JEWISH SENTINEL

JEWISH WORLD • DECEMBER 20-26, 2024 23 B ornstein noted that “until now, they have seemingly operated in a world without consequence. With this lawsuit, we will hold Hamas's collaborators accountable for their actions and show them and those in sympathy with them that no one is above, or beyond, the rule of law.” On Touro Talks, NJAC director Mark Goldfeder said the lawsuit is part of a strategy often referred to as “strategic impact litigation. "This means going after seemingly un- touchable hate groups to make “im- portant strategic gains.” Goldfeder is both a rabbi and an attorney. He is a senior Sartner with the law firP Goldfeder & Terry and a schol- ar-in-residence and adjunct law pro- fessor at Touro Law Center in Cen- tral Islip. Holding such groups accountable is essential because they appeal to a public that often needs to learn what and who they represent. “I don't know if you have ever walked into one of these [NSJP col- lege] encampments or protests, but if you do, you'll notice something fascinating,” Goldfeder told the Touro Talk audience. The student protestors are often heard chanting the battle cry, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” but most of them have no clue what they are chanting. “Charitably speaking,” said Gold- feder, “maybe 20 percent of the stu- dents involved who are chanting to their heart’s content know what ‘riv- er’ [the Jordan] and what ‘sea’ [the Mediterranean].” They probably do not know, either, that this battle cry calls for the destruction of Israel and the killing of the Jews who live there. “Most of them,” he said, “are there either for the pizza or because they have been genuinely misled into thinking they are on the right side of history. That, he explained, is where “stra- tegic impact litigation” comes in. “Now, if we can get a district court to explain to them that ‘you're in bed with an arm of Hamas,’ may- be that 80 percent of people walk away, or maybe 50 percent of them walk away. And what we've just done is saved 50 percent of our children's classmates. We've saved 50 percent of our future congress- men and women, senators, presi- dents, leaders, and citizens from, unfortunately, becoming brain- washed. So there are incredible…, significant strategic iPSacts that we're looking to get that are worth a lot more than money.” G oldfeder noted that there have Eeen seYeral lawsuits filed against colleges and universities for not protecting Jewish students during such protests. Yet, he said, although it is illegal for institutions that take federal funds to engage in discrimination based on national origin, ethnicity, and race, not one of those lawsuits has cost a single university the loss of its federal funding. As a result, the NJAC is now “[leading] the charge in using the Anti-TerrorismAct to go after some of these bad actors who are funding Hamas.” As he recently wrote on Twitter, some of NSJP’s proposed actions would eYen Ee classified as crimes because they were “acting as the PR agents of Hamas. The State of Florida, he noted, “picked up on that” just 17 days af- ter “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood,” as Hamas and its supporters refer to it, and only a few days after the NSJP “toolkit” was distributed. On October 24, 2023, State Uni- versity Chancellor Ray Rodrigues ordered all state college presidents to immediately “deactivate” any 16-3 aIfiliates Eecause oI its ´suS- port of terrorism.” He noted that the “’ toolkit…refers to Operation Al-Aqsa Flood as ‘the resistance’ and unequivocally states [that] ‘Pal- estinian students in exile are PART of this movement, not in solidarity with this movement.” He added that “It is a felony un- der Florida law to ‘knowingly pro- vide material support…to a desig- nated foreign terrorist organization,” and that the 1-63 had ´aIfirPatiYe- ly identified >itselI as Eeing@«Sart of the Operation Al-Aqsa Flood—a terrorist-led attack.” NJAC has several other lawsuits underway. Fighting JSP continued from page 11 Goldfeder said his organization this Sast )eEruary filed a lawsuit against the Associated Press be- cause it “bought photographs from Hamas on October 7 from people who were literally participating in the attack.” Doing so, the lawsuit said, was providing “material sup- port for terrorism.” The AP called the charge “baseless.” Also in February, the NJAC sued Binance, one of the world's leading cryptocurrency exchanges, and its then CEO, Changpeng Zhao. That lawsuit grew out of a plea deal en- tered into with federal prosecutors just over a year ago in November, in which Binance pled guilty to charges that it Iailed to file reTuired suspicious activity reports and that it processed over $1 billion in trans- actions to entities sanctioned by the U.S. government. In that plea deal, Binance agreed to pay $4.4 billion in fines and to disPiss its &(2 “The evidence [we presented in the lawsuit] was overwhelming,” Goldfeder said. “We had text mes- sages where employees said, ‘Hey, should we be sending all this mon- ey to Hamas?’And they got the jok- ing response, ‘Well, it's only $600 at a time.’You can barely buy a ma- chine gun, yes, but when you do it a million times, you can buy tanks.” T his past July, the NJAC also sued the newspaper Palestine Chronicle, which is owned by the non Srofit 3eoSle 0edia 3roMect, Ee- cause it “was actually paying known Hamas associates to hold hostages in *a]a µ 6Secifically, that lawsuit al- leges that a reporter in their employ, Abdullah al-Jamal, was also a spokesman for the Hamas-run labor ministry in Gaza and that he and oth- er family members were also hold- ing four people hostage in their home. The newspaper and its owner “offered [al-Jamal] its U.S. platform to write and disseminate Hamas pro- paganda, ultimately subsidized, through its status as a tax-exempt charitable organization, by U.S. tax- payers.” Al-Jamal and two family members were killed when Israeli troops raided their home to free the four hostages last June. 1-$& also filed a lawsuit against UNRWA USA, the United Nations Relief Works Agency's fundraising arm here in the United States. “Ev- erybody wants to sue UNRWA,” Goldfeder said, but “they're a branch of the United Nations, [and so] they have diplomatic immunity.” This is not so for UNRWA USA, however. “They left their 501 c3 [federal tax-exemption] unprotected in Dela- ware, so we sued them there.” The NJAC also asked the Internal Reve- nue Service to revoke UNWRA USA’s tax-exempt status. UNRWA, Goldfeder said, is “ba- sically an arm of Hamas that's been functioning [as such] for well over 20 years.” Goldfeder noted that the UNWRA USA website “went dark” for sever- al weeks aIter filing the lawsuit “When they got back online,” he said, “they had scrubbed their entire board of directors, and they argued in their court filing that they were« just a little charity. One of those peo- ple that they scrubbed from the board was Karen Koning AbuZayd, who was the director general of UN- RWA in Gaza, and we have a video of her pledging allegiance to Yaya Sinwar, [the leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip who was recently killed by the Israeli military in the Gaza war].” NJAC’s message to all groups supporting terrorism against Jews and Israel can be boiled down to fou- words: “See you in court.” Stewart Ain is a veteran reporter who writes about Long Island and Jewish affairs. The NJAC is ‘leading’ the charge in using the Anti-TerrorismAct to go after some of those funding Hamas. 4ark .oldfeder, director of the 51A* Ad]ocacy *enter, and spends its time and resources on ¸strategic impact litigation¹ that goes after S17 and other such groups. ;ouro <ni]ersity 7resident Alan 2adish notes that e]en as col- lege campuses remain uncom- fortable for 1e^s, money contin- ues to Åo^ to /amas and other terrorist groups.