The Growing Legal Defense Against Pro-Hamas Protesters (Daled Amos) ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Wednesday, April 02, 2025

The Growing Legal Defense Against Pro-Hamas Protesters (Daled Amos)

By Daled Amos

The right to free speech is both recognized and protected.

Since October 7, pro-Hamas protesters have been accusing universities, the police, and even the government of deliberately violating their free speech. However, emphasizing that speech rights are not absolute only illustrates the growing need to more clearly define the boundary between the right to protest and the right to be protected from the protesters.

When the ACLU brought a suit against the city of Pittsburgh during a 2009 G-20 Conference, it claimed:

Pittsburgh officials deliberately adopted a strategy to harass, intimidate, discourage, and ultimately prevent Three Rivers Climate Convergence and the Seeds of Peace Collective from exercising their constitutionally protected rights to free speech and assembly.

But now, in light of pro-Hamas protests, we are seeing the pendulum swing in the other direction in search of a balance that protects others from being harassed, intimidated, and discouraged from expressing their Jewish identity.

One step in that direction came in January 2024, when Jewish students at Harvard University filed a federal lawsuit claiming Harvard has "become a bastion of rampant anti-Jewish hatred and harassment" by failing to enforce Harvard's own rules against students who violate them -- rules designed to protect Jewish students. Instead, according to lawyer Marc Kasowitn, Jewish students have been "intimidated, harassed and in some instances physically assaulted because they're Jewish."

A further impetus for the protection of Jewish students' rights came last month when a jury found Greenpeace liable for civil conspiracy, defamation, and trespass with a verdict of $667 million in damages. The New York Post article notes the parallels:

There are similarities between the anti-pipeline protests near North Dakota’s Standing Rock Indian Reservation and other mass actions, including Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 and the anti-Israel demonstrations that erupted around the United States after the Oct. 7 attacks.

These are “hybrid protests,” in which masses of peaceful demonstrators are joined by smaller groups of trained agitators who tip the events toward violence.

The verdict also exposes how NGOs funnel money and material support to those who join the protests with the intent to harass and violate other people's rights.

Now, in a new tactic in the fight against pro-Hamas protesters, families of the victims of the Hamas October 7 massacre are bringing a lawsuit against the anti-Israel groups themselves. Groups such as Columbia University Apartheid Divest and Within Our Lifetime and leaders like Mahmoud Khalil are being sued. According to the suit:

“Their self-described acts in furtherance of their goals to assist Hamas have included terrorizing and assaulting Jewish students, unlawfully taking over and damaging public and university property on Columbia’s campus, and physically assaulting Columbia University employees.”

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The suit does more than claim that the protests exceed mere free speech. The families claim that these anti-Israel groups and leaders are coordinating with Hamas, a foreign terrorist group:

“Associational Defendants are not independent advocates; they are expert propagandists and recruiters for international foreign terrorist organizations and nation-state proxies operating in plain sight in New York City.”

The bottom line is that these groups did not just intimidate, harass, and perform acts of violence. They violated America’s Antiterrorism Act.

The families also accuse the groups of aiding and abetting the terrorist organization and having prior knowledge of the attack:

After months of dormancy, Columbia SJP allegedly reactivated its Instagram account "three minutes before Hamas began its attack on October 7," announcing a meeting and stating that supporters should "stay tuned."

Eighty-three SJP chapters, including Columbia, signed and disseminated a statement in support of Hamas at midnight at the end of the day of the attack, leading the suit to insinuate that the content must have been drafted, reviewed, and signed by dozens of organizations "before and/or during the events of October 7 themselves."

This lawsuit mirrors one by the Jewish National Fund in 2019, when it sued the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, accusing them of supporting terrorism and acting as a front for Hamas. The JNF was rebuffed at every turn:

The plaintiffs made these claims under the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA), which allows any U.S. national suffering injury due to an act of international terrorism to sue in federal court. Those considered to have knowingly provided “substantial assistance” to a terrorist organization can be found guilty of providing “material support” to terrorism.

Prior to the Supreme Court’s rejection, the lawsuit was dismissed by the United States District Court for the District of Columbia in 2021, noting that the plaintiff’s arguments were “to say the least, not persuasive.” In 2023, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the dismissal, stating that JNF’s attempt to establish liability “fails at every turn,” calling the allegations against USCPR “nothing more than guilt by association.”

The evidence being brought in this new case may make all the difference.

This fight against protests claiming free speech protections goes beyond college campuses. The Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute filed a lawsuit last April for blockading the main entrance into Chicago's O’Hare International Airport, tying up traffic for hours and trapping innocent travelers in their cars. Among the defendants are Jewish Voice for Peace, The Tides Center, and the National Students for Justice, who "provided monetary or logistical support."

The case defends the rights of citizens unlawfully impeded by anti-Israel, pro-Gaza groups engaging in illegal acts of obstruction rather than peaceful protest. HLLI’s legal team seeks damages and a court injunction to prevent future disruptions like this.

A counterpoint to this is the case of NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware Co. in 1966, when the group launched a boycott of white merchants to promote equality and racial justice. While the protest relied on nonviolent picketing, the protest caused financial damage to the businesses. The businesses went to court in 1969. The Mississippi Supreme Court upheld that the NAACP could be held responsible and held the boycott to be unlawful "since the NAACP agreed to use force, violence, and 'threats' to carryout the boycott."

However, the US Supreme Court unanimously held (8-0; Justice Thurgood Marshall did not take part) that the NAACP could not be held responsible because the violence or threats of violence could not be tied directly to the financial losses.

Similarly, in Brandenburg v. Ohio, the US Supreme Court limited the punishment of inflammatory speech only where it is intended to “incit[e] or produc[e] imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such aelction.” However, in that same case featuring the NAACP, an activist who said, “If we catch any of you going in any of them racist stores, we’re gonna break your damn neck,” was found not to have gone beyond protected speech.

Of course, Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits an institution receiving federal funds from discriminating based on race, color, and national origin, could add another dimension to the current cases. National origin includes shared Jewish ancestry.

At the very least, the various cases might finally get the media to correctly point out that there is more to the defense of Jewish students on campus than just free speech.