A lawsuit filed Wednesday in federal court in America appears calculated to expose as a lie the prevailing claim by National Students for Justice in Palestine that the recent campus protests are home-grown responses to the war at Gaza and expose them as planned, financed, and orchestrated by foreign terrorist groups.

Filed in the federal court in Virginia, the suit alleges that immediately after October 7 terror attacks in Israel, National Students for Justice in Palestine and related organizations answered a call by Hamas for mass mobilization by disseminating a manifesto and a plan of attack aimed at American campuses. The manifesto, the suit claims, confirms that NSJP is “not merely organizing to assist Hamas’s ongoing terror campaign abroad — they are intentionally extending their aid to fomenting chaos, violence, and terror in the United States.” 

“NSJP has effectively become the U.S. campus arm of Hamas,” a lawyer affiliated with the plaintiffs, Arsen Ostrovsky, says in a statement released Thursday. He accuses NSJP of “directly aiding and abetting the terror group on American colleges” and “facilitating the conditions necessary for Hamas to continue carrying out acts of terror and the holding of hostages, including American nationals.”

The lawsuit is being levied by a group of American and Israeli plaintiffs, including victims of the attack on Israel by Hamas on October 7. Just a day after October 7, lawyers for the plaintiffs argue, National Students for Justice in Palestine began its attempts to advance Hamas’s terror campaign against Israel and the West on American soil with an “NSJP Toolkit.”

That kit, the complaint alleges, was disseminated by American Muslims for Palestine and National Students for Justice in Palestine to recruit college students to serve as Hamas’s, as the complaint puts it, “foot soldiers.” 

The toolkit declares that National Students for Justice in Palestine is governed by Hamas’s “unified command” that seeks to achieve “liberation” by any means necessary, including “armed struggle” and other forms of violent confrontation. The toolkit, the complaint alleges, appears to have been created before the October 7 attack on Israel through which Hamas precipitated the war.

These toolkit tactics have been “enacted” by the NSJP’s “army of college students” at events sponsored by NSJP on at least 13 college campuses across the country, the lawsuit claims. The tactics include the physical assault of a Jewish student at Harvard, the holding hostage of Jewish students in a library at Cooper Union, and the threats of violence against the Hillel Rabbi at Brandeis University. All were “aimed at normalizing Hamas’s rhetoric, terrorizing students, and forwarding the ‘resistance,’” the lawsuit claims. 

The suit argues that the “NSJP and AMP” are not “innocent advocacy groups, but rather the propaganda arm of a terrorist organization operating in plain sight.” 

Mr. Ostrovsky, who is the chief executive of the International Legal Forum, an Israel-based global coalition of lawyers combating antisemitism and terrorism, says it is time not only to seek justice against Hamas, but also to “hold accountable all those who enable, support and collaborate with them, like NSJP and AMP.” 

The New York Sun asked American Muslims for Palestine for comment on the lawsuit but has yet to receive a reply. The organization has roots in the Islamic Association of Palestine, which operated as a propaganda arm for Hamas in America before it was dissolved in 2004. Press accounts suggest AMP has been vehement in denying claims of supporting Hamas.

The suit, though, argues that American Muslims for Palestine is simply a “reincarnation” of the Islamic Association of Palestine, “with the same core people and endeavors to achieve the same goal.”

“There is no indication Defendants ever ceased providing material support to Hamas and its affiliates — even in the transition period between IAP and AMP — and there is no reason to believe that Defendants have suddenly stopped engaging in the same conduct they have publicly acknowledged,” the suit alleges. 

The complaint suggests that the defendants in the case just filed are carrying on in the same ways of the Holy Land Foundation before HLF, along with five of its leaders, were found guilty in a federal court at Dallas of providing material support to Hamas. They were convicted and sent to prison for, in two cases, 65 years. At the time, the assistant attorney general for national security said that the sentences “should serve as a strong warning to anyone who knowingly provides financial support to terrorists under the guise of humanitarian relief.”

The Sun asks Mr. Ostrovsky: What happens if SJP is determined to be a terrorist arm of Hamas? “The ramifications would be extraordinarily wide-ranging,” he says. “First and foremost, it would shut them down once and for all. They would not be allowed to operate in the United States, including campuses. They could not fundraise. It would be illegal to be affiliated with them. There are many other consequences, but there are a few of the main ones.”