Judge
Reinstates Hamas/AMP Lawsuit
by Abha Shankar
IPT News
January 8, 2018
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A Chicago federal
judge on Thursday reinstated a lawsuit alleging that a virulently anti-Israel group
and several of its activists are "alter egos and/or successors"
of a defunct U.S. based Hamas-support network previously found liable for
the murder of an American teen in a 1996 terror attack.
American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) routinely sponsors conferences that serve as a platform for
Israel bashers, and openly approves "resistance" against the
"Zionist state." One AMP official acknowledged the goal is to
"to challenge the legitimacy of the State of Israel."
AMP is also one of the principal advocates of the Boycott,
Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against the Jewish state. Its BDS campaigns
include: Ramadan Date Boycott, SodaStream, Stop the JNF,
Stolen Homes/Airbnb,
and Stop G4S.
Because they include groups dedicated to Israel's elimination and single
out Israel for criticism while they ignore other nations with severe human
rights abuses, BDS campaigns are considered inherently anti-Semitic.
U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman not only vacated her
earlier dismissal of the case, she also authorized limited discovery in the
case. "[T]his Court placed too much weight to defendants' declarations
without providing plaintiffs with the opportunity to conduct limited
jurisdictional discovery on the existence of an alter ego relationship.
Accordingly, this Court will vacate its previous order dismissing the case
... and permit plaintiffs to conduct discovery solely to address
jurisdiction."
This is a major victory for the family of 17-year-old David Boim. He was
shot dead in Israel in May 1996 by Hamas terrorists. In a historic
judgment, Boim's parents Stanley and Joyce Boim won $156 million in damages
against the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP) and other
members of the U.S. Hamas support network called the "Palestine Committee." The Committee was created
by the Muslim Brotherhood to advance Hamas' agenda politically and financially in
the United States.
The IAP was the first to publish the genocidal, anti-Semitic Hamas
charter in English. Its fundraisers benefited the Holy Land Foundation for
Relief and Development (HLF), which – along with five former officials –
was convicted
in 2008 of illegally routing millions of dollars to Hamas. IAP fundraisers
featured overt
praise for Hamas, and skits in which Palestinians murdered
Israelis.
A 1996 Dallas Morning News story captured the scene at one IAP rally:
Inside a Kansas City auditorium in 1989, a masked man stepped
to a lectern and described in Arabic the "oceans of blood"
spilled in Hamas' armed attacks on Israeli soldiers and civilians.
He thanked two nonprofit organizations for being early allies:
the Islamic Association for Palestine, sponsor of the conference, and the
Occupied Land Fund [an early name for HLF].
An internal 1992 IAP document, "Islamic Action Plan for Palestine," makes at least
four specific references to Hamas, including its leadership role in the Palestinian intifada through
"a lot of sacrifices from martyrs, detainees, wounded, injured,
fugitives and deportees..."
IAP was among the first organizations the Muslim Brotherhood created in
North America to specifically focus on the Palestinian cause, even
preceding the Palestine Committee, the document said. Among the Palestine Committee's tasks, "Asking the countries to increase the
financial and the moral support for Hamas."
At the time of the Boim judgment in 2004, IAP and other defendants
claimed they were no longer in business and had no money to pay the
damages. But that was a ruse, the Boims' attorneys say, alleging that the
defendants formed new organizations like the American Muslims for Palestine
to escape their legal responsibility to pay damages. Successor groups, or
alter egos, of organizations previously found liable for providing material
support to Hamas need to pay the remaining judgment, the new litigation
argues.
In 2015, the
Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) first identified at least five AMP officials and
speakers who worked in the Hamas-supporting "Palestine
Committee."
An April 2014 AMP-sponsored conference in Chicago, for example, featured
former IAP Chairman Sabri Samirah.
"We are ready to sacrifice all we have for Palestine. Long Live
Palestine," Samirah said. "We have a mission here [in the U.S.]
also to support the struggle of our people back there in order to achieve a
free land in the Muslim world, without dictators and without
corruption."
The Boims' attorneys say that AMP's current leadership and donors are
"significantly identical" to their Palestine Committee branches,
including the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF),
Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), and the American Muslim Society
(AMS) which served as another name for the IAP.
Rafeeq Jaber, a defendant in the new lawsuit, is a
former IAP president and is now AMP's registered agent in Chicago. AMP
President Abdelbasset Hamayel was IAP's secretary general. AMP's conferences and other
events are
identical in their pro-Hamas message to conferences held earlier by
IAP, including overlapping speakers' lists.
AMP board member Osama Abuirshaid, a target of the current lawsuit, has
close affiliations to both the IAP and the Northern Virginia think tank
called the United Association for Studies and Research (UASR), a Palestine
Committee branch that was headed by senior Hamas member Mousa Abu Marzook.
Abuirshaid served
as editor of IAP's Arabic periodical, Al-Zaytounah, a mouthpiece for pro-Hamas propaganda. The magazine also
published advertisements by terrorist-tied charities, including
HLF, the Global Relief Foundation (GRF), and the Benevolence
International Foundation (BIF).
UASR published an academic journal that prosecutors in the HLF case say was "involved in passing Hamas communiques to
the United States-based Muslim Brotherhood community and relaying messages
from that community back to Hamas."
Abuirshaid has openly expressed support for Hamas. He criticized
Egyptian leader Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in a 2015 tweet for designating
Hamas as a terrorist organization. Calling Egypt's capital "Cairo
Aviv," Abuirshaid dismissed the move: "Look who's talking!? A
terrorist murder regime."
In a 2014 article written in Arabic, he praised the "Palestinian resistance" against
the "Zionist aggression" in Hamas-controlled Gaza: "The
facts of the current Zionist aggression have clearly shown that the
Palestinian resistance is no longer in the position of receiving slaps
without the response of some of them, and even many of them responding. It
also showed the creativity of the resisting Palestinian mind, consistent
with the severity of its being unyielding with long-range rockets, high-explosive
missiles and bombs, and unmanned aerial vehicles, most of which are
domestically manufactured, being designed to attack the enemy at the
doorstep of its military bases by sea, landing behind its lines through
tunnels, etc. It is a slap that Israel receives from the Resistance every
day, and it finds no response except through the cowardly weapon of
targeting civilians with artillery, air and sea missiles to raise the human
and economic costs of the Palestinians."
Abuirshaid has also praised Hamas war tactics: "There is a difference
between Hamas, whose youth renewed their adherence to their starting point
determined on liberalization, and Fatah, which has grown old after
deviating from the creed of liberation and resistance upon which it was
established."
"There is a difference between those who resist and those who
compromise; between those who constitute an army for liberation, and those
who ready battalions of lackeys; a difference between those who rise up for
the blood of martyrs, and those who spill it in the wine glasses of
Israel," he added.
At a conference last week hosted by the Muslim American Society (MAS) and the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), Abuirshaid
tried to erase Jews' historical claim to Israel. He claimed the
"Zionist Project" is a "form of apartheid" that seeks
to "Judaize" Palestine. "In creating false Zionist
historical and religious narratives, it's a deliberate attempt to deny the
indigenous people of Palestine, us, from their rights and their own land.
And Jerusalem is the bedrock to forge and falsify the history of Palestine
and Judaizing it," he said.
That's the kind of message that would have fit right in with any of the
Palestine Committee groups. When the suit was originally filed last May,
the Boims' attorneys issued
a statement explaining that Abuirshaid and the other defendants
"directed and controlled the organizations in 1996 ... that are
legally obliged to pay the judgment won by the Boims.
"These defendants cannot escape their legal liability and
accountability for murder by merely changing the names of their
organizations," they said.
Related Topics: Civil
suits | Abha
Shankar, American
Muslims for Palestine, BDS,
Hamas,
Osama
Abuirshaid, Palestine
Committee, Islamic
Association for Palestine, Sharon
Johnson Coleman, David
Boim, Sabri
Samirah, Al-Zaytounah,
Rafeeq
Jaber, MAS-ICNA
conferences, Civil
suits
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