Eight families of terror victims, among them 60 victims of October 7 and beyond, have filed a multi-million-dollar lawsuit in the Middle District of Florida under the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA) against American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), its affiliated network of student organizations, and their leaders. The plaintiffs argue that SJP is a network established by Hamas and the ‘Muslim Brotherhood”, supported by the terror organization and directly provides Hamas with material support and resources – all in violation of American law.
The plaintiffs are represented by attorneys Nitsana Darshan-Leitner of Tel-Aviv, Israel, and Robert J. Tolchin of Brooklyn, New York.
The complaint demonstrates how Hamas has, over the last two decades, covertly extended its terrorist influence on college campuses in the United States. It further showed how SJP has established a student arm of the terrorist group to facilitate intimidation tactics and coercion policies and spread its terrorist agenda among impressionable college students.
The complaint described how SJP has been established as a successor for other organizations that have been designated as terrorist organizations by the Justice Department, such as The Holy Land Foundation, and how it was deliberately created as a “network comprising more than 200 university chapters of ‘Students for Justice in Palestine’ across the United States”, acting under national “terror-linked, violence-promoting” umbrella.
The complaint further elaborates how, by spreading Hamas’s terrorist agenda to the United States and establishing a student arm of Hamas to serve in the United States as its ‘alter-ego’, SJP and its affiliated organizations have “knowingly conspired with and aided and abetted Hamas – a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization.” According to the complaint, SJP provided material support and resources to Hamas and “aided, abetted, and conspired with Hamas to commit international acts of terrorism.”
“It is time to uncover the true colors of SJP and to take off the masks that covered the faces of those who stand behind this bloodthirsty and violence-encouraging entity,” said Nitsana Darshan Leitner, founder and President of the Shurat HaDin Israel Law Center. “These aren’t innocent, peaceful college students: it is the same terrorist conspiracy that butchered thousands of innocent people, tortured and raped men, women and children. If we don’t act urgently against these organizations, America will face a very real threat of its own October 7.”
According to a family member of one of the Negev kibbutz victims, “The cries of joy, rising from all over America’s campuses, on the very same day they butchered my daughter, the intimidating parades calling to murder what’s left of my family, the calls to annihilate Israel, the Jewish students that are repeatedly intimidated and attacked on campuses, the burning of the American flag – where do they think it will all end? I urge Americans to wake up before so many will suffer the terrible fate my family did.”