The filing of a civil lawsuit against American Muslims for Palestine and its affiliates appears to be a major development to open what might be called a third front in the war against Hamas. We think of the first front as the military actions, the second front as the diplomatic pettifoggery, and the third front as the one swarming with tort lawyers. Tanks and missiles are one thing, we say, but don’t underestimate the power of the tort bar.

“When someone tells you they are aiding and abetting terrorists,” the lawsuit avers, “believe them.” The suit is brought by a group of American and Israeli victims, and their families, of Hamas’ terrorist attack on October 7. They seek damages against groups they call cat’s-paws of Hamas, a Virginia-based nonprofit, AJP Educational Foundation, which does business as American Muslims for Palestine, and an affiliate, National Students for Justice in Palestine.

American Muslims for Palestine, the Hamas victims say in their suit, “serves as Hamas’s propaganda division in the United States.” The suit notes that AMP emerged “from the ashes of disbanded organizations,” like the Holy Land Foundation, found to have ties to Hamas. The groups closed after being “found criminally and civilly liable” for aiding Hamas and other “terrorist groups.” Two Holy Land officials were sentenced to 65 years in the big house.

For some 14 years, the suit reckons, American Muslims for Palestine has been using National Students for Justice in Palestine as an umbrella group “to control hundreds of Students for Justice in Palestine chapters” at colleges. The group uses “propaganda,” the lawsuit says, “to intimidate, convince, and recruit uninformed, misguided, and impressionable college students to serve as foot soldiers for Hamas on campus and beyond.”

The suit argues that the two groups have deployed “threats, violence, and vocal support for ‘globalizing’ attacks against Jews and anyone who dares to support them,” adding that the groups “have intentionally instigated a mass culture of fear, threats, violence, and overt hatred to intimidate politicians and institutions for Hamas’s substantial benefit.” The new lawsuit doesn’t mark the first time that American Muslims for Palestine has faced legal scrutiny.

The attorney general of Virginia, Jason Miyares, announced shortly after the October 7 attacks that his office had launched an investigation of the organization, pointing to concerns that it was raising funds for “impermissible purposes under state law.” The investigation encompassed allegations, Mr. Miyares’ office said, that the group was “benefitting or providing support to terrorist organizations.”

The group called General Miyares’ announcement an “attempt to smear and silence American Muslims who speak up for Palestinian human rights.” Yet the group has been fighting an earlier lawsuit by the family of David Boim, who was killed in Israel by Hamas in 1996, seeking damages from AFP on grounds similar to the new suit. The Boim family ties the group to Hamas via the nonprofits that shut down after being found liable for terrorism, then re-formed as AFP. 

The arguments in the Boim case are bolstered by the Anti-Defamation League, which contends that the AFP has “roots in the Islamic Association of Palestine,” which it describes as an antisemitic group “that served as the main propaganda arm for Hamas.” The AFP is “the leading organization providing anti-Zionist training and education to students and Muslim community organizations,” the ADL contends. 

The lawsuit against AFP sheds a harsh light on the recent wave of anti-Israel unrest on American campuses. It suggests that many of the protests were inspired, and coordinated, by the NSJP umbrella group. If that group’s ties to Hamas end up being confirmed, the implication is that these students are in effect getting their marching orders from an international terrorist group, belying their claims to be advancing humanitarian or peaceful causes.

In the new lawsuit, the Hamas victims and their families do “not seek to suppress speech,” they say, “but to hold defendants liable for acting as Hamas’s ministry of propaganda in the United States.” They say they aim “to expose these groups for the terrorists they are and make certain that they are stopped from operating” in America. Their lawsuit could secure a welcome measure of accountability against Hamas and its overseas enablers.