Opinion A suit alleges anti-Israel protest groups provide material support to Hamas - WaPo Rubin
The sight of masked, encamped protesters breaking into buildings, barring Jewish students from classes and spewing Jew-hatred has drawn condemnation from President Biden, revealed too many college administrators’ fecklessness and confirmed that a strain of virulent antisemitism courses through pro-Palestinian protests (which too many pundits chose to ignore or rationalize). But according to a new lawsuit, the protests might have also revealed a disturbing relationship between Hamas and two U.S.-based groups, American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) and National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP).
International law firm Greenberg Traurig, in a news release last week, announced a lawsuit seeking “compensatory damages for nine American and Israeli victims of the attack in which Hamas killed 1,200 people and took 240 people hostage, alleg[ing] that AMP and NSJP work in the United States as collaborators and propagandists for Hamas. Hamas is a United States designated Foreign Terrorist Organization.” The suit further argues that defendants “are merely the current version of several prior entities that were already determined by the U.S. government to be supporters of Hamas.” According to the complaint, AMP is the “rebranded” group designed to fill the loss of the previously shut down Islamic Association for Palestine. The complaint alleges overlap in leadership and staffing. (Furthermore, according to the suit, AMP announced in 2010 the “creation of NSJP — AMP’s new on-campus sub-brand — designed to control the management, financing, and messaging of SJP chapters across the country.”)
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The suit raises obvious First Amendment concerns. The law firm points out that “free speech has never included the active support of terrorism, and it has never protected the destruction of private property or the brutalization of innocent men, women, and children of many faiths, not just Jews.” The lawsuit claims AMP and NSJP are not independent activist groups but instead “support and further the goals and directives of Hamas” and have been “intentionally extending their aid to fomenting chaos, violence, and terror in the United States.”
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Certainly, private actors are constitutionally protected to act as cheerleaders for Hamas, provided they do not directly incite violence. American students and student groups are entitled to protection from governmental action for core political speech — even outrageous, heinous speech reeking of Jew-hatred.
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In short, both conduct and speech may be prosecuted if material support is “coordinated with or under the direction of a designated foreign terrorist organization.” However, “independent advocacy that might be viewed as promoting the group’s legitimacy is not covered.” Roberts’s opinion held that the statute is not on its face unconstitutional, while leaving open that it might run afoul of constitutional protection in some contexts.
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https://archive.ph/8WqO9
