On the morning of Monday, May 13, 1996, David Boim, an American teenager studying abroad at a yeshiva in Israel, was waiting at a bus stop, en route to his parents’ home in Jerusalem, when two Hamas terrorists drove by and opened fire, shooting him in the head.

Pronounced dead within an hour, Boim, who was 17, was one of the first Americans killed by Hamas, which the United States soon designated as a foreign terrorist organization. In the ensuing years, Boim’s parents, Stanley and Joyce, have continued to fight for a measure of accountability through the American court system.

Now, almost 30 years after Boim’s death, his parents’ quest for justice seems poised to finally reach its apex as their lawsuit against a leading pro-Palestinian advocacy group with alleged ties to Hamas nears a possible trial by what legal experts say could be the end of the year.

With the discovery process recently closed, Daniel Schlessinger, the Boims’ lead attorney, believes his team has, since filing its lawsuit in 2017, built a convincing case against American Muslims for Palestine, accused of acting as an “alter ego” of a now-defunct group that shut down after it was found to have provided support to Hamas.

Founded in 2006, AMP describes itself on its website as “a grassroots organization dedicated to advancing the movement for justice in Palestine by educating the American public about Palestine and its rich cultural, historical and religious heritage and through grassroots mobilization and advocacy.”

But the group has recently come under intense scrutiny, owing in large part to its involvement in anti-Israel protests on college campuses that are a target of the Trump administration’s crackdown on foreign students accused of supporting terrorism.

“If you don’t want to be identified as a terrorist organization,” Daniel Schlessinger, the Boims’ lead attorney told Jewish Insider, “why in the world would you hire as your executive director the guy who was the executive director of this predecessor organization that has been found to be a supporter of terror?”

In constructing its argument, Schlessinger said his team has assembled “overwhelming” evidence that shows AMP is a continuation of the Islamic Association of Palestine, which was ruled liable for Boim’s murder in a related case nearly two decades ago.

Among other close parallels cited by Schlessinger, top officials at AMP — many of whom have ties to Hamas — were once affiliated with IAP, in what he characterized as a “dramatic” overlap of leadership. When AMP formed soon after IAP had shut down in 2004, for instance, “the key player in the day-to-day functioning of AMP was the same guy who was the key player in the day-to-day functioning of IAP,” he said, referring to Abdelbaset Hamayel, a former top IAP official who also served as AMP’s first executive director and still manages its books and records.

“If you don’t want to be identified as a terrorist organization,” Schlessinger told Jewish Insider, “why in the world would you hire as your executive director the guy who was the executive director of this predecessor organization that has been found to be a supporter of terror?”

In addition, Schlessinger argues, AMP had quickly established itself as a formidable organization with widely attended conferences and a deep reserve of institutional resources because it “inherited” IAP’s business and operational methods as well as email lists, donors and convention speakers. AMP, Schlessinger notes, held a convention immediately after its launch in the same location in Illinois that IAP hosted its events, which he views as a key early reference point for establishing how the two groups are identical in all but their names.

AMP denies that it is an alter ego of IAP, claiming it does not support Hamas and has never sent money overseas as the earlier group did. 

“What these eight years of litigation have in fact shown,” said Christina Jump, an attorney for AMP, in a statement to JI on Tuesday, “is that, contrary to the desires of the plaintiffs and those to whom they identify wanting to provide more information, if they could, American Muslims for Palestine operates in the United States for the purely legal purpose of educating the American public about the rich history and culture of Palestine.”

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As the lawsuit enters its final stages, previously unreported legal documents reviewed by JI and shared by the Boims’ attorneys also provide some revealing insight into AMP, a secretive group that has faced growing scrutiny in the aftermath of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, terror attacks.

The materials, including sworn depositions from several key AMP officials, strikingly guarded in their interviews, indicate that the group has obscured its connections to IAP, while further highlighting how some of its leaders have been closely tied to Hamas.

For example, Rafeeq Jaber, the former president of IAP who has prepared AMP’s tax forms, insisted in a two-part deposition taken in January that he has had no official involvement with AMP — even as the Boims’ legal team produced several records such as email correspondence showing he organized for the group and served as its representative in meetings.

Jaber, who was responsible for winding down IAP’s affairs when it closed in 2004, is the sole individual defendant named in the Boim case along with AMP, which formally identifies in tax filings as Americans for Justice in Palestine Educational Foundation, the group’s fiscal sponsor.

In one notable comment during discovery, Jaber readily acknowledged he supported Moussa Abu Marzouk, a senior Hamas official and a founder of IAP, when he lived in the U.S. in the 1990s. But he declined to weigh in on Marzouk’s current activities, suggesting he was unwilling to impart judgment on Hamas. “That’s his business now,” Jaber remarked in a characteristically curt response. “He’s not here anymore.”

More broadly, the materials shed additional light on the extent to which AMP has embraced an extremist approach to the conflict between Israel and Hamas — even as its leaders are for the most part seemingly careful not to voice explicit support for the terrorist group and are typically evasive in their comments.

Four days before Hamas’ attacks, for instance, Osama Abu Irshaid, the executive director of AMP who had previously edited IAP’s newspaper, said in his deposition, parts of which are confidential, that he would not share his current position on Hamas. In a 2014 social media post produced in discovery, he had written that the group commands “respect” because it “believes in the principle and negotiates from a position of strength,” according to his own translation. 

Abu Irshaid, who weeks later actively led campus protests in the wake of Hamas’ attacks and the ensuing war in Gaza, said he did not recall publishing the post, but agreed with the content, which he characterized as analysis rather than an endorsement. 

But he refused to confirm or deny if he now supports the principles Hamas stood for at the time of his post in 2014. “I’m not going to speak about my own convictions at the time, or today, or tomorrow,” he said, sounding frustrated by the line of questioning. “Or let me rephrase, I’m not going to say whether I support or not. What I support is the restoration of the Palestinian human rights in full.”

As to the fulfillment of that goal, Taher Herzallah, the director of outreach and grassroots organizing for AMP who has venerated Palestinian martyrdom, stated equivocally that the events of Oct. 7 “may be defined as resistance,” but then added he was only speaking objectively. “I haven’t thought about that so much,” he said in a deposition taken last month.

Later, echoing a view expressed by Jaber, Herzallah said that he would define Palestine as “between the Jordan River and east of the Mediterranean,” using a modified slogan that is widely interpreted as a call to eliminate Israel and has appeared with increasing regularity on college campuses, where he has helped organize protests.     

Salah Sarsour, an AMP national board member who has previously raised funds for Hamas, was equally circumspect in his own responses in January 2024, at one point softening the language he had used in a social media comment he was asked to translate from Arabic. 

“Oh, God! I ask you to give Gaza people victory and take care of those who want harm for people of Gaza from zealots and hypocrites,” he said in translation, but then acknowledged that “take care” could mean “destroy,” as the Boims’ attorneys suggested. “Same meaning,” he said. “Take care of them. Like, punish them.”

In 1995, Sarsour spent eight months in an Israeli prison for supporting Hamas and shared a cell with a senior Hamas commander, Adel Awadallah, with whom he “became close friends,” according to Matthew Levitt’s 2006 book Hamas: Politics, Charity, and Terrorism in the Service of Jihad. 

But speaking in his deposition, Sarsour said he was not aware of Awadallah’s history and did not know whether he was a member of Hamas. “I’m not here to judge people,” Sarsour stated. “I don’t know.”

Despite what Schlessinger described as attempts at obfuscation on the part of the defendants, he believes his team is well positioned for trial. “I think we have a very strong case on the facts and I would like to say on the law,” he averred. “We have a ton of evidence.”

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The Boims’ lawsuit, which is among several legal challenges targeting AMP that have more recently emerged, threatens to dismantle one of the nation’s leading pro-Palestinian organizations, as it has assumed an increasingly prominent role in the activist fervor fueled by the Hamas attacks and ensuing war, particularly on college campuses.

If the case succeeds, it would also be a major step toward fulfilling a significant but short-lived victory from 2004, when the family won a $156 million judgment against a network of affiliated nonprofits, including IAP, that the Boims claimed had provided material support to Hamas and were liable for their son’s murder under the Anti-Terrorism Act, which allows American victims of international terrorism to seek damages in the U.S. It was the first instance in which the law had been successfully used to reach a judgement, cementing it as a landmark decision.

The judgment, however, has never been fully paid. One of the groups, the Holy Land Foundation, had been designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. and shut down in 2001. Five of its leaders were also convicted of aiding Hamas and sent to prison in an unrelated 2008 trial that was described at the time as the largest terror financing case in the U.S. since the Sept. 11 attacks. (Hamas leadership has continued to call for their release as recently as last month.)

“This group’s leaders have ties to Hamas and helped create the group Students for Justice in Palestine,” Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), the committee chairman, said in a statement, referring to a loosely organized student advocacy group that has voiced support for Hamas while at the forefront of post-Oct. 7 protests.

IAP, the HLF’s media arm, shuttered soon after the ruling, claiming that the Boim case had depleted its assets and rendered it operationally defunct. Years later, however, in 2017, the Boims filed a new suit in Illinois invoking a legal argument typically reserved for corporate cases to allege that AMP is an alter ego of IAP and therefore responsible for the uncollected judgement. The case faced several initial roadblocks but was allowed to move forward on appeal — and a judge rejected AMP’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit in 2022.

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In the past year, AMP has drawn a growing number of legal challenges and government probes alleging that the group provides material support to Hamas. In Virginia, for example, AMP has been named in at least two lawsuits, including an investigation led by the Republican attorney general, who is seeking to enforce a Richmond judge’s order that requires the group turn over financial records that could help to shed light on its donor network — which it has long kept closely guarded.

Last month, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee launched an investigation into AMP over its engagement on college campuses. “This group’s leaders have ties to Hamas and helped create the group Students for Justice in Palestine,” Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), the committee chairman, said in a statement, referring to a loosely organized student advocacy group that has voiced support for Hamas while at the forefront of post-Oct. 7 protests.

The Boims’ lawsuit has in some ways dovetailed with such efforts — many of which have cited the case as a touchstone. “To my mind, this case is the gold standard,” Asaf Romirowsky, a historian of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict who has closely followed the Boim lawsuit, told JI. “All these other cases, and really a lot of the lawfare that has taken place, really all stems from this case.”

Like the terror financing cases of the early 2000s, the Boim suit in particular “could bring down the financial architecture” of an activist network that has thrived in a post-Oct. 7 political climate while “fomenting antisemitism” on college campuses and promoting boycott campaigns against Israel, said Romirowsky. “This is a linchpin here that can make that happen,” he added, noting that the case could also ultimately reveal “what’s behind the curtain.”

“I think there are a lot of people who are going to be looking at this case for perhaps other insights into what’s happened since Oct. 7,” he said. But the alter ego allegation is “the only thing that truly matters here,” said Jonathan Schanzer, the executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank and an expert on terror financing who has tracked the Boim case, and “if folks are smart, they’re going to just look at the intent of the case.”

In building its own case against AMP, however, the Boims’ legal team does not need to show the group has actively provided support to Hamas, in contrast with other suits requiring a higher burden of proof. Even as Schlessinger said he plans to establish that AMP has aided Hamas by helping to raise funds for such groups as Viva Palestina, a British organization that has allegedly given financial support to Hamas officials, “that’s not key to our case,” he explained to JI.

“All we have to do is prove AMP is essentially the same organization as IAP,” he said. “We’ve proven that IAP provided material support to Hamas.”

Jonathan Schanzer, the executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank and an expert on terror financing who has tracked the Boim case, said critics of AMP may be tempted to read too deeply into the legal materials that will emerge from the lawsuit. “I think there are a lot of people who are going to be looking at this case for perhaps other insights into what’s happened since Oct. 7,” he said. But the alter ego allegation is “the only thing that truly matters here,” he told JI, and “if folks are smart, they’re going to just look at the intent of the case.”

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Still, Schlessinger said he intends to demonstrate that AMP, like its alleged predecessor, has actively fostered support for Hamas, including through its close affiliation with SJP’s national umbrella group, which it has provided with financial resources and training. SJP, which published a widely scrutinized organizing toolkit shortly after Hamas’ attacks that called for the “complete liberation” of the Palestinians and for “dismantling Zionism,” was purportedly co-founded by Hatem Bazian, the founder of AMP who serves as its national board chair.

In his deposition, however, Bazian claimed he had not been a co-founder of SJP as a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley in the early 1990s, even when presented with a legal complaint he filed in Arizona in 2018 explicitly describing himself as such, which he called an error. “Most SJPs — or most campus organizing” for Palestinian causes “is actually done by Jewish students,” Bazian insisted last April.

Bazian, who spoke at IAP events before he formed AMP, also distanced his group from affiliation with Hamas, but did not share any condemnation of the terrorist organization. Instead, he stated that AMP does not allow donations to Hamas because it is a U.S.-designated terrorist organization, “and any individual that attends our conference is prohibited from violating the law.”

Elsewhere in discovery, Bazian was notably told by his lawyer to hold off from answering a question about whether he is acquainted with anyone who has been accused of membership in the Muslim Brotherhood, of which Hamas is an offshoot. Following a break in the proceedings, during which he conferred with his attorney, Bazian later revealed he knows a New Jersey imam linked to the Muslim Brotherhood but was only aware of a legal fight over his immigration status through “public information,” though he said they had met multiple times.

In a recent deposition of Jamal Said, the longtime leader of the Mosque Foundation outside Chicago who was listed as an unindicted conspirator in the HLF case and regularly speaks at AMP events, was also evasive about his own alleged connections to the Muslim Brotherhood, which he characterized as “moderate Islam.”

Asked whether he knows if AMP provides material support to Hamas, the sheikh — whose mosque has donated to the group — initially demurred. “I don’t know they are providing support to Hamas,” he told the Boims’ attorneys, but later added that he had no reason to investigate. In a separate remark, he said that AMP had told him “many times” that the group does not send money abroad, which he had deemed sufficient.

Beyond such mixed messaging, the depositions suggest AMP made misrepresentations in its early tax filings, inadvertently or not, while engaging in lobbying and other activities that may be forbidden by nonprofit organizations, potentially jeopardizing its tax-exempt status — a source of scrutiny in the Virginia attorney general’s newer investigation. For instance, Munjed Ahmad, a co-founder and national board member of AMP who has stirred controversy for delivering a lecture on how to skirt terror laws, admitted the group had introduced several “errors” and “mistakes” into its early tax returns, according to a deposition he took last February.

Meanwhile, the documents show that AMP has barely, if at all, fulfilled a description listed on its tax forms stating the group provides “funding for publishing books and journals,” with several of its members sharing contradictory statements on the matter. Bazian said AMP had published “booklets rather than books,” while Ahmad noted the group had donated copies of a controversial book on the Israel lobby to libraries. For his part, Sarsour, the AMP board member who spent time in an Israeli prison, said that the group had published “many books” covering a range of Palestinian issues.

Still, Lara Burns, a retired federal agent and now head of terrorism research at George Washington University’s Program on Extremism, said AMP has otherwise been “very successful” in spreading what she called “propaganda” that has boosted Hamas in the U.S. — which she said has “gone unchecked” for years.   

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As the case moves forward, Schlessinger said he is optimistic it could head to trial as soon as this year, nearly a decade after the suit was filed. “We would like the public and the press in general to hear what these witnesses have to say from a witness stand and make their own determination,” he told JI.

Gary Osen, an attorney with experience in terror financing cases whose law firm has filed an amicus brief supporting the Boims in their lawsuit, said in a recent interview with JI that the complaint paints “a very convincing picture” to establish that AMP is an alter ego of IAP — which he called a “fairly common problem” among groups with alleged ties to terror.

In the meantime, some challenges remain. Unlike related cases, for example, the Boims’ lawyers have already successfully obtained some of AMP’s donor records, even as they are designated as confidential, which Schlesinger said he plans to challenge in order to bring them to the public. But he has had trouble acquiring earlier records that could illustrate further parallels with IAP, the depositions suggest.

Last year, Hamayel, the former IAP leader who now manages AMP’s books and records, told the Boims’ counsel that he had maintained a list of the group’s donations on Excel spreadsheets until 2012 or 2013, after which the computer he was using to store such data crashed. He was unable to recover the missing information, he claimed, and said he did not recall holding onto the computer. Afterward, he said he began using a cloud-based service to store AMP’s donor records, according to his deposition, parts of which remain confidential.  

During the exchange, Hamayel’s attorney instructed him “not to answer as to any specifics,” when asked if he had turned over all available donor records as part of discovery.

In a statement to JI shared by Schlessinger, Joyce Boim voiced hope that the case would soon finally come to a close, as she prepares to observe the anniversary of her son’s death next month. “Dovid’s yahrzeit is in May, and it will be 29 years since I lost him,” she said. “The murderers are still killing people and torturing people and I don’t know when it’s going to end.”

If the Boims prevail in their case, Schlessinger acknowledges that recovering the full judgment from two decades ago is still unlikely, even as the group’s fundraising has increased considerably since Hamas’ terror attacks. The organization pulled in a record $2.3 million in revenue in 2023, according to its latest tax filings. 

“I don’t think there is any chance that we will collect $156 million from AMP, but we will get what we can,” Schlessinger said. “We’re not really in this for the money,” he clarified. “We’re in it to get some justice for the Boims.”

In a statement to JI shared by Schlessinger, Joyce Boim, who has lived in Israel with her husband for the past several decades, voiced hope that the case would soon finally come to a close, as she prepares to observe the anniversary of her son’s death next month. “Dovid’s yahrzeit is in May, and it will be 29 years since I lost him,” she said. “The murderers are still killing people and torturing people and I don’t know when it’s going to end.”

“I am not giving up,” she vowed last week. “We need to keep this mission in the limelight. It is essential that we keep fighting to see an end to this horror.”