A lawsuit filed Monday in the Southern District of New York alleges a coordinated campaign of support between several American nonprofit groups and organizations and prominent anti-Israel activists, and Hamas, a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization.
Defendants named in the lawsuit include Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) and Columbia graduate Mahmoud Khalil, a spokesperson for CUAD, who was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement on March 8. Other defendants include Nerdeen Kiswani, co-founder and leader of Within Our Lifetime, a pro-Palestinian activist group; Maryam Alwan, a representative of Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine; and Cameron Jones, a representative of Columbia Jewish Voice for Peace.
The plaintiffs include Columbia students as well as parents of hostages who were abducted by Hamas on October 7, 2023.
Khalil’s arrest on March 8 sparked a heated debate across the country about the limits of freedom of speech and association. But this suit claims that debate misses the point entirely.
“This case is not about individuals and organizations independently exercising their free speech rights to support whatever cause they wish—no matter how abhorrent,” the complaint argues. “Rather, it is about organizations and their leaders knowingly providing substantial assistance—in the form of propaganda and recruiting services—to, and in coordination with, a designated foreign terrorist organization, Hamas.”
The lawsuit notes one plaintiff, Shlomi Ziv, was taken hostage on October 7 and that his captors “bragged about having Hamas operatives on American university campuses” and “showed him Al-Jazeera stories and photographs of protests at Columbia University,” organized by the various defendants.
Filed by attorneys at the National Jewish Advocacy Center (NJAC), Schoen Law Firm, Greenberg Traurig, and Holtzman Vogel, the lawsuit seeks “compensatory and punitive damages” against defendants for “violating the Antiterrorism Act and the law of nations,” according to the suit filed Monday.
In filing the complaint, Mark Goldfeder, the lead attorney at NJAC, hopes to “make it clear that the right to propagandize on college campuses is important, but it does not encompass coordinating with a terrorist organization or breaking university rules. They are not independently endorsing Hamas.” The defendants, he believes, “are providing material support.”
According to the lawsuit, “as soon as October 8th, the national chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine—a group that was suspended from Columbia’s campus and has since acted under the guise of CUAD—handed out toolkits to its chapters, including those at Columbia University, urging ‘real’ support to Hamas (not just rhetoric), in response to Hamas’ ‘call for mass mobilization.’ ”
This suit is not the first to allege U.S. citizens are working in tandem or on behalf of designated terrorist organizations. In a 25-year-long fight, the family of David Boim—an American victim of Hamas who was gunned down aged 17 in 1996—have launched suits against several U.S. nonprofits they accused of raising money for Hamas.
“The Boim family, whose teenage son was murdered by Hamas, filed a case against Hamas’s three front organizations, and the jury found those front organizations civilly liable for the murder of their son,” Lara Burns, head of terrorism research at The George Washington University and a former FBI special agent, told The Free Press.
Burns says she believes that there “are elements” in the United States that “have ties to the original Hamas front organizations,” and that cases like the one filed today could help hold individuals like Khalil responsible, and lead to the dismantling of the groups being sued.
For more coverage on campus protests and the deportation of Mahmoud Khalil, click here.