EXCLUSIVE — The Department of Justice should force anti- Israel activists behind protests boosting Hamas after its Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack to register as foreign agents, according to a conservative legal group.
America First Legal, a group led by former Trump administration officials, sent a petition on Friday to the DOJ's national security division requesting that it enforce the Foreign Agents and Registration Act on pro-Palestinian groups and their leaders. Those groups include Americans for Justice in Palestine Educational Foundation, also known as American Muslims in Palestine, and its director, Osama Abuirshaid.
The DOJ, America First Legal argued in a 13-page letter, should also seek FARA registration from the New York-based WESPAC Foundation, the charity's National Students for Justice in Palestine offshoot, and Hatem Bazian, the founder of both American Muslims for Palestine and Students for Justice in Palestine.
These individuals and groups, according to the conservative legal group, appear to be "public relations counsel" as defined under FARA law and engaged in "political activities" in the interests of Hamas and other Palestinian entities that act as foreign principals. The DOJ has long faced scrutiny from outside groups and lawmakers for failing to enforce FARA, which the agency's own watchdog concluded in a sprawling 2016 report is not being enforced aggressively enough by the DOJ.
FARA, enacted in 1938, requires certain agents of foreign principals engaged in political activities to make periodic disclosures to the DOJ of their ties to overseas parties. Such disclosures are publicly viewable in filings on the DOJ's website. Foreign principals include governments, political parties, people outside the United States, and other groups operating primarily overseas, according to federal law.
"To support the Oct. 7 atrocities, the pro-Hamas network, with foreign support, has openly waged a campaign of ethnically targeted violence and intimidation against American citizens in our residential neighborhoods and on our city streets and taxpayer-funded campuses," said Reed Rubinstein, America First Legal's senior vice president and a former deputy associate attorney general.
American Muslims for Palestine, one of the groups that America First Legal zeroed in on in its letter to the Biden-Harris administration, is based in Virginia. State Attorney General Jason Miyares, a Republican, opened an investigation into the pro-Palestinian group last year. Bazian founded American Muslims for Palestine in 2006.
Miyares, his office said in a prior statement, "has reason to believe" American Muslims for Palestine is fundraising unlawfully and may have backed terrorism. American Muslims for Palestine is facing a lawsuit in Chicago alleging it is an "alter ego" for the Islamic Association for Palestine and the Holy Land Foundation, a pair of defunct groups convicted for providing material support to Hamas.
American Muslims for Palestine denies that it is linked to terrorism. It is one of many anti-Israel groups planning to protest support for the Jewish state between Monday and Thursday outside the Democratic National Convention. American Muslims for Palestine helped plan and execute a violent protest last month in Washington, D.C., where pro-Palestinian activists burned an effigy of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu outside Union Station and red graffiti was scrawled on the Columbus Memorial Fountain that read, "Hamas Is Coming."
AMP's director, Abuirshaid, "disseminates propaganda and engages in political activity for the benefit of Hamas," according to America First Legal. Abuirshaid was once "featured on the website of Hamas’s self-declared military wing, the al-Qassam Brigades," America First Legal wrote in the DOJ letter.
Moreover, the conservative group argued, Abuirshaid is a foreign principal based on the fact that American Muslims for Palestine described in a blog post how its Minnesota-based offshoot "invests significantly in its Palestinian, Muslim, and Arab population to educate and mobilize for Palestine."
"Our citizens deserve protection; this perversion of our system and our laws must and will end," Rubinstein, America First Legal's senior vice president, added in a statement.
In its letter to the DOJ, the group said Students for Justice in Palestine has supported Hamas and hosted terrorists or individuals linked to terrorism at events. Students for Justice in Palestine, which has chapters across the U.S. active on college campuses, is housed under the WESPAC Foundation.
The Anti-Defamation League, as the Washington Examiner first reported , asked the IRS in July to investigate whether the WESPAC Foundation is abusing its tax-exempt status. The ADL's letter to the IRS cited examples of Students for Justice in Palestine being behind antisemitic protests. Moreover, it also pointed to discrepancies with its financial disclosures, some of which were reported by the Washington Free Beacon in May.
The WESPAC Foundation does not solely sponsor Students for Justice in Palestine. It also houses the U.S. Palestinian Community Network, the Palestinian Youth Movement, and other anti-Israel groups linked to recent protests. Like American Muslims for Palestine, the WESPAC Foundation has faced legal scrutiny.
In May, victims of the Oct. 7 attack on Israel accused Students for Justice in Palestine and American Muslims for Palestine in a lawsuit of being "collaborators and propagandists for Hamas."
"As a fiscal sponsor, WESPAC receives and administers donations on behalf of groups such as National Students for Justice in Palestine," the victims wrote in a complaint, noting that WESPAC keeps a percentage of such donations. "The financial interactions between WESPAC and its anti-Israel clientele is intentionally opaque to largely shield from public view the flow of funds between and among them."
Hatem Bazian, whom America First Legal also argued should register under FARA in its letter, founded Students for Justice in Palestine in 2001 while teaching at the University of California, Berkeley.
America First Legal wrote in its DOJ letter that Bazian, who once said that "it's about time we had an intifada" in the U.S., was found to have knowingly fundraised for a Hamas front group in 2004.
On Friday, America First Legal also renewed a demand for the DOJ's inspector general office to investigate whether the DOJ's lack of prosecution of pro-Hamas groups is due to bias. In January, the conservative group said it obtained nonpublic information suggesting the DOJ "issued an effective stand-down order to U.S. Attorneys and to federal law enforcement concerning Hamas’s network of U.S.-based supporters" and front groups backing terrorism.
Avril Haines, the Biden-Harris administration's director of national intelligence, said in a July statement that Iran is linked to pro-Palestinian protests.
"In recent weeks, Iranian government actors have sought to opportunistically take advantage of ongoing protests regarding the war in Gaza, using a playbook we’ve seen other actors use over the years," Haines said at the time. "We have observed actors tied to Iran’s government posing as activists online, seeking to encourage protests, and even providing financial support to protesters."
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American Muslims for Palestine and the WESPAC Foundation did not return requests for comment.
The DOJ declined to comment.
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