Victims of Hamas file lawsuits against pro-Palestinian campus groups for aiding terrorists

Victims of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attack on Israel are suing two pro-Palestinian campus organizations, saying they hold some responsibility for the attack because they are “collaborators and propagandists for Hamas.”

The suit, filed in a Virginia-based federal court Wednesday, alleges that national campus organizations American Muslims for Palestine and National Students for Justice in Palestine are partially responsible for the Oct. 7 attack because “Hamas’s propaganda directed at American audiences is instrumental to its strategy.”

AMP and NSJP are both heavily connected to the pro-Palestinian protests and encampments disrupting college campuses across the country, often working through chapter-level subsidiaries. Both groups are funded by far-left donors, as the Washington Examiner reported.

“There is a legal chasm between independent advocacy and knowingly serving as the propaganda and recruiting wing of a Foreign Terrorist Organization in the United States,” the lawsuit, filed by nine American and Israeli victims of the Oct. 7 attack, reads. “AMP and NSJP are the latter. They are not innocent advocacy groups, but rather the propaganda arm of a terrorist organization operating in plain sight.

“Survivors of Hamas’s October 7 terrorist attack, family members of those murdered by Hamas, civilians still under fire from Hamas’s ongoing terrorism, and persons displaced by Hamas’s ongoing terrorism have been, and continue to be, injured because AMP and NSJP knowingly provide continuous, systematic, and substantial assistance to Hamas and its affiliates’ acts of international terrorism,” it continues.

Affiliated chapters have organized the campus encampments, which have roiled universities for the past several weeks. Schools such as Columbia University have had to use harsh measures to retake control of portions of campus, asking the New York City Police Department to send in a tactical unit to clear a lecture hall that had been taken over by agitators.

According to the police, “outside agitators” have been brought in to provide numbers and support to protesters — something some suspect is funded by the NSJP and AMP. On Wednesday, members of Congress visited the encampment at George Washington University, where House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) promised to hold hearings and “follow the money” to uncover the role of interest groups in the protests.

“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 lawsuit reads.

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NSJP and AMP materials cited in the lawsuit show that the two groups identify themselves as part of the “‘Unity Intifada,’ governed by Hamas’s ‘unified command’ of terrorist operations in Gaza,” according to the filing. “As part of Hamas’s movement, AMP and NSJP state that they seek ‘liberation,’ which they describe as a ‘real process that requires confrontation by any means necessary,’ including ‘armed struggle’ and other acts of violence.”

The suit, with representation from Greenberg Traurig, the National Jewish Advocacy Center, Schoen Law Firm, and Holtzman Vogel, alleges that the two groups provide material support to Hamas, so they should be held liable for the violence Hamas commits.