A big victory at the Supreme Court has put wind in the sails of our terror lawsuit.
On Friday, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that a law passed by Congress to allow for lawsuits specifically against the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the PLO was constitutional. Churchill would best describe victory. “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”
After the suicide bombing in which our son and I were wounded, I looked for lawyers to sue those involved in harming us. The names that continually showed up were Nitsana Darshan-Leitner and her organization, Shurat HaDin. We met in 2002, and she filed a lawsuit for eleven American families harmed in and around Jerusalem during the second intifada. The case was filed in 2004. We went to trial and won in the district court in New York in 2015. The Second Circuit ruled that the PA and PLO were not “at home” for trial and threw out the $655.5 million judgment. On Friday, the Supreme Court declared that a 2019 law that made the bad guys at home was Constitutional, and now our case goes back to the Second Circuit for the next steps. The law in question, the Promoting Security and Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act, required the PA to stop payments to terrorists who had harmed American citizens. When they continued to pay these murderers, the law construed their jurisdictional consent for the purpose of civil suits in the US.
There are a lot of people to thank as we reach this milestone and move forward.
First, I thank God for saving us during the explosion in which three were killed and over 80 were wounded. Ours was the only case that made it to a jury and a judgment; the others were thrown out due to the lack of standing addressed by the Supreme Court in its ruling. All of those cases should be coming back to life now.
Recommended
I have to thank our lawyers for their determination and perseverance. Nitsana and our US counsel, Kent Yalowitz, have never taken their foot off the gas. Before the hearing in Washington in April, Kent said that he thought he could get all of the justices to vote in our favor. I didn’t want to argue with him, but I thought he was wildly optimistic. In the end, he was right.
I wish to thank the nine justices of the US Supreme Court. I listened to the oral arguments, and I heard several of them trying to find a way to make the law Constitutional without opening the floodgates of Congress crafting laws to make anyone at home for litigation. I am truly thrilled that the court ruling was unanimous. Before the highest court in the land, every court deemed the law unconstitutional.
I thank the US government for coming into our case on our side. The Biden Department of Justice (DoJ) initiated support for our case and the Trump DoJ continued in arguing that the law was Constitutional. A DoJ lawyer argued on our behalf in front of the court.
I must thank the US Congress that always stood by our side. The House several times filed amicus briefs on our behalf, as did many key senators. Senator Grassley of Iowa has been the driving force for the original Anti-Terror Act (ATA) and the follow-on laws to help us see justice from those who harmed us. President Trump twice signed into law bills that were meant to help establish the PA at home for lawsuits. The second of the two stuck and now they can no longer claim that they cannot be sued in a US court.
When the Second Circuit ruled that the PA was not at home and thus our judgment was invalid, it was painful. The judges noted that all of the plaintiff families suffered horrible events, something that even the PA’s original lawyers also noted, though they claimed that their client was not involved in the bombings and shootings recorded in the case. When the PA got off, it felt like someone getting out of a murder rap for a technicality. They caught the guy kill his friend on camera, with witnesses, fingerprints on the gun, a confession and he walked free because nobody read him his Miranda rights. The PA and PLO were found guilty by twelve New York jurors in less than two days of deliberations. The original $218.5 million judgment was automatically trebled to $655.5 million by the ATA. It is our hope that the Second Circuit will reinstate this verdict—with interest. It is as if nine years from the moment when the PA was found not at home until they were now found at home just vanished in a second. When the case returns to New York, it will start up exactly where it left off, with the one major difference being that the defendants can no longer claim that they cannot be sued in a US courtroom.
One of Westerners' biggest challenges is understanding that not everybody thinks the way we do. The lefties who went to Libya to enter Gaza were shocked when Egyptian police took their passports, threw projectiles at them and roughed them up before unceremoniously throwing them out of the country. If one went to Ramallah, he would find streets and squares named after mass murderers. The US would never think to make the address of New York’s Freedom Tower 1 Unabomber Circle, but in the Palestinian world, such praise for people who killed innocents is common. Our lawyers crafted the law that made payments to terrorists one of the hooks in the law. The first law made US payments to the PA the hook, so the PA swore off all American aid until the law was struck off. Our lawyers understood that they could not easily stop paying terrorists in Israeli jails. Paying those who killed Jews in their mind is an obligation like the US having the VA to serve the needs of veterans who protected our country. The terrorists are their heroes and the PA keeps paying them while in Israeli jails. The guy who sent the bomber to blow up behind us has gone up several ranks in the PA intelligence services while sitting in an Israeli jail.
The unanimous decision of the Supreme Court to allow our case to continue was an enormous boost not only for us but for the original purpose of the ATA—to bankrupt those who harm Americans overseas. Terrorists do not buy into our pieties, but they understand money very well. I hope that we move forward successfully from here, and the day will soon come when no American faces danger, neither at home nor at a location outside of the United States.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member