[Order Michael Finch’s new book, A Time to Stand: HERE. Prof. Jason Hill calls it “an aesthetic and political tour de force.”]
Victims and families of victims of the October 7 attacks have just filed a massive lawsuit against both those terrorist groups that carried out the attacks and their state sponsors. More on this lawsuit can be found here: “October 7 massacre lawsuit filed for 140 people against terrorist groups and state sponsors,” by Michael Starr, Jerusalem Post, September 18, 2025:
A lawsuit by over 140 family members and victims of the October 7 massacre against the terrorist organization perpetrators and their state sponsors was filed…
The filing sought judgment against eight terrorist organizations for homicide, material support for terrorism, aiding and abetting terrorism, and conspiracy under the Anti-Terrorism Act, which allows US nationals to seek civil action in the US for terrorism conducted by Foreign Terrorist Organizations abroad.
The ADL and Crowell & Moring named Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, the Popular Resistance Committees, the Palestinian Resistance Committees, the Palestinian Mujahideen Movement, and Hezbollah as responsible for varying crimes against US citizens and their families.
The suit also targeted four state actors under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, which allows victims to sue countries that are US-designated state sponsors of terrorism….
Iran and its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Syria, and North Korea were accused of facilitating, supporting, or funding the activity of the terrorist organizations involved in the October 7 massacre. The suit brought claims of punitive damages, direct liability, assault, civil conspiracy, aiding and abetting, emotional suffering, and wrongful death….
Lawfare can tie these terrorist groups and the state actors who support them in litigation for a long time, and if the plaintiffs are ultimately successful in their civil suits, the defendants, including the state actors being sued, should be on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars. Some of them may even have their assets in the U.S. seized to pay the judgment. But here is just one thing about the suit that confounds me. The suit names three state actors, Iran, Syria, and North Korea, but the world’s main supporter and funder of the terror groups, including Hamas, is not a defendant in this suit or in he one filed in 2024. Why is that? I am speaking, of course, of Janus-faced meretricious Islamic Qatar. Those who are involved in this suit, please explain.