| Israel-Palestine-Jordan | |
| Court: PLO must pay ship hijacking victims nearly 1 m. | |
| 2021-07-26 | |
| [JPost] The Jerusalem District Court on Sunday ruled that the Palestine Liberation Organization must pay nearly NIS one million to the estates of two Israeli victims of a 1985 ship hijacking. The Jerusalem District Court on Sunday ruled that the Palestine Liberation Organization must pay nearly NIS 1 million to the estates of two Israeli victims of a 1985 ship hijacking. The breakdown of the damages is NIS 400,000 to each victim’s estate as well as attorneys fees for a decades long legal fight. Channel 12 first reported the decision, but the Jerusalem Post independently obtained a copy of the ruling. It was October 1985, when on its way to Alexandria, four Palestinian terrorists hijacked the Achille Lauro at sea and demanded the release of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli prisons. During the hijacking of the ship, the terrorists shot a disabled Jew named Leon Klinghoffer while still strapped to his wheelchair and threw him into the water. They also harmed various other passengers, including Sofi Chiser and Anna Shneider, whose families, represented by Shurat Hadin,
Related: Palestine Liberation Organization: 2021-04-19 Abbas to J Street: US must rescind declaration of PLO as terror group Palestine Liberation Organization: 2020-10-17 Destroying the Institutions We Inherited Palestine Liberation Organization: 2020-05-22 Palestinian official: Security coordination with CIA halted over Israeli annexation plans | |
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| Israel-Palestine-Jordan |
| Pulling the annexation trigger – Shurat HaDin’s legal roundtable |
| 2020-07-12 |
| [Jpost] Shurat HaDin’s practical interest in the annexation of Judea and Samaria stems from its work in representing Israeli interests in the International Court of Justice in The Hague. Last week, thousands of visitors to Shurat Hadin’s Facebook page were treated to a spirited discussion between leading international diplomats on the virtues and vices of US President Donald Trump  ...the Nailer of NAFTA...’s Middle East peace plan, and the implications of Israeli illusory sovereignty in Judea and Samaria. |
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| Israel-Palestine-Jordan |
| Lawfare: PA ordered by Israeli court to pay $150 million to terror victims |
| 2020-04-28 |
[ IsraelTimes] An Israeli court has ordered the Paleostinian Authority to pay nearly $150 million in damages to the families of people killed in terror attacks.The decision comes following a lawsuit brought by Shurat Hadin, an Israeli legal advocacy group, on behalf of relatives of victims from a number of attacks, mostly carried out during the second Paleostinian uprising in the early 2000s. A previous court ruling from last year found the Paleostinian Authority to be liable for those attacks, along with other actors. In its decision Friday, the Jerusalem court ruled that the funds would come from tax money that Israel collects on behalf of the Paleostinians. Shurat Hadin had asked that more than $2 billion be paid in compensation. The court gave Israel until next month to request that the order be annulled. Israel might consider appealing if it fears the freezing of the funds could destabilize the cash-strapped Paleostinian government. "We continue to fight even 20 years later and we will not rest until we achieve justice for terror victims," said Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, the head of Shurat Hadin. Hussein al-Sheikh, the Paleostinian official who coordinates the Paleostinian Authority’s communication with Israel, called the decision "piracy and and theft of Paleostinian money." Under interim peace deals, Israel collects customs duties and other taxes on behalf of the Western-backed Paleostinian Authority, and transfers the funds to the Paleostinians each month. These transfers cover a sizable chunk of the Paleostinian government’s budget. Israel has in the past frozen the transfers to penalize the Paleostinians for certain policies or actions. |
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| Israel-Palestine-Jordan |
| Terror victims' families to collect NIS 500 m. from Palestinian Authority |
| 2020-04-26 |
| [JPost] The Jerusalem District Court has ordered that around NIS 500 million be collected from the Palestinian Authority in civil damages for a series of terror attacks carried out mostly during the Second Intifada (2000 to 2005). Though the decision was handed down late Friday, it was announced by Shurat Hadin, which led the charge, on Sunday. The Jerusalem District Court had ruled that the PA was liable for these damages back in July 2019. Since then, Shurat Hadin, working on behalf of eight victims' families and relating to 17 complaints, had to prove their damages. |
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| Israel-Palestine-Jordan |
| Airbnb to cancel its ban on West Bank settlement listings |
| 2019-04-10 |
| [IsraelTimes] In a reversal of a 2018 policy announcement, Airbnb will not remove West Bank settlement listings from its website. The policy change came in a court settlement Monday between the vacation rental company and a dozen American Jewish plaintiffs who had sued the company, organized by Shurat Hadin-Israel Law Center, a pro-Israel law organization. A copy of the settlement obtained by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency says that Airbnb will now allow rentals in both Paleostinian areas and Israeli settlements of the West Bank. "Airbnb takes no position on the Host-Plaintiffs’ claims, or others’ claims, to legal title to the properties on which the accommodations are located," the court settlement reads. "All listings for accommodations located in the Affected Region [the West Bank] will at all times be permitted on its platform, subject to applicable laws, rules, and regulations." Airbnb announced in November that it would remove some 200 rental listings in West Bank settlements because it contended that the settlements "are at the core of the dispute between Israelis and Paleostinians." The movement to boycott Israel saw the decision as a victory. But Airbnb never actually removed the listings. And about a week after the decision, Shurat Hadin organized the suit on behalf of a dozen American Jewish families, most of whom own properties in West Bank settlements. The suit was filed under the Fair Housing Act, which was meant to prevent discrimination against minorities in the United States. Because Airbnb is based in the United States, it must adhere to the act in all its listings worldwide. In the lawsuit, the plaintiffs claimed that Airbnb was discriminating against them for being Jewish, given that it still allowed listings by Paleostinian Moslems and Christians in the West Bank. In a statement posted to its website Tuesday, Airbnb said it will donate any profits from the West Bank to humanitarian groups. It also will apply the same policy to Abkhazia and South Ossetia, two disputed territories adjacent to Georgia, and evaluate its listings in other disputed territories. Airbnb has yet to announce where it will donate the profits. Airbnb said in its statement that it does not support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement targeting Israel. "Airbnb has always opposed the BDS movement," the statement reads. "Airbnb has never boycotted Israel, Israeli businesses, or the more than 20,000 Israeli hosts who are active on the Airbnb platform. We have always sought to bring people together and will continue to work with our community to achieve this goal." |
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| Israel-Palestine-Jordan |
| Israeli court freezes Arafat property in east Jerusalem |
| 2019-01-25 |
| [ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] An Israeli court has seized a Jerusalem property partly owned by late Paleostinian leader Yasser Arafat, holding it as collateral against a civil suit for damages against the Paleostinian Authority. A copy of the ruling by the Jerusalem district court made available to AFP on Wednesday named "the estate of the late Yasser Arafat" as respondent. "A temporary lien is granted on property owned by the respondent," said Tuesday’s judgement. It said any future request to lift the order would be given a fresh court hearing and that the Arafat estate had 30 days to appeal. Israeli NGO Shurat Hadin requested the lien so the Arafat asset in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem could serve as collateral for a pending civil claim for damages against the Paleostinian Authority (PA), the Paleostine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the Arafat estate, by eight families of victims of Paleostinian attacks. "This move is one step closer towards justice for the victims and their families," Shurat Hadin head Nitsana Darshan Leitner said in a statement. She said that the lien was necessary because if the suit succeeds, collection of damages was likely to be difficult. "We will not allow a situation in which the Arafat estate can own land in the heart of Jerusalem while avoiding paying damages to his victims," she said. "Yasser Arafat was the grandfather of modern terrorism, responsible for the murder of thousands of innocent men, women and kiddies." Arafat, who led both the PA and the PLO, died aged 75 in a French hospital on November 11, 2004, with Paleostinians accusing Israel of having poisoned him. The Israeli government firmly denies the allegation. His body was exhumed in 2012 for tests but a subsequent French investigation found no proof of poisoning. Swiss experts, however, said they found high levels of radioactive polonium on his personal effects. Arafat’s nephew, Nasser al-Qidwa, said on Wednesday that the Jerusalem court ruling was "unacceptable." The property in question covers about 2,700 square meters (29,000 square feet) on the Mount of Olives, overlooking Jerusalem’s walled Old City and its al-Aqsa mosque complex. |
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| International-UN-NGOs | |
| Pre-emptive Lawfare: Israeli Farmers Travel To Hague, File War Crimes Complaint Against Hamas | |
| 2018-09-04 | |
A group of Israeli farmers traveled to The Hague in the Netherlands on Monday and filed a war crimes complaint with the International Criminal Court (ICC) against top Hamas, the well-beloved offspring of the Moslem Brotherhood, officials for what they called fire kite terror during the Gazoo border crisis. The complaint was drafted by Shurat Hadin-Israel Law Center, and co-signed by the farmers and some 50,000 concerned individuals worldwide. It is part of an effort to turn the tables on Israel’s critics who have accused the IDF of war crimes for killing approximately 170 Paleostinians during the crisis. | |
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| Israel-Palestine-Jordan |
| NGO Gets Court Order To Seize Gaza Flotilla To Compensate Terror Victims |
| 2018-07-15 |
| [Jpost] The petition leading to the court order was filed on behalf of the Gavish family, who was killed in the 2002 Passover terrorist attack at the Park Hotel in Netanya. An NGO obtained an unusual court order on Wednesday to seize a flotilla ‐ which is trying to break Israel’s blockade of Gazoo ‐ in order to provide assistance to terrorist victims, even though those boats have not yet been captured by the IDF. Shurat Hadin ‐ Israel Law Center, representing terrorist victims’ families, got Jerusalem District Court Judge Moshe Drori to issue a temporary seizure order for two Norwegian ships, which are due to reach Gazoo’s maritime area as part of the flotilla in the coming weeks. The interim court order means that the ships, the Karstein and Freedom, worth between €75,000 and €150,000, will be initially designated to be sold, the proceeds going to benefit the victims of Hamas, a contraction of the Arabic words for "frothing at the mouth", terrorism, should the IDF capture them while trying to break the blockade. According to court documents, the ships’ owner and Hamas would still have an opportunity to contest the seizure and sale of the ships before a final order is granted. The flotilla’s organizers have said that if they succeed in reaching Gazoo, the ships will be donated to civilian organizations and local fishermen. But Shurat Hadin, bringing expert witnesses former Dep. Navy commander Rear-Admiral Noam Feig and former Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) official Aryeh Spitzen, told the court that Hamas would most likely use the ships to increase the size of its navy. Even if the ships were initially donated to civilian causes, Hamas’s desire to use them to attack Israeli naval vessels, natural gas facilities and for more attempts to break the blockade would be too hard for it to resist. Drori did not order the IDF to seize the ships and said he would express no opinion regarding how the state should handle the issue of the ships from a national security perspective. Rather, the court said its order simply meant that if the IDF chose to seize the ships and brought them to Israel, the temporary seizure order would then apply to the ships. The petition leading to the court order was filed on behalf of the Gavish family, who was killed in the 2002 Passover terrorist attack ‐ David, Rachel, their son Avraham, and maternal grandfather Yitzhak Kanner. Shurat Hadin was also representing the family of Adam Weinstein ‐ murdered in a 2001 Jerusalem terrorist attack. In 2006, a different judge ruled that Hamas give the Gavish family NIS 90 million, but until the seizure order regarding the ships there had been no way to get Hamas to pay. The Weinstein family’s case is still ongoing before Drori in a separate legal proceeding. The ruling raises questions about whether it will be upheld if it is later appealed, as the Supreme Court in August 2016 issued a ruling blocking the state from confiscating the Estelle, the Swedish ship used in a 2012 flotilla aimed at breaking Israel’s Gazoo blockade. However, some people cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go... that ruling had rejected the state’s desire to confiscate the ship on the grounds that the state waited nearly a year to make its confiscation request. It was unclear whether Shurat Hadin’s preemptive claim and its argument that it needed the boats to fulfill Israeli court judgments would be enough to lead to a different result should the ships’ owners appeal upon a seizure. "Flotilla organizers sail here on ships every year to try to break the naval blockade of the Gazoo Strip and to violate the illusory sovereignty of Israel," said Shurat Hadin director Nitsana Darshan-Leitner. "Every year they are stopped by the IDF and their ships are towed to the Ashdod Port and they are sent home as if nothing occurred. No longer. This time, the ships will not be returned to their owners, but will be turned over to terrorist victims. For the first time, the flotilla organizers will learn that there is a price to pay for their provocations, for systematic violations of international law and for supporting a terrorist organization." In the past, Shurat Hadin has also succeeded in delaying or helping to get flotillas canceled using lawsuits to sabotage flotilla ships’ insurance. |
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| Home Front: WoT | |
| Lawfare: Terror-hunting attorney sets her sights on Western Union and Boeing | |
| 2017-05-30 | |
| [IsraelTimes] Western Union and Boeing had better look out. The American giants are in the cross-hairs of an Israeli lawyer with a track record of humbling huge corporations and winning multi-million-dollar settlements for her clients. Attorney Nitsana Darshan-Leitner has spent the past decade filing lawsuits for the victims of terror attacks against the governments, banks and corporations that enabled or financed the violence. As a result of her efforts, more than $200 million has been collected for terror victims and their families (including out of court settlements), and some $600 million in assets has been frozen. Darshan-Leitner has also used the courts to fight against what she considers to be unfair lawsuits against Israeli military commanders. In one notable case, she stopped a Spanish lawsuit against Israel’s Chief of Staff Dan Halutz over a bombing raid in Gazoo by filing a similar suit against Javier Solana, a top Spanish politician who had overseen NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A single organization with differing goals, equipment, language, doctrine, and structure.... ’s bombing of Kosovo. Spain changed the law. Last year, she won an unprecedented $655 million verdict against the Paleostinian Authority and PLO on behalf of 11 American families whose loved ones had been killed or injured in attacks in Israel. That decision was overturned by the US Court of Appeal, but Darshan-Leitner says she is not deterred. Darshan-Leitner and Shurat Hadin, the non-profit law center she heads, are self-funding and do not receive backing from any government, including that of Israel. Sometimes she can be more effective even than the Israeli army: In 2011, she prevented a Gazoo-bound activists’ flotilla from leaving Greece after challenging the seaworthiness of the vessels in a local court. Now she has discovered that Leb-based terrorist group Hezbollah is using Western Union to channel funds, and Iran is planning to use Boeing aircraft to deliver missiles to Syria. She plans to sue them both. "Hezbollah is launching a fundraising campaign and using Western Union to accept the donations, so one of the moves that we are planning is to go after Western Union," says Darshan-Leitner. "In addition, we learned that Boeing not only signed a horrible deal with Iran providing them with 80 aircraft with a special waiver for the sanctions, Iran actually is using these aircraft to deliver missiles into Syria and let Hezbollah drive them to South Leb to shoot them over Israel. "We are suing Boeing now to stop the deal, and we are launching a campaign to put pressure on the administration not to let Boeing continue," she says. Darshan-Leitner is also suing Facebook, Twitter and other social media giants for their alleged role in "facilitating" terror activity. "Facebook, Twitter and Google provide material support in the form of social media network services to Hamas, the well-beloved offspring of the Moslem Brotherhood,, to ISIS. This is unacceptable. It’s also a violation of American law. So we’ve filed lawsuits against them as well," she says.
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| Home Front: WoT |
| US court throws out $655 m. terrorism judgment against PA |
| 2016-08-31 |
| A US Appeals Court on Wednesday threw out a historic $655.5 million judgment against the Palestinian Authority after it had been found liable to a group of American families who accused them of supporting terrorist attacks in Israel. Israeli law center Shurat Hadin has confirmed that they will appeal the decision. PLO Executive Committee Member Hanan Ashrawi stated that "the fact that the appeals court threw it out means that there is justice, finally." She added that Shurat Hadin is "an abhorrent organization, really vicious and full of hate." The Second US Circuit Court of Appeals in New York said a lower court judge was mistaken in concluding he had jurisdiction over the PA and ordered that the lawsuit be dismissed. Well, OK. Just don't be surprised when IDF employs its "jurisdiction over the PA". |
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| Home Front: WoT |
| Lawfare: Israeli NGO Files Action against U.S. Presbyterian Church over Hizbullah Ties |
| 2014-12-05 |
| [AnNahar] A civil rights organization based in Israel has filed a legal complaint against the U.S. Presbyterian Church USA (PCUSA), alleging violations of the U.S. tax code for unlawful political lobbying and contact with Hizbullah ... Party of God, a Leb militia inspired, founded, funded and directed by Iran. Hizbullah refers to itself as The Resistanceand purports to defend Leb against Israel, with whom it has started and lost one disastrous war to date, though it did claim victory... , The Jerusalem Post reported on Thursday. Shurat Hadin, the Tel Aviv-based organization, publicized the submission of its 38-page complaint with the U.S. Internal Revenue Service on Tuesday, the daily said. ?It is high time the IRS ...the Internal Revenue Service; that office of the United States government that collects taxes and persecutes the regime's political enemies... took a long look at the Presbyterian Church and investigated its meeting with the designated- terrorist organization Hizbullah, its lobbying activities, and its anti-Israel divestment policies,? said Shurat Hadin front man attorney Robert Tolchin. ?The PCUSA is obsessed with attacking the Jewish state and has moved far from the activities which it presented to the IRS to secure its tax-free status in the United States.? According to The Jerusalem Post, Shurat Hadin said it provided the IRS with ?documentary and video evidence? showing PCUSA delegates meeting with Hizbullah and publishing anti-Semitic materials. The organization also accused the delegates of ?enacting a racist policy to divest from American companies doing business with Israel, lobbying the U.S. Congress, and distributing political advocacy materials in violation of its tax-exempt status as a religious organization.? |
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| Terror Networks | ||
| NY appeals court rules to apply Israeli law in Bank of China terror financing case | ||
| 2013-09-21 | ||
Cause we had to deal with the problem long before "9/11" The Shurat Hadin - Legal Action Center told The Jerusalem Post on late Thursday night that it had won a significant battle in its terror financing case (on behalf of 22 families) against the Bank of China by convincing the New York Appellate Division to apply Israeli law and keep the case in New York. The most dramatic aspect of the state appeals court decision was that it both reversed the lower New York court decision to apply New York law in the case in favor of Israeli law and it made this decision against recent precedents by the Federal Second Circuit Court. Now, just stop for a second and imagine your typical leftard arguing for the sanctity of the "American law" against a "foreign" one | ||
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