OPINION:
An alliance of American lawyers is aiding post-Oct. 7 Israel by suing groups that have boosted terror-driven Hamas with propaganda, campus violence and money.
The lawsuits accuse supporters of the Palestinian cause of unleashing “violence and terror on American college campuses.” The filings say the activists are violating federal law by helping Hamas, a U.S.-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization.
The lawyers from the National Jewish Advocacy Center and three law firms were targeting American Muslims for Palestine, or AMP, and allied National Students for Justice in Palestine, which launched a reign of harassment across the nation. They occupied and ransacked campuses while terrifying Jewish students — all in support of Hamas against Israel’s counter-invasion.
Mark Goldfeder, the advocacy center’s director, told me, “We are meant to be a think tank with teeth, primarily set up to protect American Jews from antisemitism, including antisemitism driven by anti-Zionism, and also to correct the record on international law as it relates to Israel.”
Also sued in a separate action is the United Nations Relief and Works Agency USA. It sends American dollars by the millions directly to the Gaza-based UNRWA. The U.N. organization has been revealed to be an embedded ally of Hamas before, during and after its henchmen on Oct. 7 launched a vicious invasion of southern Israel, gleefully killing over 1,200 innocents, including babies.
The plaintiffs are Israelis and Americans who survived Oct. 7, some escaping carnage as Hamas paragliders swooped down on a peaceful music festival and began the massacre.
The anti-AMP lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Northern Virginia states that the group crossed the line from being a Palestinian advocate to being a propaganda arm of Hamas. It wants Judge Rossie D. Alston to declare that AMP is violating federal law.
President Biden and his weak foreign policy appeasers should be doing this. But Mr. Biden is too consumed with winning Michigan in November and doesn’t want to offend Muslim voters. Overall, Mr. Biden’s Middle East policies amount to a colossal failure.
The lawsuit tells the story of college campuses that became shameful centers of antisemitism, pro-terrorism and violence as hapless administrators mostly just watched.
“Defendants provide ongoing, continuous, systematic, and material support for Hamas and its affiliates,” the filing alleges.
AMP began spreading its influence to colleges in 2010 by founding National Students for Justice in Palestine, known as NSJP.
“Through NSJP, AMP uses propaganda to intimidate, convince, and recruit uninformed, misguided, and impressionable college students to serve as foot soldiers for Hamas on campus and beyond,” the suit states.
The lawsuit says one of NSJP’s communications channels exploited the Telegram messenger app. On the day of the atrocities, the group was ready for battle even though Israel had not yet responded. “We stand with our brothers in the Al-Qassam Brigades [Hamas’ military wing] and with all resistance forces, and we merge with them in this battle that will be recorded in history,” the organizing chat room message states. “Glory to the martyrs.”
The pro-Israel lawyers filed suit against UNRWA USA in U.S. District Court in Wilmington, Delaware, before Judge Richard G. Andrews.
For years, the Geneva-based U.N. Watch has documented how UNRWA relief workers became embedded in the Hamas system of grooming future terrorists in the classroom and how it provides secure facilities to stash the terror group’s huge, Iran-fed arsenal. Israel accused some relief workers of crossing the border and taking part in the atrocities. In New York, U.N. headquarters, no one seemed to care.
The lawsuit argues that by raising and sending cash to the Gaza Strip (over $10 million in 2020-22), the USA fundraising is violating federal law.
“Defendant UNRWA USA is not operating a legitimate nonprofit organization,” the court filing states. “It is operating a terrorist-financing scheme in violation of federal law and thereby misleading its donors, the United States government, and the international community.”
It adds, “Defendant UNRWA USA has been and is fully aware that UNRWA works with and for Hamas, providing operational and financial support for their activities.”
Hamas sent out lots of photos and videos of its atrocities. The group’s aim was to terrorize Jews and show the world it had killed a lot of Jews. The murderers are their own publicists.
Along for the ride came photojournalists working for big-name media.
The National Jewish Advocacy Center, on behalf of Israeli survivors, is suing The Associated Press in U.S. District Court in southern Florida. The lawsuit states that the AP knew it was working with journalists affiliated with Hamas and was thus giving the terror group material support in violation of federal law.
“AP paid for the real time images of Israeli hostages being taken into Gaza … despite the clear indications that they were functioning as full participants of the Hamas terrorist squad that conducted the October 7th attack, and not as AP chose to pretend as journalists,” the filing says.
The AP issued a statement calling the lawsuit “baseless.”
It said: “AP had no advance knowledge of the Oct. 7 attacks, nor have we seen any evidence — including in the lawsuit —that the freelance journalists who contributed to our coverage did. Allegations like this are reckless and create even more potential danger for journalists in the region.”
An AP freelancer, Ali Mahmud, photographed the grotesque image of murdered German Israeli Shani Louk, 22, loaded onto a pickup truck by Hamas like some prized hunting trophy.
The Reynolds Journalism Institute at the Missouri School of Journalism awarded Mr. Mahmud “photo of the year.”
The AP in May filed a motion asking a magistrate to dismiss the suit, to which the Hamas victims replied, “AP does not have the unfettered right to buy pictures from terrorists taken while engaging in a terrorist attack.”
• Rowan Scarborough is a columnist with the Washington Times.
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