Israeli victims of Hamas terror file suit against Qatari banks, charities

Shurat HaDin Law Center initiated the legal action on behalf of 24 Israeli families of terror victims, a total of 120 Israeli individual plaintiffs.

A Palestinian Hamas-hired civil servant displays U.S. Dollar banknotes after receiving her salary paid by Qatar, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip December 7, 2018. (photo credit: IBRAHEEM ABU MUSTAFA/REUTERS)
A Palestinian Hamas-hired civil servant displays U.S. Dollar banknotes after receiving her salary paid by Qatar, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip December 7, 2018.
(photo credit: IBRAHEEM ABU MUSTAFA/REUTERS)
The Tel Aviv-based Shurat HaDin Law Center filed a legal action on Thursday in the Jerusalem District court against Qatari banks and charities for alleged transfer of funds to Hamas’ military wing during last month’s war against the Jihadi organization in the Gaza Strip. 
Shurat HaDin Law Center initiated the legal action on behalf of 24 Israeli families of terror victims, a total of 120 Israeli individual plaintiffs.
According to a statement from Shurat HaDin, “the NIS 1 billion civil action was filed against charities and Qatari banks, that it is alleged transferred money to Palestinian terrorists in the military wing of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, including during the recent Operation Guardian of the Walls, which saw thousands of rockets launched by Islamic groups into Israel. The court papers contend that the Qatari banks and charities played a key competent in financing and facilitating numerous terrorists attacks perpetrated by the Palestinian terrorists groups.”
The European Union and United States have classified Hamas a foreign terrorist organization.
Shurat HaDin said included in the “lawsuit as plaintiffs are the families of the late 19-year-old Uri Ansbacher, who was brutally murdered in the Jerusalem Forest, the late four-and-half- year-old Daniel Tregerman from Kibbutz Nahal Oz who was killed in Operation [Protective Edge].”
The lawsuit also includes the plaintiffs “Yochai Shreki, who was killed in a 2015 car bombing as well as the families of the late Rabbi Nehemiah Lavi, the late Rabbi Shai Ohayon, the late Reuven Shmerling and other victims of terrorism.”
Shurat HaDin said it “submitted evidence of bank transfers from these rogue charitable associations and Qatari banks, which in recent years have delivered millions of shekels from the Gulf region to the terrorist organizations in the Hamas controlled Gaza Strip. In addition, confessions from the interrogation of captured Palestinian terrorists who confirm that this is financial pipeline of how the funds were transferred to facilitate their criminal activities are included in the court submissions.”
Nitzana Darshan-Leitner, the president of the Shurat HaDin, said that "The absurdity is darkly troubling, on the one hand, the Israeli government is fighting Hamas, destroying weapons and devastating tunnels, and on the other hand it is transferring hundreds of millions of dollars being used to purchase new weapons and rehabilitate the terrorist infrastructure in Gaza. The government was grossly naïve to think that it could buy silence from a murderous terrorist organization like Hamas indefinitely in exchange for paying bribes.”
She added that “If the State of Israel cannot prevent Qatari funding of Palestinian terrorism, and actually insanely allows it, then the victims of terrorism will act to prevent it. In the end, these are the families who will be at the forefront of the fight against terrorist financing, and they will succeed in doing against Qatari banks and the rogue charities what the Israeli government refuses to do.”
Last week, The Jerusalem Post reported that a group of Syrians filed a legal action in London against Qatari banks and charities for their alleged financial support of the international designated terrorist entity al-Nusra Front.

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Qatar, whose monarchy was accused by Germany’s Development Minister Gerd Mueller of financing the Islamic State in 2014, is slated to host the soccer World Cup in 2022.
The Jerusalem Post reported last year that the US sent a team to probe Qatar’s regime for its reported financing of Hezbollah, a group classified as a terrorist movement by the US and the European Union.
The Post sent press queries to Qatar's foreign ministry and its embassies in Berlin and Washington DC about the Israeli lawsuit.