Hamas using anti-Israel campus groups to recruit future US leaders into 'terrorist cult': lawyers
Two lawyers involved in a case against National Students for Justice in Palestine allege the group is trying to recruit young Americans into its "terrorist cult."
A lawsuit filed this month against National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP) offers an important window into how Hamas terrorists are allegedly using the campus group to recruit America’s future leaders into its "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 Oct. 7 Hamas terror attack.
The litigation alleges NSJP and AJP Educational Foundation Inc., also known as American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), are serving as Hamas' "propaganda division," influencing young Americans who don’t know exactly what they are supporting.
"A lot of times when I had conversations with students, they didn’t know what was ‘River to the Sea,' what it meant," Alon-Beck told Fox News Digital. "They didn’t even know what was ‘intifada.’ They thought it was a salad."
The slogan "From the River to the Sea," which has been described as antisemitic by U.S. lawmakers, is viewed as a call to exterminate Israel. The term "intifada" is Arabic for resistance against oppression and has been used to describe violent terrorist uprisings against Israel.
Goldfeder estimated 80% of students and protesters involved in the anti-Israel demonstrations on campuses "couldn’t find Israel on a map" or tell you "what river and what sea."
"Most of them are there for the pizza, or they’ve been genuinely misled into thinking that they’ve actually been doing the right thing," Goldfeder said.
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Goldfeder noted that the major purpose of the lawsuit is to differentiate those being misled from those extremists who are allegedly working toward the same ends as the terrorist group.
"We might actually save a generation of Americans from accidentally walking into a terrorist cult," he said. "If we can just say, ‘Look, you didn’t know what you were doing, but these people, these extremists are not just extremists, but they’re actually working with a terrorist group,’ hopefully those 80% can walk away. Those are our future congressmen, our future senators, maybe our future president."
The lawsuit filed against the NSJP and AMP in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern Division of Virginia, Alexandria Division alleges the groups use "propaganda to intimidate, convince, and recruit uninformed, misguided, and impressionable college students to serve as foot soldiers for Hamas on campus and beyond."
The litigation, brought by major U.S. and global law firm Greenberg Traurig, alleges AMP "was founded from the ashes of disbanded organizations created by senior Hamas officials after those organizations and related individuals were found criminally and civilly liable for providing material support to Hamas and other affiliated terrorist groups."
"There is a legal chasm between independent advocacy and knowingly serving as the propaganda and recruiting wing of a Foreign Terrorist Organization in the United States," the lawsuit alleges. "AMP and NSJP are the latter."
American Muslims for Palestine disputes the allegations.
"AMP operates entirely domestically, raises funds from U.S. donors, and spends that money within the United States to support its mission of educating the American public about the rich history and culture of Palestine," Christina Jump, lead counsel for AMP, told Fox News Digital. "AMP looks forward to demonstrating in any jurisdiction that it acts in full compliance with U.S. and local legal requirements for nonprofit organizations. AMP remains in good standing and in compliance with the laws of the Commonwealth of Virginia as well as all federal agencies."
Jump said AMP "has zero corporate relationship with NSJP." The complaint asserts that AMP founded NSJP in 2010.
"We find the lack of basic due diligence on the part of the plaintiffs' attorneys highly disappointing," Jump continued. "Plaintiffs wrongly list NSJP's address as the location of AMP's office, but NSJP maintains no presence at and does not work out of AMP's offices."
These groups aren’t just targeting universities with demands to divest from Israel, according to Alon-Beck. They are also targeting public companies like Amazon, Google and Raytheon, all of which could have "ripple effects" on private capital markets and innovations in technology.
"We could have a liquidity crisis. We might already be in such a crisis because … a lot of universities have not been able to handle what has happened on the campuses, and so a lot of donors pulled out their funds," Alon-Beck said.
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Alon-Beck and Goldfeder say to "believe" these groups when they say they want to destroy Israel and not brush it off as just idle talk.
"The tagline for this lawsuit is: When someone tells you they are trying to provide material support to terrorists, believe them," Goldfeder said. "And we do."
