Virginia Court Orders Pro-Palestine Group Behind Anti-Israel Campus Protests To Disclose Financial Records

American Muslims for Palestine will have to disclose financial documents as part of an ongoing investigation into the Virginia-based nonprofit organization’s funding activities and ties to terrorist groups. The case is among a number of investigations and lawsuits that raise questions about whether campus protests across America are being organized in conjunction with Hamas via nonprofit groups here. The order, made by a Virginia court on Tuesday, upheld the request of Virginia’s attorney general, Jason Miyares, who launched an investigation into the organization shortly after Hamas’s violent attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. According to a statement released by the attorney general’s office when the probe was launched, the state has “reason to believe” that the organization may have solicited contributions without properly registering them with the state. Additionally, the state will investigate “allegations that the organization may have used funds raised for impermissible purposes under state law, including benefitting or providing support to terrorist organizations.”Tuesday’s ruling marks a setback for American Muslims for Palestine, which has fought to keep the sensitive financial documents private. The organization petitioned against the initial probe in October, requesting that the scope of the documents be narrowed “to appropriate areas of focus within its purview” and denounced the investigation as “defamatory.” They claimed that the attorney general’s office “does not have an objective ‘reasonable cause to believe’ that AMP has any information related to any such alleged violation.” However, on Tuesday, the Richmond judge supported the arguments of the state, noting that Mr. Miyares “acted in good faith” when he requested the financial information from the organization, and that the request was “entirely” within his “statutory authority.” In accordance with the ruling, the pro-Palestinian group will have to provide “AMP’s finances, organizational structure and governance, its solicitation activities, and its potential ties to terrorist organizations” dating back to when the group started taking donations in Virginia seven years ago. The lawyer representing the group, Christina Jump, told the Free Beacon that the court will have to clarify exactly what records the ruling has granted the state access to. Ms. Jump also said that “if compliance means providing information about every single donor and every single transaction,” they would likely file an appeal. The investigation adds to mounting legal action waged against American Muslims for Palestine based on claims that the pro-Palestine group acts on behalf of Hamas in America.One such legal effort includes a lawsuit filed in a federal court in Virginia which alleges that American Muslims for Palestine, and an offshoot group, National Students for Justice in Palestine, are not “innocent advocacy groups, but rather the propaganda arm of a terrorist organization operating in plain sight.” National Students for Justice in Palestine — which operates underneath American Muslims for Palestine — is one of the pro-Palestinian organizations at the helm of the anti-Israel protests on American college campuses. The suit argues that the organization has recruited college students to serve as Hamas’s “foot soldiers” on American soil. Further, American Muslims for Palestine faces a decades-long civil suit in Chicago in which the plaintiffs — parents of a Jewish teenager killed in the deadly 1996 West Bank attack — accuse the group of being an “alter ego” of the Islamic Association for Palestine. The Islamic Association for Palestine was convicted of providing material support for Hamas and subsequently disbanded in 2004. The Virginia suit against National Students for Justice in Palestine similarly accuses American Muslims in Palestine of being a “reincarnation” of the Islamic Association of Palestine, “with the same core people and endeavors to achieve the same goal.”American Muslims for Palestine describes itself as “grassroots organization dedicated to advancing the movement for justice in Palestine” through education and “mobilization and advocacy.”A Jewish advocacy group, the Anti-Defamation League, however, profiles the pro-Palestine organization as a promoter of “extreme anti-Israel views” and, at times, “provided a platform for anti-Semitism under the guise of educating Americans about ‘the just cause of Palestine and the rights of self-determination.’”

Virginia Court Orders Pro-Palestine Group Behind Anti-Israel Campus Protests To Disclose Financial Records

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