A lawsuit filed this month against the National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP) provides an important window into how Hamas terrorists allegedly used campus groups to recruit America’s future leaders to a “terrorist cult,” according to two lawyers involved in the case.
Anat Alon-Beck of Case Western Reserve University School of Law and Mark Goldfeder of the National Jewish Advocacy Center both spoke to Fox News Digital about the lawsuit filed on behalf of survivors of the October 7 Hamas terror attack.
The lawsuit alleges NSJP and AJP Educational Foundation Inc., also known as American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), are Hamas’ “propaganda division,” influencing young Americans who don’t know exactly what they’re supporting.
“Many times when I talk to students, they don’t understand what ‘River to Sea’ means,” Alon-Beck told Fox News Digital. “They don’t even know what an ‘intifada’ is.’ He thought it was a salad.”
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The slogan “From the River to the Sea,” described as antisemitic by US lawmakers, is considered a call to destroy Israel. The term “intifada” is Arabic for resistance to oppression and has been used to describe violent terrorist uprisings against Israel.
Goldfeder estimated that 80% of students and protesters who participated in anti-Israel demonstrations on campus “couldn’t find Israel on a map” or tell “which river and which sea.”
Students participate in an anti-Israel protest outside the Columbia University campus November 15, 2023, in New York City. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
“Most of them are there for the pizza, or they’ve been misled into thinking they’re doing the right thing,” Goldfeder said.
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Goldfeder noted that the main purpose of the lawsuit is to distinguish those who are misled from extremists who are allegedly working for the same goals as terrorist groups.
“We may be saving a generation of Americans from accidentally joining a terrorist cult,” he said. “If we could just say, ‘Look, you don’t know what you’re doing, but these people, these extremists aren’t just extremists, they’re actually working with terrorist groups,’ hopefully those 80% would go away. This as our future congressman, our senatorial candidate, maybe even our future president.
A Students for Justice in Palestine protest takes place near the main entrance to the University of California, Santa Cruz, campus May 20 in Santa Cruz, California. (Shmuel Thaler/The Santa Cruz Sentinel via AP)
The lawsuit filed against NSJP and AMP in the US District Court for the Eastern Division of Virginia, Alexandria Division accuses the group of using “propaganda to intimidate, convince, and recruit uninformed, misguided, and impressionable college students to become foot soldiers for Hamas .on campus and beyond.”
The litigation, conducted by leading US and global law firm Greenberg Traurig, states that AMP “was founded from the ashes of a dissolved organization created by senior Hamas officials after the organization and related individuals were found criminally and civilly liable for providing material support to Hamas and other affiliated terrorist groups.”
“There is a legal gulf between independent advocacy and knowingly serving as the propaganda and recruiting wing of a Foreign Terrorist Organization in the United States,” the lawsuit states. “AMP and NSJP are the latter.”
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Muslim Americans for Palestine denied the allegations.
“AMP operates domestically, raises funds from US donors, and spends that money in the United States to support its mission of educating the American public about the rich history and culture of Palestine,” said Christina Jump, AMP’s general counsel, to Fox News digital. “AMP looks forward to demonstrating in any jurisdiction that it acts in full compliance with US and local legal requirements for non-profit organizations. AMP remains in good standing and complies with the laws of the Commonwealth of Virginia as well as all federal agencies.”
Protesters gather outside an anti-Israel camp on the UCLA campus in Los Angeles May 1. (Keith Birmingham/MediaNews Group/Pasadena Star-News via Getty Images)
Immediately said AMP “has zero corporate relationship with NSJP.” The complaint alleges that AMP established NSJP in 2010.
“We find the lack of due diligence on the part of the plaintiff’s lawyer highly disappointing,” Jump continued. “The plaintiff wrongly listed NSJP’s address as the location of AMP’s office, but NSJP was not there and did not leave AMP’s office.”
The group is not the only one targeting universities seeking to divest from Israel, according to Alon-Beck. They are also targeting public companies like Amazon, Google and Raytheon, all of which could have a “ripple effect” on private capital markets and innovation in technology.
“We may have a liquidity crisis. We may have already had a crisis because … he said.
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Alon-Beck and Goldfeder said to “believe” this group when they say they want to destroy Israel and do not brush it off as just talking quietly.
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“The tagline for this lawsuit is: When someone tells you they’re trying to provide material support to terrorists, believe them,” Goldfeder said. “And we did.”
