A federal lawsuit filed this week by families of hostages kidnapped by Hamas on October 7 seeks to shed light on Hamas’s coordinated campaign to exert influence over American college campuses. 

The complaint, filed in Manhattan federal court on Monday, accuses embattled Columbia graduate, Mahmoud Khalil, and his fellow anti-Israel group leaders of “aiding and abetting” Hamas in “continuing acts of international terrorism” immediately following the October 7 massacre.  

The other defendants named in the suit include the co-founder of hard-line anti-Israel group, Within Our Lifetime, Nerdeen Kiswani, as well as Columbia University Apartheid Divest — the anti-Israel group that replaced the school’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine after it was suspended from campus — and Columbia Jewish Voice for Peace. 

“Defendants in this case are Hamas’ propaganda arm in New York City and on the Columbia University campus. We know this because they advertise themselves as such,” the complaint reads. 

The complaint raises the groups’ “self-described acts in furtherance of their goals to assist Hamas” which include “terrorizing and assaulting Jewish students, unlawfully taking over and damaging public and university property on Columbia’s campus, and physically assaulting Columbia University employees.”

The anti-Israel groups, the complaint alleges, knowingly answered Hamas’s October 7 call to “join the battle in any way they can” by organizing anti-Israel protests and disseminating “pro-terror propaganda produced by and literally stamped with the logo of the ‘Hamas Media Office.’” 

The lawsuit even suggests that the defendants may have had prior knowledge of Hamas’s attack, given that Columbia’s SJP chapter revived its Instagram just hours before the October 7 massacre to announce that “We are back!!” and inform future members to “Stay tuned” for details about their first meeting of the semester. The account reportedly had been dormant for months beforehand. 

The plaintiffs behind the case include six families of captives still held in Gaza, two released hostages — Shlomi Ziv and Iris Weinstein Haggai, the daughter of murdered Israeli-Americans Gadi and Judith Haggai — and three American Israel Defense Forces soldiers. The suit seeks compensatory and punitive damages for violation of federal anti-terrorism legislation. 

One of the plaintiffs, Shlomi Ziv, who was held in Gaza for 246 days, testifies in the suit that his captors “bragged about having Hamas operatives on American university campuses.” Mr. Ziv claims that they even “showed him Al-Jazeera stories and photographs of protests at Columbia University that were organized by Associational Defendants while he was being held hostage.” The plaintiff was working as a security detail for the Nova Music Festival when he was kidnapped.

The lawsuit adds to the mounting evidence that the protests that have exploded on American college campuses are not simply home-grown responses to the war at Gaza but rather were planned, financed, and orchestrated by foreign terrorist groups.

Such claims were aired as early as last May when a group of American and Israeli plaintiffs filed a federal lawsuit accusing Students for Justice in Palestine of not “not merely organizing to assist Hamas’s ongoing terror campaign abroad” but “intentionally extending their aid to fomenting chaos, violence, and terror in the United States.” 

The lawsuit also comes amid Mr. Khalil’s ongoing immigration battle against the State Department which earlier this month revoked visa and green card over allegations of pro-terror activism. 

On Sunday, the government filed a new legal brief accusing Mr. Khalil of lying on his green card application about his membership at the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, a UN group which has been accused of aiding Hamas and employing people who participated in the October 7 massacre. The government also alleges that Mr. Khalil withheld his previous employment at the Syria office of the British Embassy at Beirut as well as his work with the anti-Israel student group at Columbia, Columbia University Apartheid Divest, the government alleges.