A carefully planned plot to firebomb the New York home of one of the city’s most prominent pro-Palestinian activists was thwarted at the last moment by the FBI and the New York City Police Department. Late Thursday night, law enforcement swooped in on a residence in Hoboken, New Jersey, arresting the suspected conspirator, Alexander Heifler, as he was
assembling the components for his attack.
The intended target was Nerdeen Kiswani, 31, co-founder of the pro-Palestinian activist group Within Our Lifetime. On the evening of Thursday, March 26, she received a call from the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force informing her that a threat on her life had been “about to take place” and that an operation had been carried out in Hoboken to stop it.
According to the criminal complaint, Heifler spent weeks discussing the plot with an undercover law enforcement officer, at one point travelling to physically scout out Kiswani’s home. On March 4, he and the undercover officer visited the property together, surveying the building and two vehicles parked outside, and mapped out a plan to throw twelve
Molotov cocktails at the home. He had also made arrangements to flee the country after carrying out the attack.
When the undercover officer visited Heifler’s Hoboken home on Thursday, the materials for the bombs were already laid out — rags, corks, and the highly flammable alcohol Everclear. Law enforcement then executed a search warrant, recovering eight fully assembled Molotov cocktails from inside the residence. Heifler is a 2022 graduate of the Stevens Institute of Technology, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Kiswani responded in a statement on social media, saying that Zionist organisations and politicians had spent months inciting violence against her and her family. She said she would not stop speaking out for Palestine. Though shaken by the news, she said she was not entirely surprised. “I feel very blessed that they were able to thwart this,” she
said, “but it’s something that is a constant possibility for people who speak up on behalf of Palestine.”
Hoboken Mayor Emily B. Jabbour issued a statement assuring residents that there was no danger to the public and no ongoing threat. An NYPD spokesperson confirmed that the operation was conducted as part of a joint operation within the department’s counterterrorism bureau. Heifler has been charged with two firearms-related criminal offences. No attorney representing him has been identified as of the time of publication.
