A protest demanding the release of Israelis kidnapped by Hamas militants outside the HaKirya military base in central Tel Aviv. (Kobi Wolf/Bloomberg)
A group of survivors of the Oct. 7 terrorist attack in Israel alleged in a federal lawsuit this week that two leading pro-Palestinian groups in the United States are a propaganda front working to recruit “uninformed, misguided, and impressionable college students to serve as foot soldiers for Hamas” — the latest salvo in the proxy battle raging on U.S. campuses over the war in Gaza.
The nine plaintiffs — six survivors of the attack, the brother of one victim who was killed and two people who were not attacked but remain displaced from their homes in an Israeli kibbutz — are seeking unspecified monetary damages from the two defendants, American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) and National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP).
“They are not innocent advocacy groups, but rather the propaganda arm of a terrorist organization operating in plain sight,” according to the lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va.
The complaint alleges that AMP, a nonprofit headquartered in Virginia, founded NSJP, an information clearinghouse serving hundreds of chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine on U.S. college campuses. The lawsuit claims the two groups are “coordinating the occupation of dozens of college campuses across the country.”
AMP’s chairman, Hatem Bazian, rejected the lawsuit as an assault on students’ rights to free speech and protest. An attorney for AMP said it was false to claim the group was secretly puppeteering the student-led demonstrations or occupations at dozens of universities.
“We will defend ourselves,” Bazian said. “The lawsuit is an Islamophobic text reeking in anti-Palestinian racism and resorts to defamation to deflect from the live-streamed genocide in Gaza.”
Christina Jump, an attorney for AMP, said the victims and their relatives are entitled to redress for the trauma they suffered but that their lawsuit was “misdirected.”
“AMP will in any jurisdiction that gladly demonstrate it operates fully within the laws of the United States,” Jump said.
NSJP representatives did not respond to a request for comment sent through its website.
More than 1,200 people were killed in the Oct. 7 attacks, and 200 people were taken hostage, sparking a large-scale war in the region. One of the plaintiffs, Maya Parizer, a U.S. citizen, was at a music festival with her boyfriend when the violence broke out, according to the lawsuit. They fled by car, “dodging Hamas gunfire as they wove through dead bodies on the roads,” the complaint says.
Another plaintiff, David Bromberg, also a U.S. citizen, fled the same music festival and hid in bushes for more than 12 hours until he was rescued. Several of his friends were killed and one remains a Hamas hostage, the lawsuit says.
Lior Bar Or, a third plaintiff and U.S. citizen, made his escape through gunfire and grenade explosions “after Hamas set fire to the shelter he was hiding inside,” the lawsuit says. Four of his friends were killed. An Israeli plaintiff, Ariel Ein-Gal, “narrowly survived” Hamas gunfire on a beach Oct. 7, according to court records.
The survivors alleged that AMP and NSJP are in a real-time dialogue with Hamas, quick to echo the terrorist group’s propaganda on social media or help craft it from half a world away. The lawsuit alleges that NSJP’s messaging and communications tailored to student groups constitute material support for a foreign terrorist organization. Hamas has been designated as such by U.S. officials for decades.
“AMP’s message to college campuses through NSJP is unambiguous: violent attacks are a justified response to Zionism as an idea, to Israel as an entity, and to Zionists as people,” the lawsuit says. “The purpose of this messaging is not only to justify the terrorism of Hamas and its affiliates in Gaza within Western academia and society at large but also to establish an environment where violence against Jews and anyone else associated with Israel could be construed as acceptable, justified, or even heroic.”
In support of that argument, the plaintiffs said: “Within hours of the attack, the language of the Hamas-authored disinformation campaign appeared in NSJP propaganda across social media and on college campuses.” In an information “tool kit” released Oct. 8, the day after the attack, NSJP urged sympathizers to “not only support, but struggle alongside our people back home … and above all normalize and support our fearless resistance.”
“Resistance comes in all forms — armed struggle, general strikes, and popular demonstrations,” the NSJP tool kit says. “All of it is legitimate, and all of it is necessary.”
Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares (R) launched an investigation into AMP in October. In a statement at the time, Miyares’s office said that it had “reason to believe that the organization may be soliciting contributions in the Commonwealth without first having registered” and that it would investigate allegations, from a pending lawsuit in Illinois, that AMP “may have used funds raised for impermissible purposes under state law, including benefiting or providing support to terrorist organizations.”
A spokeswoman for Miyares on Thursday said his investigation was ongoing. Jump, the AMP lawyer, said the group has answered some of the inquires it has received from the attorney general but that other questions were “out of line” and are the subject of pending litigation.
She said the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services “recognized shortly after opening that investigation that AMP came into compliance with the requirements of nonprofit filing.”
AMP had “missed one form,” Jump said. “Once brought to their attention, they filed it. They are not the only nonprofit to do that.”
