Anti-Israel groups accused of knowing about October 7, acting for Hamas

A complaint filed on Monday in a New York federal court accuses several American activist organizations of having prior knowledge of the October 7 attacks and acting as "propaganda arms" for Hamas.

The lawsuit, filed by the victims of the attack a year and a half ago, specifically targets Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), Within Our Lifetime, Jewish Voice for Peace, and their leaders. The victims' families are seeking damages for "material support" provided to the terrorist organizations in the Gaza Strip. According to the complaint, these groups would have had to have coordinated their communication actions with Hamas, citing the swift coordinated response.

"Three minutes before Hamas began its attack on October 7, Columbia SJP posted on Instagram 'We are back!!' and announced its first meeting of the semester would be announced and that viewers should 'Stay tuned,'" the lawsuit said. This followed months of inactivity.

The plaintiffs also point out that 83 SJP sections signed a joint statement supporting Hamas at midnight on the very day of the attack. One of the plaintiffs, Shlomi Ziv, a former hostage freed after 246 days of captivity, testified that his Hamas captors "bragged about having Hamas operatives on American university campuses." They "showed him Al-Jazeera stories and photographs of protests at Columbia University."

The targeted organizations allegedly responded to the call of the late Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh, who on October 7 called for a "mass mobilization" of Muslims and Palestinians from around the world to "join this battle by all possible means." The complaint also details how these groups allegedly set up camps on the Columbia campus in April, disrupted Israeli history classes, and occupied several university buildings, notably distributing "an official Hamas brochure" during the occupation of the Milstein Library.