A lawsuit filed this week by seven Israeli victims of the Hamas terror attack of October 7, 2023, alleges that American groups such as Students for Justice in Palestine, active in many campus protests, is a propaganda front for Hamas.
The complaint, filed in federal court in the Eastern District of Virginia in Alexandria, claims that the AJP Educational Foundation, Inc., also known as American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), and its offshoot, National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP), are acting as a “propaganda arm” of the Hamas terrorist organization in the United States, The plaintiffs, who are victims, survivors, and relatives of victims of the October 7 attack, are seeking damages for the “pain and suffering” caused by AMP and NSJP’s alleged “material support” to Hamas through their advocacy.
As Breitbart News reported in October, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) distributed a “toolkit” to activists on campuses across the United States, celebrating the October 7 attack as the beginning of the end of the Jewish state.
That “toolkit” forms a key part of the complaint, as evidence of a coordinated effort by AMP, NSJP, and SJP chapters to help Hamas’s genocidal aims effort by undermining U.S. public and government support for Israel’s self-defense.
The complaint walks through the history of terror financing for Hamas in the United States, and alleges that AMP is “simply a reincarnation” of past organizations that were prosecuted, operating with the same people and objectives.
It adds:
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 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.
…
Defendants provide ongoing, continuous, systematic, and material support for Hamas and its affiliates in precisely the same way that [their banned predecessors] used to: by operating and managing Hamas’s mouthpiece for North America, dedicated to sanitizing Hamas’s atrocities and normalizing its terrorism.
…
Defendants consistently respond to Hamas and its allies’ calls for mass protests and support. Indeed, Defendants seem to almost always answer the calls from Hamas, and Hamas, in turn, continues to express its organizational appreciation.
The complaint also links these groups to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its calls to action.
It goes on to say that the “encampment” movement across university campuses is also part of the Hamas propaganda effort.
Anticipating a First Amendment defense to the claims in the lawsuit, the complaint says that the problem is not political speech or advocacy, but rather material support to terrorism and its propaganda objectives in the U.S.
The case is Parizer, et al. v. AJP Educational Foundation, et al., Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division, No. 1:24-cv-00724-RDA-IDD.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, “The Zionist Conspiracy (and how to join it),” now available on Audible. He is also the author of the e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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