“I’m Not Sure What to Make of It”: Zionist Jews and Far-Right Rally Together

Pro-Palestinian student demonstrations have seen an unlikely alliance between Israel-supporting Jews and far-right extremists.

Mike Ancheta surrounded by Zionists at UCLA. Photo Credit: Kelly Stuart

On February 27, 2016, Tom Bibiyan was stabbed by a member of the Ku Klux Klan. A Green Party activist at the time, he had participated in a counter protest at a KKK meeting in Anaheim, California. Fights broke out and amid the turmoil, Klansman Charles Edward Donner stabbed Bibiyan twice along with two others, but was never charged for any of it.

Bibiyan would later tell reporters that “As someone who fights for social justice, I figured this is a place they shouldn’t be.”  

“I think this country has seen 400 to 500 years of white supremacy and oppression of people of color, of minorities…I feel like I was acting in self defense, because I am of Jewish heritage and I have friends that are Latino, that are Black, Muslim,” he said.

Eight years later, however, Bibiyan is now a staunch supporter of Donald Trump—a seismic political shift that he attributes “in part because of views toward Israel.” On April 30, he was part of the large crowd of Israel supporters that violently attacked an encampment of student demonstrators at the University of California Los Angeles, who were demanding a ceasefire in Gaza and divestment from companies profiting off of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories. Bibiyan posted a video of the violence on his Instagram with the caption, “The moment we rushed the terrorist encampment last night at ucla to take it apart.” In another video he posted to X, Bibiyan can be seen throwing a water bottle at an older woman, who he suggested was a “Hamas supporter.” 

Days after the events at UCLA, Bibiyan took part in another pro-Israel rally in front of the campus of the University of Southern California. The demonstration had been organized by Christian nationalist Sean Feucht, who is part of an Evangelical movement known as the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) that believes Israel’s existence is necessary for Christ to return and that the Jews must convert to Christianity or perish, and has suggested that the Palestinian rights protests are a sign of the end times. 

At the USC rally, a plane circled overhead with a banner that read “Israel is Forever, Jewish Lives Matter. US.”  

Another attendee of the Feucht demonstration was a man named Kelly Scott Johnson, who had previously participated in a small White Lives Matter rally in Huntington Beach on April 11, 2021. White Lives Matter is a movement of loosely affiliated hate groups including Neo Nazi groups like Goyim Defense League and the Rise Above Movement that produces deeply antisemitic propaganda. The 2021 rally was also attended by the man who had stabbed Bibiyan in 2016: Charles Donner. At the event, Donner had admitted to doing the stabbings while talking to a journalist, declaring, “This could be Anaheim all over again.” 

Asked what he thought about Johnson’s attendance at the USC Feucht rally, carrying the Israeli flag, Bibian told Important Context, “I’m not sure what to make of it.”

Bibiyan’s situation may be unique, but his dilemma is increasingly common. As Israel’s war in Gaza has escalated and public support waned in the face of a mounting death toll and severe humanitarian crisis, Jewish Zionists have found strange bedfellows in far-right extremists and fascists. But the uncomfortable and unlikely alliance has been forming for years.

Although white nationalists often irrationally blame Jews for all of society's ills, many of them see Israel as the ideal of an ethnostate that takes care of its own.  Alt Right provocateur Richard Spencer even refers to his mission to create a white ethnostate as a “sort of white Zionism.” Many modern Nazis also view Israel's existence as a solution to what they refer to as the “JQ” or Jewish Question.  Meanwhile, far-right Christians see the existence of the Jewish state in historical Palestine as a necessary condition for the end times and the return of Jesus Christ.

Important Context has identified a number of these far-right extremists and white nationalists who have participated in pro-Israel events in recent weeks. 

“Far-Right Motherfuckers”

Johnson is hardly the only antisemitic white nationalist Bibiyan has rallied with. Among the other UCLA agitators was Narek Palyan, a Trump-supporting extremist who has a history of posting hateful content on his social media accounts, including Holocaust denial. In an Instagram post from this past year, he shared a meme of the John Carpenter B-movie class “They Live” referencing the antisemitic conspiracy theory that Jews own the media. Palyan has also been filmed at anti-LGBTQ+ rallies in Los Angeles giving stiff-armed Roman salutes while screaming, “Far-right motherfuckers!” 

Los Angeles based photographer Kent Avery was also at UCLA on April 30. He livestreamed from the melee on Instagram but has since deleted the video. At one point in his livestream he asks a man who had just assaulted a student with several others, “You good?”

Avery has “liked” a number of posts on X containing white nationalist material including videos supporting the so-called “great replacement theory,” an antisemitic conspiracy theory that claims Jews are masterminding a plot to replace white people with non-white immigrants for control. He has also liked multiple posts claiming the election was stolen from Trump. 

Another far-right extremist who was at both the UCLA attack and the USC Feucht rally is ex-MMA fighter Mike Ancheta. Ancheta has associated with Proud Boys and been involved in many confrontations at past political rallies including an anti-vaccine brawl in front of Los Angeles City Hall in September 2021 and a street fight that broke out at a Glendale School Board meeting in June 2023 over its recognition of Pride Month. He assaulted documentarian Vishal Singh at another anti-vaccine protest in West Hollywood in 2021, breaking multiple bones in his face. Ancheta had been at the UCLA Palestinian rights camp ten days before the events of April 30, harassing journalists.

After Ancheta and Palyan were exposed as being part of the UCLA violence, they shared the same post on Instagram claiming “We represent the minority. That's why they hate us”.

“Jewish Self-Defense”

Along with the antisemites, white nationalists, and other far-right actors, far-right Jewish extremists have been showing up at pro-Palestinian protests. Two days before the April 30 attack, a group of Zionists staged a rally in front of UCLA’s Palestinian rights encampment. One rally goer was carrying the flag of the Jewish Defense League (JDL), a ultranationalist group associated with Kahane Chai or Kach, which has carried out multiple acts of terrorism both in the United States and Israel, including the bombing that killed Palestinian rights activist Alex Odeh in 1985. 

Meir Kahane, the Rabbi who founded the JDL and Israel’s Kach party, won a seat in the Knesset in 1984. His views were so extreme that he proposed making it illegal for Jews to have sexual relations with non Jews. His Kach party was barred from running candidates in 1988 on the grounds that it was racist and undemocratic. Following Kahane’s assassination in New York in 1990, a faction known as Kahane Chai (or Kahane Lives) split from Kach. Israel declared both Kach and its offshoot terrorist groups in 1994.

In its “Terrorism 2000/2001” report, the FBI includes the JDL as a terrorist group. Meanwhile, Kahane Chai was added to the State Department’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations until 2022 when the Biden administration removed it the grounds that it was defunct—a move some advocates suggested would embolden far-right elements in Israel.

The individual carrying the JDL flag has been identified as real estate broker Yehuda Younessian. When asked by videographer and writer Sean Beckner-Carmitchel why he was carrying the flag he responded, “Jewish self-defense.” He has posted a photo of himself carrying a JDL flag on Instagram and even used the group’s symbol as a profile picture on Facebook.

At the April 28 rally at UCLA, a Jewish student was caught up in a scuffle while trying to retrieve an Israeli flag from the ground, and either fell backwards onto the pavement or was shoved and injured her head. Her mother, Ruth Sonbolian, with whom she appeared on Fox News to discuss the incident, has shared multiple videos of Meir Kahane on her Instagram. In one video, the deceased extremist was offering “the best pro-Israel argument you will ever hear.” Sonbolian shared another Kahane video with the caption, “Kahane was right” in Hebrew. That post is no longer available. She has also shared hateful content, including an image of a condom in Palestinian flag packaging with text on the front reading, “Some things were never meant to be born.” In other posts, Sonbolian revels in videos of police apprehending pro-Palestinian protesters.

Meanwhile, earlier this month at another rally in New York City, a cousin of Meir Kahane intentionally drove his car into a group of Palestinian rights protesters. He has been charged with second degree assault.

“The Reverberations of Their Aggressive Actions”

Despite the support they offer Israel, the emergence of far-right extremists at pro-Palestinian events has some Israel supporters concerned. 

Hillel, a liberal Zionest organization that some student demonstrators have called on their schools to cut ties with, issued a statement condemning the April 30 UCLA attack on the protesters. 

“The truth is that a largely peaceful, pro-Palestinian encampment was attacked by an angry, violent mob comprised of fringe members of the off-campus Jewish community last night,” the statement read. “They do not represent the estimated 3,000 Jewish Bruins at UCLA, yet those are precisely the people who will have to live with the reverberations of their aggressive actions”.

There is good reason for Zionist Jews to doubt the commitments and intentions of their supposed new allies given the long history of antisemitism on the right. According to the Zionist Anti-Defamation League’s Hate, Extremism, Antisemitism, Terrorism (H.E.A.T.) Map, an overwhelming majority of incidents involve right-wingers. Despite the hand-wringing over antisemitism among the divestment and pro-Palestinian human rights protesters, including by the ADL—a recent blog post from the group about the student demonstrators’ “extreme demands” was tagged “antisemitism”—there are zero recorded incidents on the map involving left-wing ideology in 2024, although antisemitic incidents are not filterable ideology.

UPDATE 6/15/24: A previous version of this article asserted that there were no recorded incidents involving left-wing ideology on the ADL’s H.E.A.T. Map. That statement has been clarified to note that it refers to 2024. The piece has also been updated to note that antisemitic incidents on the map cannot be filtered by ideology.