On Thursday, May 2, 2024, a major U.S. and global law firm, Greenberg Traurig, filed a federal lawsuit against the National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP) and its parent organization, AJP Educational Foundation Inc. (also known as American Muslims for Palestine or AMP). The lawsuit was brought by nine survivors of the October 7, 2023 terrorist attacks on southern Israel by Hamas.
The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern Division of Virginia, Alexandria Division, alleges that 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.” It claims AMP “serves as Hamas’s propaganda division in the United States” and “was founded from the ashes of disbanded organizations created by senior Hamas officials.”
According to the complaint, in 2010 AMP founded NSJP “to control hundreds of Students for Justice in Palestine (‘SJP’) chapters across the country.” The plaintiffs include U.S. citizens Maya Parizer, Adin Gess, Noach Newman, Natalie Sanandaji, Yoni Diller, David Bromberg and Lior Bar, as well as Israelis Ariel Ein-Gal and Hagar Almog.
The lawsuit accuses the organizations of violating the Antiterrorism Act and the Alien Tort Statute. It seeks compensatory damages for the October 7, 2023 attacks, in which 1,200 people were killed and 240 others taken hostage.
The complaint states that the day after the attacks, NSJP and AMP disseminated a manifesto and plan called the “NSJP Toolkit” which “appears to have been created before the attack.” It alleges this toolkit identifies NSJP and AMP as “PART of” a “Unity Intifada” governed by Hamas’s “unified command” seeking “liberation” through “armed struggle” and violence.
It claims that within hours of the attack, “the language of the Hamas-authored disinformation campaign appeared in NSJP propaganda across social media and on college campuses.” The next day, it alleges NSJP released the toolkit across over 300 U.S. college campuses promoting protests, portraying the attacks as “a historic win for the Palestinian resistance”, and providing instructions for “messaging and framing” supporting “resistance.”
The toolkit says organizers should not use “war” or “conflict” but rather say it is a “struggle for national liberation.” It also includes graphics to advertise anti-Israel campus events. The lawsuit claims the groups “provide ongoing, continuous, systematic, and material support for Hamas and its affiliates” by “operating and managing Hamas’s mouthpiece for North America.”
The complaint alleges that by using “threats, violence, and vocal support for ‘globalizing’ attacks against Jews”, the organizations “have intentionally instigated a mass culture of fear, threats, violence, and overt hatred to intimidate politicians and institutions for Hamas’s substantial benefit.” It also claims that at the time of filing, “AMP and NSJP are…coordinating the occupation of dozens of college campuses across the country to ‘force’ the American government and academia to bend to Hamas’s will.”
Greenberg Traurig’s Scott J. Bornstein stated “Until now, they have seemingly operated in a world without consequence. With this lawsuit, we will hold Hamas’s collaborators accountable…and show them…that no one is above, or beyond, the rule of law.” The plaintiffs said in a joint statement “It is time that Hamas and all of its agents…be held responsible for their horrific actions. We want to…expose these groups for the terrorists they are and make certain that they are stopped from operating in the United States and other countries they infiltrate.