“With respect to Mr. Torossian, we are offended by the aggressive, hateful tone and vulgarity in many of his attacks,” they wrote.

The ban offers yet another sign of how heated this year’s election has become. Advocacy groups, religious leaders and rank-and-file voters have flocked to the election — in which Jews worldwide vote for delegates to a global Zionist legislative body — seeing it as a battle for Israel’s future and seeking to control a $5 billion pot of Israeli government funds allocated by the congress.

It has also, the decision against Torossian shows, become another front in a personal showdown between two fierce opponents of anti-Zionism.

In the same ruling, Gafni and Butler ordered Shai Davidai, the Columbia University professor and activist, to cease campaigning for a different party, Kol Israel. Kol Israel and ZOA Coalition had filed the respective complaints that resulted in the rulings against Torossian and Davidai.

Davidai is not actually a candidate with the slate, which also includes advocacy group StandWithUs and the Zionist youth group Young Judaea. But he had planned to be before officially stepping aside in February amid complaints from the Zionist Organization of America, the conservative pro-Israel group that backs the eponymous slate, about his own negative comments about Torossian. Davidai continued to advocate for Kol Israel in social media posts since.

While both men have gained prominence calling for more forceful responses to antisemitism and anti-Israel advocacy in the United States, their differences are longstanding and deep. Torossian has said his “first real job” was “working for the Likud Party in Israel,” which is headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, while Davidai prior to Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel had been a critic of Netanyahu. In an essay Davidai co-wrote with his wife last year in Tablet, they said they “remain staunchly opposed to Israel’s occupation of the West Bank [and] refrain from buying products manufactured beyond the 1967 armistice line.”

Davidai and Torossian promote different visions about the war in Gaza: Betar USA has called for “more blood in Gaza,” while Davidai has expressed concern for Palestinian civilians there.

The men have been feuding since at least February, when Betar USA activists joined in a demonstration Davidai organized at Columbia, and Davidai said he did not want their participation. Since then, Torossian has publicly accused Davidai of backing Israel boycotts, owing to the line in the Tablet essay, while Davidai has called Torossian an “unhinged extremist” and Betar USA “a group of violence-loving thugs” (the group insists it is operating in the spirit of early Revisionist Zionist thinker Ze’ev Jabotinsky).

The WZC ruling found that both men had engaged in “derogatory, demeaning and filthy language” and that neither of their respective parties “should have tolerated, approved or promoted any part of the hateful exchanges between Torosian [sic] and Davidai.” The American Zionist Movement, which manages the U.S. election for the WZC, and its executive director, Herbert Block, did not return requests for comment about whether individual candidates had been barred from previous elections.

Torossian, whose Betar USA social media account publicized the ruling against him late Wednesday, told JTA that he planned to appeal. On X, Betar called the ruling “a terrible decision for the fate of American Jews” and continued to go after Davidai, at one point calling him a “cuckold.”

Reached for comment, Davidai said he stepped down as a delegate voluntarily, “triggered by Ronn’s behavior.” He also said he hadn’t heard that the WZC had leveled a disciplinary ruling against him.

The head of Kol Israel, which had been trying for months to expel Betar USA from the congress, said the episode was “a sad day for the Zionist movement.”

“The last thing that the Jewish people need is more infighting,” said David Yaari, chair of Kol Israel.

Yaari said he didn’t want to have to go public with his group’s complaint against Torossian. But as Betar and its leader targeted Kol Israel leaders and allies, both in public and private, for their associations with Davidai, he saw no other way.

“People should know the kind of person that he is and what he’s done to these organizations,” he said.

Kol Israel’s secretary general Fleur Hassan-Nahoum, who is the former deputy mayor of Jerusalem and ran for Israel’s parliament with the Likud Party, filed the complaint against Torossian that the AEC acted upon.

The complaint accused Torossian of “blackmail, intimidation, incessant harassment, direct personal attacks, inflammatory rhetoric, and aggressive behavior (including, but not limited to, threats of physical violence, defamatory statements, calculated and malicious misrepresentation, and continuous bombardment and badgering of various members of the Kol Israel slate) that are entirely personal in nature and undermine the integrity of the World Zionist Congress elections,” according to a copy of it posted on X by Betar USA. Many of these attacks, Hassan-Nahoum wrote, were directed at Davidai and his family.

Mort Klein, longtime head of the Zionist Organization of America, told JTA he knew nothing about the banning of his coalition partner from the election. He also called Hassan-Nahoum “a liar and a disgrace” for refusing to debate him about Davidai at a recent event, and for saying Klein had “abused” her. Hassan-Nahoum did not return a request for comment.

Torossian said that in addition to appealing the ruling, he also planned to seek redress against Davidai in a Jewish legal court, known as a beit din. But whatever happens, he added, he plans to attend the World Zionist Congress regardless.

If he does, he would be taking a page from the late extremist rabbi Meir Kahane, whose ideology he has embraced. Kahane, the leader of the Jewish Defense League, flew to Israel from New York for the 1972 World Zionist Congress despite not being a delegate and demanded to address the convention. He left without doing so, but not before his supporters briefly halted proceedings with their protests.

Torossian said he would not fear repercussions from coming to the conference, set for October in Jerusalem.

“I’m going to be there every single day,” he said. “The security guards for the convention are Betaris…. We are the government.”

La source de cet article se trouve sur ce site