Hamas hostage-taker who wrote for US-based website boasted of ‘actively coordinating’ with American campus protesters, lawsuit alleges

Aljamal informed his hostages that ‘Hamas was going to ensure that the United States, as well as Jews and Israelis, are hated everywhere,’ according to the lawsuit.

By Adam Kredo, The Washington Free Beacon

A Hamas operative who also wrote for a U.S.-based nonprofit publication bragged to his Israeli hostages about how the terror group “was in contact and actively coordinating” with anti-Israel protesters at American colleges, according to eyewitness accounts detailed in a landmark terrorism lawsuit.

Abdallah Aljamal, a Gaza-based “journalist,” was killed last year during an Israeli raid that freed three hostages from his home: Almog Meir Jan, Shlomi Ziv, and Andrey Kozlov.

They are now suing Aljamal’s former collaborator, a little-known publication called the Palestine Chronicle. The website is operated by a nonprofit group in Washington state, the People Media Project, thus giving it tax-exempt status.

The lawsuit provides the hostages’ firsthand account of their time spent in captivity, where they witnessed Aljamal file dispatches for the Palestine Chronicle and brag about Hamas’s ability to orchestrate violent campus protests across America.

It is one of several lawsuits stemming from Hamas’s Oct. 7 terror attack. The case is scheduled for trial early next year, according to lawyers working on the lawsuit.

Aljamal, the lawsuit reveals, “repeatedly expressed his hatred for the State of Israel and the United States of America and informed the [hostages] that Hamas was in contact and actively coordinating with its affiliates in the media and on college campuses.”

While it has long been known that Hamas-linked entities are fueling the campus unrest, the hostage testimony confirms for the first time that the terror group itself is playing a role.

Aljamal informed his hostages that “Hamas was going to ensure that the United States, as well as Jews and Israelis, are hated everywhere,” according to the lawsuit.

To achieve this goal, the terror group “was coordinating with its allies, including its allies in the media and on college campuses, to foment hatred against Israel and Jews.”

“Most disturbingly,” the complaint continues, “because of the Palestine Chronicle’s tax-exempt status, Hamas Operative Aljamal’s propaganda, as well as his hostage-taking, was actually subsidized by U.S. taxpayers.”

Also named in the case is Ramzy Baroud, the Palestine Chronicle’s founder and editor-in-chief. Baroud, who formerly served as an editor and executive for Al Jazeera, the network bankrolled by Hamas-friendly Qatar, knowingly employed a Hamas foot soldier, the lawsuit alleges.

Baroud also has written for two now-defunct websites that the U.S. government seized in 2020 for being part of a propaganda network controlled by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp (IRGC), the Washington Free Beacon first reported in June 2024, shortly after Israel freed the three hostages.

In addition to publishing Aljamal’s work, the Palestine Chronicle has favorably covered the campus protest movement in America.

Baroud’s ties to Aljamal became the subject of a congressional investigation last year, with GOP lawmakers petitioning the IRS to revoke the People Media Project’s tax exempt status. The hostages’ lawsuit offers new details about the alleged relationship between Baroud and Aljamal.

At 5:43 AM on Oct 7, 2023—about 45 minutes before Hamas breached Israeli territory—Aljamal posted a celebratory message on his TikTok account, suggesting he had advance knowledge of the strike:

“Praise be to God, abundant, good and blessed praise.. O God, guide us.. O God, guide us.. O God, guide us.. O God, grant us the victory that you promised.. O God, acceptance, acceptance, acceptance.. Your victory, O God.”

Baroud, the lawsuit alleges, “saw Aljamal’s post asking for a blessing over the terrorist attack.”

In the weeks that followed, “Aljamal’s propaganda in the Palestine Chronicle increased exponentially, often publishing two to three pieces per day” as he kept the three Israelis captive in his Gaza home.

Additional Facebook postings offered as evidence in the case show Aljamal’s young son wearing a Hamas headband and carrying a toy gun.

Baroud and the Palestine Chronicle engaged in “consistent, direct, and substantial contact with Aljamal, using electronic and internet means,” according to the complaint.

Additionally, Baroud and the outlet “knew that Aljamal’s post-October 7, 2023 propaganda could only be made with direct and substantial contacts with other Hamas terrorists providing him information to publish, power for his electronic devices, and Internet access for transmission of materials.”

Baroud’s daughter, Zarefah Baroud, worked for American Muslims for Palestine, a leading anti-Israel group that has defended Hamas terrorism and spearheaded the anti-Semitic campus protests, as Aljamal held the hostages, the Free Beacon reported.

The group is also being sued for providing “substantial assistance to Hamas” in the wake of the Oct. 7 attacks.