Today I would like to tell the story of two legal cases. One is finished, one has just started. Both are related to Palestinian terrorism and they show a very interesting story, and - if you will bear with me till the end of this post - they are very important for the present situation.
Let's start with the first one.
In April 1995 Alisa Flatow, the US citizen and student, was spending a semester studying in Israel. It was a time after Oslo Accords when many people among Israelis and Palestinians were still hopeful for a long-time solution and the end to the conflict (what happened to not bring about this vision I will describe in my next piece about Arafat, but that is not for today). Alisa wanted to take a trip to Jordan (the border between Jordan and Israel has just been opened) but did not find for the short few days break friends who would like to go with her. Instead she decided to spent these days with her two girl friends at the beach in Gaza (at the time it was 10 years to unilateral Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, and Gaza's beaches are spectacular). The girls took a regular line 36 bus they boarded in Ashkelon. At 11:45 Khaled Mohammed Khatib rammed his explosive-full car into the bus, full of soldiers and civilians, switching a trigger. 8 people were killed including Alisa Flatow, whose brain was penetrated by a shrapnel. Evacuated by helicopter to the Soroka hospital in Israel she undergone complicated surgery but to no avail. She was pronounced brain dead and her father, who flew to Israel, agreed for donation of her organs to 3 different people in life-saving medical procedures.
The responsibility for the attack was claimed by the Shaqaqi faction of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
Steven Flatow, Alisa's dad, himself a lawyer, became public speaker and was constantly looking for ways to deal with his grief. In the spring of 1997, after terrorist attacks in Israel claimed lives of subsequent American victims - 174 over the 18 months period, President Clinton signed the law allowing for families of American victims to sue countries designated as sponsors of terrorism. These applied to 7 countries. One of them was Iran. Steven Flatow, with the help of two brilliant lawyers and his well informed friends, helpers and experts, established that the Islamic Republic of Iran was spending yearly approximately 100 million dollars (remember, it is mid 90s) on terrorism. Of this sum some 75% was spent on financing Palestinian terrorism, in particular on Hamas and PIJ (Palestinian Islamic Jihad). Steven Flatow decided in the fall of 1997 to try new law and brought a civil case against Iran for the murder of his daughter claiming that the attack would not have been possible without Iran's organizational and financial support. It turned that Iran was training Palestinian terrorists to great extent in Sudan and Iran itself. The summons were delivered with the help of Swiss Embassy in Iran which after a revolution served as diplomatic outpost for American interests. Iranian officials opened the enveloped, had a look, returned the papers to the enveloped, and the enveloped to sender. They never hired a lawyer, comment on the summons or appeared in the court (which they often did for regular civilian lawsuits following businesses gone wrong after the revolution). The case - US District Court for the District of Columbia - 999 F. Supp. 1 (D.D.C. 1999) January 25, 1999 - took place in March 1998 in the Federal District Court with Judge Lamberth presiding. Here is a link to the case for those interested.
After listening to witnesses, plaintiffs, experts and reviewing documentation provided the court decided to rule in favor of plaintiffs and award them almost a quarter billion of dollars total (including punitive damages). Steven Flatow tried to collect it from frozen Iranian assets in the USA, including the building of former Iranian embassy, but the Department of State prevented it. In the year 2000 plaintiffs gained the knowledge that the US government had $400,000,000.00 of Iranian money frozen. It constituted prepayment for the weapons the USA was selling to Iran previously and was frozen after the hostage crisis in American Embassy in Tehran. When that was publicized the US government proposed settlement and paying of 25 million dollars to Flatows from these funds. Settlement was agreed. 15 years later, when the Agreement about stopping work on nuclear weapons with Iran was entered into US government (at the time under President Obama) released.... 400 million dollars of these frozen funds to Iran. And Flatows were not the only ones to sue Iran for the deaths of their near and dear. When in 2019 President Trump withdrew from that Agreement and Iran returned to working on nuclear weapons - we know the subsequent, including very fresh history - the only conclusion one may reach is that for the death of American citizen, killed in Israel by Palestinian terrorists with vast help from Iran the Islamic Republic of Iran was sued, found guilty, lost in the court, the money was collected and then... returned by American authorities for nothing (as the agreement didn't stand, even if one - I do not - believes that it should be returned to Iran after entering into the agreement) and effectively all damages in this and similar cases were covered by American taxpayers. Don't get me wrong, I truly support the sentence by Judge Lamberth, I just believe that defendant should cover the costs and not American taxpayers because of American politics and war between political parties. That was the whole idea of punitive damages that were to deter Iran from financing terrorism (and mind you, the sentence was against Iran AND its highest authorities including Khamenei).
The second lawsuit was brought to court only last Thursday. It is directed against UNRWA by families of Americans killed by Palestinian terrorists. According to the complaint, UNRWA has provided material aid to Hamas and Hezbollah in violation of anti-terrorism laws. It also claims that UNRWA USA assisted the groups by gathering donations. Similar lawsuit has been started already last year by a different group of American victims, yet until April this year UNRWA enjoyed immunity from lawsuits in the US. And while the UN continues to enjoy such immunity the recent Department of Justice decision from April 2025 declared that its subsidiaries (UNRWA included) are not. This lawsuit is also brought to the Federal Court in the District of Columbia, like in Alisa Flatow's case. The other is in New York.
Both suits are attempting to hold the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, known as UNRWA, responsible in some measure for violent acts by Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, groups dedicated to the destruction of Israel that have been designated terrorist organizations by the United States. The plaintiffs are seeking unspecified monetary damages, both compensatory and punitive. The lawsuit alleges that rather than promoting peace and coexistence, UNRWA actively encourages anti-Israel and antisemitic attitudes through its positions, services, and education system. Hundreds of UNRWA workers are believed to have engaged in terrorism in recent years. On Oct. 7, 2023, UNRWA social worker Faisal Ali Mussalem al Naami and a colleague were caught on film loading into a truck the lifeless body of an Israeli man, Yonatan Samerano, providing evidence that’s helped focus attention on UNRWA and its well-documented, years-long record of complicity in terrorism and incitement.
Below a list of some UNRWA teachers reactions to October 7 massacre:
- UNRWA Gaza teacher Osama Ahmed posted “Allah is Great, Allah is Great, reality surpasses our wildest dreams” as the massacre was unfolding.
- UNRWA school principal Iman Hassan justified the massacre as “restoring rights” and “redressing” Palestinian “grievances.”
- Director of the UNRWA Khan Younis Training Center Rawia Helles, who is featured in and UNRWA campaign, glorified one of the terrorists as a “hero,” “raider,” and “prince of Khan Younis.”
- UNRWA English teacher Asmaa Raffia Kuheil excitedly posted “7th, October, 2023! Sculpture the date!” adding a heart emoji.
- UNRWA school administrator Hmada Ahmed posted “welcome the great October.”
Also remember that despite UNRWA knowing for more than a decade that the head of its teachers union in Lebanon, Fathi al-Sharif (a.k.a. Fateh “Abo Amin” al-Sharif), overseeing 39,000 students in 65 schools, is part of Hamas and an overt promoter of terrorism, the agency is refusing to fire him.
UNRWA chief Lazzarini initiated an external review of UNRWA in mid-January 2024 in response to revelations about the agency’s terror ties, including a 3,000-member UNRWA staff Telegram group and the participation of at least 12 UNRWA employees in the October 7 Hamas attack. The mandate of that review, headed by former French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna, was to “conduct an independent review of mechanisms and procedures to ensure adherence by UNRWA to the humanitarian principle of neutrality.” The Colonna Review Group published its final report, containing 50 separate recommendations, on April 20, 2024.None of them was so far implemented to my knowledge.
The most specified reports about UNRWA's employees and officials criminal activities are written by UN Watch - examples may be find here and here. Greater aggregation of the reports may be found here. They were all formally submitted to governments and UNRWA itself, and not protested.
Will UNRWA, employing almost exclusively Palestinians and for years not even pretending to be neutral be found responsible. I should definitely hope so. And hopefully this time defendant, if found responsible, will pay their own penalties.
More about UNRWA soon.
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