Supreme Court Upholds Law Allowing American Victims of Terror Attacks To Sue Palestinian Groups

The Supreme Court on Friday unanimously upheld a 2019 law passed by Congress permitting lawsuits by American victims of terror attacks in the Middle East against the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority.The ruling resulted from two cases — one brought by a group of victims and family members and the other from the Department of Justice, U.S. v. Palestine Liberation Organization. The lawsuits are part of a long legal battle between Congress and the courts over whether the PLO and the PA can be held accountable for providing a monetary incentive for terror attacks — dubbed “pay for slay” by critics. The Palestinians have consistently argued that such cases shouldn’t be allowed in American courts.In 2024 an appellate court ruled in the Palestinians’ favor, finding the law violated due process protections. On Friday, the Supreme Court rejected that reasoning. “We agree with the Government that we need not address the private petitioners’ unbounded jurisdictional theory today. The [Promoting Security and Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act] ties federal jurisdiction to conduct closely related to the United States that implicates important foreign policy concerns,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote in the court’s opinion. “We hold that the statute’s provision for personal jurisdiction comports with the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment,” Chief Justice Roberts adds. The decision allows the lawsuits to move forward in American courts.The justices combined the two cases into one, Fuld v. Palestine Liberation Organization, named after an American-Israeli, Ari Fuld, who was stabbed to death in 2018 by a Palestinian terrorist outside a mall in the West Bank. “As my mother says, we’d rather not have this money,” Ari’s brother, Hillel Fuld, previously told the Sun. “What’s more important than the money is the symbolism of them having to pay us. It’s the very fact that our enemies will finally be held accountable.”The family of Fuld’s murderer reportedly received a monthly salary of 1,400 shekels for three years following the attack. In the year of Fuld’s slaying, the PA reportedly budgeted 1.2 billion shekels to fund its “pay-for-slay” program. Although the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, claimed in February that the government would do away with the financial reward system, Israeli officials were quick to cast doubt on the report. The Israeli foreign minister, Gideon Sa’ar, insisted that the PA just found a “different way” to dole out cash to terrorists and made the announcement “to fool the international community.”

Supreme Court Upholds Law Allowing American Victims of Terror Attacks To Sue Palestinian Groups

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