The filing supports survivors of the assault, relatives of those killed, and civilians still affected by Hamas’ ongoing violence.

By Vered Weiss, World Israel News

A group of 25 US states has launched federal appeal against American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) and National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP), urging the 4th Circuit to reinstate claims that the organizations aided Hamas in the lead-up to and during the October 7, 2023 terrorist attack.

The filing supports survivors of the assault, relatives of those killed, and civilians still affected by Hamas’s ongoing violence.

Led by Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares and Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird, the coalition submitted an amici curiae brief asserting that the case carries national importance and implicates the states’ sovereign interest in enforcing anti-terrorism laws.

The states back plaintiffs in Parizer et al. v. AJP Educational Foundation et al., who argue that several US-based entities violated the federal Anti-Terrorism Act by providing material support to Hamas.

The states’ filing challenges a decision by a federal judge in the Eastern District of Virginia, who dismissed the case at the motion-to-dismiss stage before any discovery occurred.

The plaintiffs are now appealing that ruling, and the attorneys general contend that early dismissal deprived the Anti-Terrorism Act of its intended force.

According to the brief, AMP and NSJP publicly aligned themselves with Hamas one day after the October 7 attack by declaring they were “part of a ‘Unity Intifada’ under Hamas’s ‘unified command.’”

The submission argues that such statements, combined with organizational links cited by the plaintiffs, warrant full judicial review rather than an early rejection of the claims.

The document describes AMP and NSJP as operating in the United States as communications and outreach extensions of a designated terrorist organization.

It highlights assertions that AMP was established by senior figures formerly involved with the Holy Land Foundation, a group tied to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.

The brief further notes that AMP subsequently created both its fiscal sponsor, AJP Educational Foundation, and its campus branch, NSJP.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, one of the amici, said Wednesday that “radical Islamic terrorist groups like Hamas must be decimated and dismantled, and that includes their domestic supporting branches.”

He added that “terrorism relies on complex networks and intermediaries, and the law must be enforced against those who knowingly provide material support.”

The coalition’s involvement follows Paxton’s previous defense of Texas’s designation of the Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR as foreign terrorist and transnational criminal organizations.

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A lawsuit in Illinois is arguing that AMP is a resurrection of the former organization, Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), which a judge found liable for $156 million due to its support for Hamas.

By David Swindle, The Algemeiner

A circuit court judge in Richmond, VA, ruled on Friday that American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), a nonprofit which has sponsored a series of anti-Israel protests following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks across southern Israel, must provide financial information which the activist group has long guarded from government investigators.

Virginia’s Attorney General Jason Miyares has said that the organization possesses connections to terrorists and has submitted multiple filings to compel AMP to provide its donor list.

He said his office “has a legal obligation to ensure that charitable organizations operating in Virginia are following the law” and vowed to “continue to enforce state law without exception or delay to protect Virginians.”

Judge Devika Davis’s decision represents the end of AMP’s efforts to legally delay Miyares’s investigation.

Labeling Miyares’s claims a “defamatory smear,” AMP lawyer Christina Jump said the “vague accusations that AMP has anything to do with Hamas or Oct. 7 just got thrown out completely by a federal court judge.” She referred to the dismissal last week of a Nevada lawsuit against the group.

A second suit in Illinois remains ongoing, arguing that AMP is a resurrection of the former organization Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), which a judge found liable for $156 million due to its support for Hamas, a US-designated terrorist group.

Individuals formerly involved with IAP and now supporting AMP include AMP’s current executive director, Osama Abuirshaid; Nihad Awad, the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR); Rafeeq Jaber, a former president of IAP who speaks at AMP events; former AMP executive director Abdelbaset Hamayel, who worked for IAP as executive director and secretary general; Kifah Mustafa, who worked for IAP in Illinois; and Raeed Tayeh, a former IAP member.

The lawsuit charges that AMP includes “largely the same core leadership as IAP/AMS; it serves the same function and purpose; it holds nearly identical conventions and events with many of the same roster of speakers; it operates a similar ‘chapter’ structure in similar geographic locations; it continues to espouse Hamas’s ideology and political positions; and it continues to facilitate fundraising for groups that funnel money to Hamas.”

In 2015, the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) first revealed the extensive cross-over between IAP and AMP.

In a speech while protesting at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, DC on Dec. 1, 2023, Abuirshaid denied the atrocities committed by Hamas during the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre: “Most of the civilians were killed by their own army … They killed their own civilians … There were no rapes, that’s what they told us. And they still lie to us, why?”

Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists murdered 1,200 people, wounded thousands more, and kidnapped 251 hostages while perpetrating widespread sexual violence during their Oct. 7 onslaught.

Abuirshaid has a history of spreading antisemitic conspiracy theories such as the claim that Jews originated not in ancient Israel but among the Khazars.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) describes AMP as “at the core of the anti-Israel and anti-Zionist movement in the United States” and notes that the group’s leadership “promotes antisemitic tropes and support for violence against Israel, such as praising Hamas for the Oct. 7, 2023, attack which marked the deadliest massacre of Jewish people since the Holocaust.”

Founded in 2006 by Hatem Bazian — a senior lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley and the group’s current national board chairman — the ADL says that “some AMP-sponsored anti-Israel rallies have featured flags of terrorist groups and the glorification of individual terrorists, such as Hamas spokesman Abu Obaida; speeches and posters that contained antisemitic conspiracy theories about Zionist control of the US government; and incidents of harassment towards Jewish people.”

Bazian has previously made comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany, a claim which the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism characterizes as antisemitic.

In 2015, he wrote that Gaza was “an epistemic Warsaw Ghetto but only different Semites are locked up this time around” and that “the Europeans who fought Nazism with arms were labeled ‘terrorist’ by Hitler. Hamas is fighting against the occupation of Palestinian lands and is labeled ‘terrorist.’”

AMP works closely with Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), another anti-Israel activist group also cofounded by Bazian. Jump told the Daily Mail in an April 2024 statement that AMP provides between $500 and $2,000 to Jewish Voice for Peace and SJP in support of protest events.

According to NGO Monitor, an independent, Jerusalem-based research institute that tracks anti-Israel bias among nongovernmental organizations, “SJP is the campus organization most directly responsible for creating a hostile campus environment saturated with anti-Israel events, BDS initiatives, and speakers. Each SJP chapter operates independently and is responsible for forming its own constitutions, finding funding sources, and organizing activities.”

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At least nine individuals involved with AMP and its sister organization, Americans for Justice in Palestine, are alleged to have ties to Hamas.

By Jessica Costescu and Lexi Boccuzzi, The Washington Free Beacon

The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions launched a probe into American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), a prominent Hamas-linked advocacy group, over its role in fueling anti-Israel demonstrations on American college campuses, the Washington Free Beacon has learned.

Committee chairman Bill Cassidy (R., La.) sent a letter to AMP’s founder and chairman Hatem Bazian on Wednesday demanding the nonprofit hand over documents and records detailing the group’s financial and logistical involvement in supporting college protests in the aftermath of Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist attack.

Bazian, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, has argued that “it’s about time we had an intifada in this country.”

“Reports of individuals with ties to terrorist groups or their affiliates engaging with students on college campuses are cause for the highest alarm,” Cassidy wrote in the letter. “Activity that threatens the safety of others is not constitutionally protected free speech, and conduct that violates campus rules should not be tolerated.”

“While college campuses should welcome free speech and the free exchange of ideas,” he continued, “they should never be havens for terrorist organizations or their affiliates to engage with college students or instigate conflict for their own political purposes.”

The probe comes as the Trump administration moves forward with its efforts to deport pro-Hamas visa holders and pull funding from schools that fail to protect Jewish students.

The administration has revoked the visa and green card of Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate student and prominent pro-Hamas protest leader.

It has also slashed more than $430 million in federal funding to the Ivy League school and is now eyeing sanctions against the international funders bankrolling pro-Hamas demonstrations.

At least nine individuals involved with AMP and its sister organization, Americans for Justice in Palestine, are alleged to have ties to Hamas.

The letter names AMP executive director Osama Abuirshaid, who was featured on the website of Hamas’s military wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, who were responsible for the Oct. 7 attack.

Last spring Abuirshaid personally visited anti-Israel encampments at Columbia and George Washington University to encourage participants.

The letter also names Salah Sarsour, one of the group’s board members, who is alleged to have played a direct role in fundraising for a Hamas front group in the late 1990s, according to an FBI memorandum.

Other AMP associates, like Jamal Said and Mohammed El-Mezain, are tied to the Holy Land Foundation—a sham charity founded by a top Hamas official—which was shut down by the U.S. government after it was discovered the foundation had sent approximately $12.4 million to support Hamas.

The committee’s inquiry zeroes in on AMP’s relationship with Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and its national network of college chapters, responsible for spearheading anti-Semitic protests at campuses across the country.

Four of the universities at the epicenter of this chaos, Columbia, Barnard College, George Washington University, and the University of California, Los Angeles, have also received letters from Cassidy ordering them to turn over all records related to SJP’s activities.

The committee has requested the universities provide all information related to the funding of the anti-Israel student groups and their links to AMP.

Shortly after the Oct. 7, 2023, terror attack, Virginia attorney general Jason Miyares filed a suit against AMP demanding access to its financial records after failing to file tax disclosures in the state for seven years.

Miyares alleges that the group “may have used funds raised for impermissible purposes under state law, including benefitting or providing support to terrorist organizations.” AMP has so far refused to comply, even after being ordered to do so by a judge.

In May, meanwhile, the Republican-controlled Congress, spearheaded by the House Oversight and Education and Workforce Committees, demanded the Biden Treasury Department turn over any “Suspicious Activity Reports” related to AMP that could tie the group to money laundering and terrorism financing.

AMP did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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The petition, if successful, could implicate AMP in terrorism financing violations and shine a light on American anti-Israel groups’ close ties to foreign extremists and illicit actors.

By Adam Kredo, The Washington Free Beacon

Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares (R.) filed a petition to compel American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) to turn over documents related to the leading anti-Israel group’s alleged terror financing.

Though a judge ordered AMP to disclose its funding channels last year, AMP has “refused to comply,” Miyares’s office said.

If a Richmond, Va., judge approves Miyares’s petition to enforce, AMP would be compelled to “immediately” comply with Miyares’s investigation into allegations that the group provides material support to overseas terrorist organizations.

A city circuit court judge ordered AMP, a nonprofit group that helped drive anti-Semitic protests against Israel in the wake of Oct. 7, to turn over financial records to Miyares in a July 2024 decision.

Shortly thereafter, AMP filed an unsuccessful petition to limit the probe. It has since stonewalled the investigation, Miyares’s office said in a Tuesday press release.

The petition, if successful, could implicate AMP in terrorism financing violations and shine a light on American anti-Israel groups’ close ties to foreign extremists and illicit actors.

Miyares launched the probe after AMP failed to properly file basic tax forms permitting it to solicit donations in Virginia for seven years.

Miyares used that failure as legal justification to access AMP’s donor records.

AMP attempted to quash the probe, claiming Miyares was on an Islamophobic witch hunt, but a district judge rejected that argument last year, saying the attorney general is within his right to perform oversight on AMP’s finances.

The original request, known as a civil investigative demand (CID), centered on “AMP’s noncompliance with the state’s charitable solicitation law and an investigation into allegations that the organization may have used raised funds for impermissible purposes, such as benefiting or providing support to terrorist organizations,” according to the attorney general office’s statement.

“Despite the court having rejected AMP’s previous lawsuit that sought to evade the Attorney General’s investigation, AMP has refused to comply with the CID requiring the Attorney General to bring this action to ensure accountability,” the office said.

Miyares’s probe covers many years’ worth of AMP funding documents, including its donors and transaction records.

It garnered national attention due to AMP’s status as one of the country’s leading anti-Israel forces responsible for a wave of anti-Semitic protests on college campuses that have featured violence and vocal support for Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre.

AMP did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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The suit seeks to hold the anti-Israel groups accountable under the Anti-Terrorism Act for allegedly ‘providing material support to Hamas,’ according to the AGs’ brief.

By Jessica Costescu, The Washington Free Beacon

A group of Republican attorneys general has filed an amicus brief backing a lawsuit against American Muslims for Palestine and National Students for Justice in Palestine, the anti-Israel groups accused of providing material support to Hamas.

The coalition of 22 attorneys general, led by Virginia’s Jason Miyares and Iowa’s Brenna Bird, filed the brief late last week, urging the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia to “decline to dismiss” a lawsuit brought on by survivors and family members of those killed by Hamas on Oct. 7.

The defendants stand accused of serving as “the propaganda and recruiting wing of a Foreign Terrorist Organization in the United States.”

American Muslims for Palestine and National Students for Justice in Palestine have galvanized anti-Israel and anti-Semitic activists across the country in the wake of Oct. 7, calling for a “Unity Intifada” against the Jewish state and vowing to “contribute to the fight for Palestinian liberation.”

The suit seeks to hold the anti-Israel groups accountable under the Anti-Terrorism Act for allegedly “providing material support to Hamas,” according to the AGs’ brief.

“Attorneys General, as their States’ chief law enforcement officers, have a deep interest in holding terrorists and their supporters accountable,” says the brief.

“That accountability helps ensure that citizens of their States receive financial compensation from the individuals and organizations who supported the terrorists that engaged in the horrific attacks that harmed family members and loved ones—fully acknowledging that no amount of financial compensation can ever make up for the tragic losses these citizens have experienced.”

Miyares and Bird told the Washington Free Beacon that organizations that abuse their “nonprofit” status to promote terrorism must be held accountable.

“Sunlight is the best disinfectant and we are working to get to the truth. Groups such as AMP and NSJP are alleged to have abused their nonprofit status in order to promote Hamas’ dangerous ideological campaign of hatred,” Miyares said.

“Their inconsistent financial reporting, particularly in Virginia, raises serious concerns about whether donations to these organizations are in fact being funneled to support activities far from their publicly stated mission.”

“It is not only despicable but illegal for any person or group to provide support to terrorists. I stand with the victims and families whose loved ones were murdered on October 7,” Bird added.

“They deserve the chance to take their fight against terrorism to court and to hold accountable any group that leverages its ‘nonprofit’ status to act as Hamas foot soldiers and promote terrorism.”

In Virginia, where American Muslims for Palestine is based, Miyares opened a separate investigation in October probing allegations that the organization maintains fundraising ties to Hamas.

Salah Sarsour, one of the group’s board members, is alleged to have played a direct role in raising funds for a Hamas front group in the late 1990s, according to an FBI memorandum. A judge ordered the group in July to disclose its funding channels.

Virginia and Iowa are joined by attorneys general from Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and West Virginia.

American Muslims for Palestine and National Students for Justice in Palestine did not respond to requests for comment.

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