A pro-Palestinian legal organization linked to an influential liberal dark money empire is defending college campus groups and other anti-Israel entities under fire across the United States for boosting Hamas talking points after the terrorist faction’s Oct. 7 attack against Israel.
Palestine Legal, which calls itself “dedicated to supporting the movement for Palestinian rights,” was formed in 2012 and seeks “to bolster the Palestine solidarity movement by challenging efforts to threaten, harass and legally bully activists into silence and inaction,” according to its website. The group is housed under the Tides Center, a major Democratic-allied grantmaker funding activist hubs behind recent anti-Israel protests. It hires attorneys who have expressed support for violence — and it has even appeared to represent at least two Palestinian terrorists.
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Now, on the heels of terrorists killing more than 1,200 people in Israel on Oct. 7, Palestine Legal is taking steps to push back against university administrators penalizing students who sympathize with Hamas. In particular, Palestine Legal is lending a helping hand to Students for Justice in Palestine, which has some university chapters that have been recently banned or suspended by their schools due to terrorism support.
“Groups like Palestine Legal and Students for Justice in Palestine should be put on notice that we are not going to tolerate hate on our campuses any longer,” Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY), who sits on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told the Washington Examiner.
“Contrary to what the presidents of three prestigious universities said on the Hill recently, calling for genocide or harassing students because of their ethnicity or religion is not protected speech,” Lawler added, referring to how the University of Pennsylvania’s Liz Magill, who has since resigned, Harvard University’s Claudine Gay, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sally Kornbluth faced scrutiny in December for rejecting the idea that calls for genocide against Jews constitute harassment under campus policies.
Palestine Legal, which has offices in Chicago, New York City, and San Francisco, was formerly called Palestine Solidarity Legal Support. It was launched by several anti-Israel groups, including American Muslims for Palestine, a charity being investigated by state Attorney General Jason Miyares (R-VA) over allegations that it, in part, may have funneled cash to support terrorism. American Muslims for Palestine is being accused in a lawsuit filed by the family of the late David Boim, a 17-year-old killed in a 1996 West Bank attack, of being an alter ego for the Islamic Association for Palestine and the Holy Land Foundation — two dissolved groups that were closely linked to Hamas. American Muslims for Palestine’s operations and leadership came directly from the defunct groups, the lawsuit alleged.
In particular, Palestine Legal has come under the national spotlight for joining the American Civil Liberties Union in suing the chancellor of the State University System of Florida over the Sunshine State’s ban on Students for Justice in Palestine, court records show. The lawsuit was filed in November on behalf of the campus group’s chapter at the University of Florida. The chapter has been posting on social media in favor of a Middle East ceasefire and calling for “resistance.”
The UF chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine wrote in an Oct. 10 statement justifying the recent terrorist attack that it stands “in full support of Palestinian liberation,” asserting that “the resistance we are seeing today is a response to decades of oppression and inhumanity.”
Palestine Legal’s advocacy manager, Lina Assi, said in mid-November that her group had received at least 600 requests for legal help after Oct. 7. Palestine Legal notably sent a letter with other anti-Israel groups on Nov. 3 to universities to oppose the alleged “criminalization of students speaking out against the mass atrocities Palestinians are suffering and for Palestinian safety and human rights.”
Assi has a history of celebrating terrorist leaders and once said that “Hezbollah and Iran’s role in resisting imperialism” in the Middle East “is important and crucial,” the Washington Examiner reported. She also once called Fatima Bernawi, the late Palestinian terrorist who served 10 years in prison over an attempted bombing in Jerusalem, “one of the first Palestinian women to engage in armed resistance for national liberation.”
In mid-December, for instance, Palestine Legal called the move by Rutgers University to suspend Students for Justice in Palestine “wildly unconstitutional.” The chapter was investigated for apparently vandalizing the business school and disrupting classes at the New Brunswick campus.
Palestine Legal also recently defended the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights, an anti-Israel group that was accused in a lawsuit of providing “material support for terrorism.” Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) was slated to speak at the group’s national conference in late October, but a Texas Hilton hotel canceled the event to protect “the safety and security of our team members.”
Nevertheless, Palestine Legal’s actions after Oct. 7 are no surprise to some conservatives. The organization was previously on the “defense committee” on behalf of convicted Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terrorist Rasmea Odeh, whom the U.S. government deported to Jordan in 2017 for her involvement in a deadly 1969 Jerusalem supermarket bombing, and in 2020, Palestine Legal slammed Zoom for not allowing Leila Khaled, another convicted PFLP terrorist, to use its video platform.
Palestine Legal, the Tides Center, and other affiliated groups are clearly part of a “leftist U.S. network dedicated to dismantling and destroying the State of Israel,” according to Reed Rubinstein, an ex-general counsel for the Department of Education.
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“To my knowledge, law enforcement and Congress have not yet substantially explored the extent of the collaboration and coordination between these organizations and groups like Hamas or the Muslim Brotherhood,” Rubinstein, who is now the oversight director for the Trump-linked America First Legal Foundation, told the Washington Examiner.
Palestine Legal did not reply to requests for comment.
