A prominent Jewish advocacy group filed a lawsuit on Thursday against Hamas and other armed groups, as well as Iran, Syria and North Korea, seeking billions in damages over the October 7 attacks in Israel.
The suit, brought on behalf of more than 140 plaintiffs, including US victims and their family members, was filed by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and law firm Crowell & Moring in the US District Court in Washington, DC, just weeks before the two-year anniversary of the attack.
The lawsuit seeks at least $7 billion in damages from the armed groups and from the three foreign countries, which it accuses of providing Hamas with “support and resources” for the terror attacks.
The lawsuit appears to be largely symbolic in nature and it’s not clear how those bringing the case plan to serve papers on foreign states or Hamas, an Islamist movement that has been majorly diminished and had much of its leadership eliminated during the war in Gaza.
Many of the plaintiffs and defendants are also parties in a lawsuit filed by the ADL in the same court last year against Iran, Syria and North Korea, which similarly accused the states of providing support to Hamas. The plaintiffs in that case were able to serve papers to Iran with diplomatic help from Switzerland, but they have not successfully served Syria or North Korea and none of the countries have responded in court.
“The victims of the October 7 massacre deserve justice, accountability and redress,” said ADL CEO Jonathan A. Greenblatt. “This lawsuit seeks to do that by holding those responsible for the carnage accountable, from the state sponsors who provided the funding, weapons, and training to the terrorist organizations who carried out these unspeakable atrocities.”
Among the plaintiffs in the case are David and Hazel Brief, whose son Yona, an Israeli soldier, died from injuries sustained during the attack. They said in a statement provided by the ADL that Yona’s life was “senselessly cut short.”
“We believe it is critical that those responsible for the horrific terror inflicted that day are held accountable in a court of law, to ensure the record is clear as to who helped support, plan and carry out the violence that day,” they added.
During the October 7, 2023 attack, Hamas and several other militant groups stormed the Nova Music Festival and nearby communities in southern Israel, killed more than 1,200 people and took 251 others hostage. Nearly two years later, 148 hostages have been returned alive to Israel, but the Israeli government says 47 are still held captive inside Gaza. 25 of those remaining have been declared dead, while 20 are believed to be alive; the status of the others is uncertain.
Over the course of the war, Israeli forces have killed nearly 65,000 Palestinians and injured more than 164,000, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health. This week, Israel announced it had begun a ground incursion into Gaza City and an independent UN inquiry concluded for the first time that Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, which its government has denied.
Iran, Syria and North Korea have been designated by the US State Department as “state sponsors of terrorism.” The designation is applied by the secretary of state to countries found to have “repeatedly provided support for acts of international terrorism.”
Foreign states are typically allowed immunity from prosecution in the US under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. But the law makes exceptions for state sponsors of terrorism, as well as for “personal injury or death that was caused by an act of torture, extrajudicial killing, aircraft sabotage, hostage taking” or “material support” of these activities by state officials.
In their statement, David and Hazel Brief said they hoped that the litigation would “help prevent attacks like these in the future, so that no other families have to go through losing a loved one as a result of such violence.”
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