Protesters face off in front of Columbia University April 22. Photo by Getty Images

By Benyamin Cohen March 25, 2025

A lawsuit filed Monday against Columbia University pro-Palestinian student groups and several of their leaders “has been in the works for well over a year,” according to a lawyer involved in the case. The suit alleges that organizers and student demonstrators at protests against the war in Gaza were acting as a “propaganda arm” of Hamas and receiving support from the terror group and its affiliates.

Among the defendants is Mahmoud Khalil, a leader of Columbia’s protest movement who was arrested earlier this month and whom the Trump administration is seeking to deport. Arielle Klepach, an attorney with the National Jewish Advocacy Center, said Khalil had drawn attention from their legal team “because of his leadership role” in campus protests — scrutiny that predated his detention by immigration authorities.

Klepach added that the legal team “accelerated our work” after protesters took over a building at Barnard College, an affiliate of Columbia, on Feb. 26 when a school employee was injured and briefly hospitalized.

The lawsuit was filed by nine U.S. and Israeli citizens affected by Hamas’ Oct. 7 assault, including family members of those killed or taken hostage, as well as two members of the Israeli Defense forces — one a reservist and one a former soldier — enrolled at Columbia who allege they were harassed on campus.

One of the allegations comes from Shlomi Ziv, a security guard at the Nova music festival who was kidnapped and held hostage in Gaza for 246 days before being rescued. The complaint claims that his captors “bragged about having Hamas operatives on American university campuses” and showed him images of protests at Columbia.

In addition to Khalil, the lawsuit names three other leaders — Nerdeen Kiswani, a co-founder of Within Our Lifetime; Maryam Alwan and Cameron Jones, both Columbia students — along with Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine, Columbia University Apartheid Divest, Within Our Lifetime-United for Palestine and Columbia-Barnard Jewish Voice for Peace. The complaint further alleges that American Muslims for Palestine, a group it claims provided support to these student movements, is effectively acting on Hamas’ behalf in the United States.

The lawsuit seeks financial damages for, among other things, “mental anguish and pain and suffering.”

Lawsuit alleges student knowledge of Hamas attack before it happened

One of the most striking allegations in the 79-page complaint concerns the timing of Hamas’ attack. The lawsuit claims that Columbia’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine had advance knowledge of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack — specifically, “three minutes” before it began. The suit cites an Instagram post from the group’s account, which had allegedly been inactive for months but reappeared on Oct. 6, Eastern time, with an announcement of its first meeting of the semester and the message, “Stay tuned 🇵🇸❣️.”

The Hamas assault began at approximately 6:30 a.m. local time in Israel — 11:30 p.m. on Oct. 6 in New York. The Instagram post could plausibly have been published just after the attack began but still show an Oct. 6 date. Unlike Twitter and Facebook, Instagram only shows dates and does not publicly display exact posting times. There are ways of looking at the source code to determine that information, but the account in question has since been taken down.

Klepach claims that people saw the post at the time and can attest to its timing before the attack. “We did not make this up,” she said.

The suit comes just days after Columbia agreed to demands from the Trump administration, which had penalized the school by pulling $400 million in federal contracts and grants for not doing enough to deal with pro-Palestinian protests. The Trump administration has sought to detain at least seven students and professors affiliated with universities and protests, including four at Columbia amid a broader crackdown on antisemitism on college campuses.

Correction: An earlier version of this story referred to Nerdeen Kiswani’s affiliation incorrectly. She is co-founder of Within Our Lifetime.

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