‘I’m not shocked’: Palestinian activist’s home targeted in foiled firebombing plot
A New Jersey man who allegedly planned to firebomb the home of a prominent Palestinian-American activist was arrested on Thursday and now faces federal charges in a criminal complaint viewed by Middle East Eye.
Nerdeen Kiswani, the founder of the Palestine advocacy group Within Our Lifetime, told MEE the FBI came to her home late on Thursday, local time, in the New York City area, to inform her and her family of a threat to her life.
They told her the would-be attacker's plot had been foiled and that he had been arrested, leading officials to believe she was no longer in danger.
"I'm at a loss," Kiswani told MEE on Friday. "I'm not shocked, but you know, it's still something that does shake me to my core."
Hoboken Police on X referenced an investigation involving the FBI on Thursday evening. Unverified images of an arrest have circulated on social media.
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The suspect has been identified as Alexander Heifler of Hoboken, New Jersey.
The New York Police Department on Friday said Heifler is a member of an "offshoot" of the Jewish Defense League (JDL), a far-right organisation listed as a violent extremist group by the FBI.
JDL was founded by dual US-Israeli citizen and Knesset member, Meir Kahane, in 1968.
Kahane was shot dead in New York City on 5 November 1990, and his movement was banned as a terrorist organisation in 1994 in Israel after one of his adherents, Baruch Goldstein, massacred 29 Palestinians in a killing spree at Hebron’s Ibrahimi Mosque in the occupied West Bank.
Zohran Mamdani, New York City's first Muslim mayor and a longtime advocate for Palestinian rights, said on Friday that the foiled plot "comes amid an alarming rise in threats and violence across the country targeting Palestinian human rights advocates".
"I am thankful that the NYPD and FBI thwarted this plot, which could have endangered Nerdeen’s life and those of other New Yorkers," he wrote on X.
"Let me be clear: We will not tolerate violent extremism in our city. No one should face violence for their political beliefs or their advocacy. I am relieved that Nerdeen is safe. Our city must meet hate with solidarity, and meet fear with an unshakable commitment to justice and to one another."
The plot
The criminal complaint indicates Heifler planned to leave the country shortly after carrying out the firebombing.
Planning for the attack began in early February, the FBI said in the complaint, when an undercover law enforcement officer joined a video call in which the suspect asked about making homemade weapons and alluded to the use of "Molotovs".
'I'm not shocked, but you know, it's still something that does shake me to my core'
- Nerdeen Kiswani, Within Our Lifetime founder
Commonly known as Molotov cocktails, these are incendiary devices made by combining bottles and flammable liquids such as petrol and filled with wicks and saturated rags that ignite when the object is thrown at a target.
Heifler then had an in-person meeting with the undercover officer, where he divulged his plan to go to Kiswani's home and carry out an attack.
"No IDs, no phones... In and out," he told the officer, according to the complaint.
Over the next several weeks, the officer and Heifler bought the components to make the Molotov cocktails at Heifler's home, where Heifler also discussed planning a hideout for the immediate aftermath of the attack. He said he would then leave the country.
On 26 March, after continued discussions on an encrypted messaging app, the officer determined that the attack on Kiswani was imminent, given Heifler had saturated the rags and put them beside the bottles to get them ready, the complaint said. It was at that point that the FBI raided Heifler's home.
He is now facing federal charges that include unlawful possession of firearms and the unlawful making of firearms.
'No accountability'
No known motive for the attack has yet been disclosed by officials, but Kiswani has long been on the receiving end of a litany of threats for her vocal activism for Palestinian rights.
"Palestinian activists, our supporters, are intimidated, harassed, doxxed, threatened with impunity by Zionists constantly," Kiswani told MEE on Friday.
"There's absolutely no accountability," she added. "This is something that's encouraged and supported by people who are part of this government that we live under."
Last month, Kiswani sued the far-right Jewish-American group Betar USA after she says she endured a months-long campaign of violent threats.
Kiswani's lawyers said that she has been unlawfully targeted.
"Betar has exhibited a dangerous fixation on Ms Kiswani that goes far beyond protected speech," Christopher Godshall-Bennett and Eric Lee said in a press release.
"It has used its social media accounts to publicly offer cash rewards to anyone who would hand Ms Kiswani a beeper, a direct reference to Israel’s 2024 use of exploding pagers to kill Hezbollah operatives in Lebanon. On multiple occasions, Betar affiliates physically confronted Ms Kiswani on public sidewalks and at demonstrations, cornering her and shouting threats," they described.
Betar also urged the Trump administration to revoke Kiswani's US citizenship and submitted her name to federal authorities for deportation, her lawyers say.
The group has previously boasted of collecting names of people participating in pro-Palestine activities and then sending them to the Trump administration.
Its New York chapter was compelled to wind down operations after an investigation by the state’s attorney general last month found that the group repeatedly targeted individuals based on their faith and ethnic origin, specifically Muslim, Arab, Palestinian, and Jewish New Yorkers.
Editor's note: This article has been updated since publication to include New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s statement on the incident and the NYPD's statement on the suspect’s affiliation with the Jewish Defense League.
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