Solidarity International, Attorney Stanley L. Cohen Announce Landmark Lawsuit

By Janet McMahon

At a July 17 press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, Solidarity International and attorney Stanley L. Cohen announced the filing of a groundbreaking lawsuit against the State of Israel, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and other Israeli officials, and U.S. President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell. Defendents also include U.S. arms manufacturers The Boeing Co., McDonnell Douglas and others, and the Halamish/Neve Tzuf Settlement and its American Jewish and Christian supporters.

Cohen represents 18 Americans of Palestinian origin and three resident aliens—among whom is a survivor of the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre, for which an Israeli commission found Sharon indirectly and personally responsible. These plaintiffs, Cohen said, represent “about 45,000 U.S. citizens and American resident aliens who either live in or visit the occupied territories.” They are seeking damages, according to the lawsuit, “for a decades-long pattern of extra-judicial killing, torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, arbitrary arrest, illegal detention and other violations of customary international law and the laws of the United States.”

Speaking for Solidarity International, Abdurrahman Alamoudi explained that his organization had approached Cohen a year ago to request that the New York-based attorney study the feasibility of such a lawsuit. Filed July 18, 2002 at U.S. District Court in Washington, DC, it is the culmination of over a year of research by a legal team comprising “some of the best and the brightest,” Cohen said. The team has expanded, he added, to include Palestinian and Israeli attorneys, the human rights organizations Al-Haq and B’Tselem, and the Palestinian Authority.

From an original pool of several hundred possible plaintiffs, Cohen and his team narrowed the number to its current 21 in order to keep the focus as narrow as possible. “The plaintiffs are American citizens who have been injured,” the pony-tailed attorney stated, “and the source of the injury is illegal.”

One of the plaintiffs, for example (all of whom are pseudonymous at this point), John Doe II, owns approximately 15 acres in Deir Nitham—land which has been in his family for some 1,600 years. Since 1995, however, his lands have been stolen and encroached upon by the Halamish/Neve Tzuf settlement, and he and his family have been harassed and threatened by Jewish settlers and Israeli security officers. In October 2000, between 15 and 20 Halamish settlers set fire to the trees on his property and riddled his home with gunfire. Settlers also have bulldozed trees on his property in preparation for settlement expansion.

The legal team also was asked to trace the money trail that makes these illegal acts possible. “Tens of millions of dollars are coming from pro-Israel and Christian organizations in the U.S.,” Cohen said, “and much of it is used for armored personnel carriers, laser vision night scopes” and other weapons. Through its research, Cohen said, the team was able to identify “the 40 largest pro-Israel Jewish organizations and 25 Christian right organizations—and we plan on going after every one of them.”

While the so-called “Israeli” and “settler” defendants are charged with war crimes, crimes against humanity, racketeering and other criminal acts, the lawsuit seeks a ruling that President Bush and Secretary of State Powell must “cease providing military assistance to Israel until they have reported to Congress the misuse of American military assistance by Israel,” as required under the Arms Export Control Act of 1976.

Cohen declined to reveal plans for serving the various defendants. He did note with some relish, however, that the U.S. State Department is obligated to serve Israel a warrant.

Although the lawsuit’s initial focus was narrow and specific, Cohen said, he expected it to expand into a class action lawsuit with “tens of thousands of plaintiffs.” Two other lawsuits are “in the pipeline” as well, he said: one challenging the tax exemption of American pro-Israel and Christian right organizations, and another seeking to require that such organizations register as lobbyists.

According to Cohen, the current lawsuit’s “sole purpose is to say ‘never again.’” Its message to Palestinians, he said, is that “You are not alone. We will fight, we will work, we will struggle. We will not let Israel…know a day of peace from this point on.

“What we do is easy,” he went on. “What you [Palestinians] do is nigh on impossible—and that is, just live.”

As the legal complaint concludes, “None of [the plaintiffs] or the persons they survive perpetrated any crime, committed any wrongdoing, or posed any threat before they were killed, injured or tortured; before their homes were firebombed, their businesses razed and their property taken; before their lives were forevermore torn asunder, if not destroyed….Although they are as different as different can be, one thread binds their common experience and thus their common suffering—they are Palestinian. These Palestinian Americans seek nothing more of this Court than that which they have been denied for more than five decades in their ancestral homeland—justice.”

A Web site, <http://www.palestinianjustice.com>, is in the process of being established. In addition to providing information on the lawsuit, U.S. citizens or resident aliens of Palestinian heritage who have suffered damages from Israel or any of the suit’s other defendents or potential defendents will be able to contact the team through the site.

Janet McMahon is managing editor of the Washington Report.